interpret, or a lost
Faint prelude to another—missing too.
She sang it (says the text) one summer night,
After the vespers, when the Abbess passed
And blessed her; when the nuns were gone, and when
She, kneeling in her drowsy cell, had said
Her prayers (poor soul!), her sorrowful prayers, in which
She had besought the Lord, for His dear sake,
And love and pity of His Only Son,
To wash her of her stain, and make her fit
On summer nights, behind the convent bars
And on stone-floors, with bruisèd lips, to pray
Away all vision but repentance from her soul.

When, kneeling as she was, her limbs
Refused to bear her, and she fell afaint
From weariness and striving to become
A holy woman, all her splendid length
Upon the ground, and groveled there, aghast
That buried nature was not dead in her,
But lived, a rebel through her fair, fierce youth;
Aghast to find that clasped hands would clench;
Aghast to feel that praying lips refused
Like saints to murmur on, but shrank
And quivered dumb. "Alas! I cannot pray!"
Cried Guinevere. "I cannot pray! I will
Not lie! God is an honest God, and I
Will be an honest sinner to his face.
Will it be wicked if I sing? Oh! let
Me sing a little, of I know not what;
Let me just sing, I know not why. For lips
Grow stiff with praying all the night.
Let me believe that I am happy, too.
A blessèd blessèd woman, who is fit
To sing because she did not sin; or else
That God forgot it for a little while
And does not mind me very much.
Dear Lord,"
(Said Guinevere), "wilt thou not listen while
I sing, as well as while I pray? I shall
Feel safer so. For I have naught to say
God should not hear. The song comes as the prayer
Doth come. Thou listenest. I sing." ...

Purple the night, and high were the skies, and higher
The eyes that leaned like the stars of my soul, to me.
Whom loveth the Queen? Him who hath right to crown her.
Who but the King is he?

Sultry the day, and gold was the hair, and golden
The mist that blinded my soul away from me.
Dethroned for a dream, for a gleam, for a glance, for a color,
How could the crownèd be?

Life goeth by like a deed, nor returneth forever.
Death cometh on, fleet-footed as pity should be.
Hush! When she waketh at last and looketh about her,
Whom will a woman see?

Thus in her cell,
Deep in the summer night, sang Guinevere—
A little, broken, blind, sweet melody—
And then she kneeled upon the convent floor,
And, peaceful, finished all her prayer and slept;
For she had naught to say God might not hear.

SUNG TO A FRIEND.

The tide is rising, rising
Out of the infinite sea;
From ripple, to wave, to billow,
Past beryl and gold and crimson,
A prism of perfect splendor;
What shall the white surf be?

The sacred tide is rising,
Rising for you and me.
Defiant across the breaker,
Wave unto wave must answer,
The sea to the shore will follow;
When shall the great flood be?

The tide must turn falling, falling
Back to the awful sea.
Thus far shalt thou go, no farther.
The color sinks to the shadow,
The pæan sobs into silence,
Where shall the ebb-line be?

By the weeds left blazing, beating
Like heart-throbs of the sea,
By the law of the land and the ocean,
By the Hand that holdeth the torrent,
I summon the tide eternal
To flow for you and me!

INCOMPLETION.

Perhaps the bud lost from the loaded tree
The sweetest blossom of the May would be;

Or wildest song that summer could have heard
Is dumb within the throat of the dead bird.

The perfect statue that all men have sought
May in some crippled hand be hid, unwrought.

Which of our dearest dead betook his flight
Into the rose-red star that fell last night?

The words forever by thy lips unsaid
Had been the crown of life upon thy head.

The splendid sun of all my days might be
The love that I shall never give to thee.

RAFE'S CHASM.

CAPE ANN, SEPTEMBER SURF. 1882.

White fire upon the gray-green waste of waves,
The low light of the breaker flares. Ah, see!
Outbursting on a sky of steel and ice,
The baffled sun stabs wildly at the gale.
The water rises like a god aglow,
Who all too long hath slept, and dreamed too sure,
And finds his goddess fled his empty arms.
Silent, the mighty cliff receives at last
That rage of elemental tenderness,
The old, omnipotent caress she knows.
Yet once the solid earth did melt for her
And, pitying, made retreat before her flight;
Would she have hidden her forever there?
Or did she, wavering, linger long enough
To let the accustomed torrent chase her down?
Over the neck of the gorge,
I cling. Lean desperately!
He who feared a chasm's edge
Were never the one to see
The torment and the triumph hid
Where the deep surges be.
I pierce the gulf; I sweep the coast
Where wide the tide swings free;
I search as never soul sought before.
There is not patience enough in all the shore,
There is not passion enough in all the sea,
To tell my love for thee.

GALATEA.

A moment's grace, Pygmalion! Let me be
A breath's space longer on this hither hand
Of fate too sweet, too sad, too mad to meet.
Whether to be thy statue or thy bride—
An instant spare me! Terrible the choice,
As no man knoweth, being only man;
Nor any, saving her who hath been stone
And loved her sculptor. Shall I dare exchange
Veins of the quarry for the throbbing pulse?
Insensate calm for a sure-aching heart?
Repose eternal for a woman's lot?
Forego God's quiet for the love of man?
To float on his uncertain tenderness,
A wave tossed up the shore of his desire,
To ebb and flow whene'er it pleaseth him;
Remembered at his leisure, and forgot,
Worshiped and worried, clasped and dropped at mood,
Or soothed or gashed at mercy of his will,
Now Paradise my portion, and now Hell;
And every single, several nerve that beats
In soul or body, like some rare vase, thrust
In fire at first, and then in frost, until
The fine, protesting fibre snaps?

Oh, who
Foreknowing, ever chose a fate like this?
What woman out of all the breathing world
Would be a woman, could her heart select,
Or love her lover, could her life prevent?
Then let me be that only, only one;
Thus let me make that sacrifice supreme,
No other ever made, or can, or shall.
Behold, the future shall stand still to ask,
What man was worth a price so isolate?
And