darker blue, a starry sparkle now begins;
The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins
Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers;
Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers.
The waters lull me and the scent of many gardens, and I hear
Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear.
Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid:
The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,
One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide,
Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side.
Oh light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,
While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.

THE SILENCE OF LOVE

I could praise you once with beautiful words ere you came
And entered my life with love in a wind of flame.
I could lure with a song from afar my bird to its nest,
But with pinions drooping together silence is best.

In the Land of Beautiful Silence the winds are laid,
And life grows quietly one in the cloudy shade.
I will not waken the passion that sleeps in the heart,
For the winds that blew us together may blow us apart.

Fear not the stillness; for doubt and despair shall cease
With the gentle voices guiding us into peace.
Our dreams will change as they pass through the gates of gold,
And Quiet, the tender shepherd, shall keep the fold.

APHRODITE

Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways:
One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days.
With solemn gaiety the stars danced far withdrawn on elfin heights:
The lilac breathed amid the shade of green and blue and citron lights.
But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of things,
For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings:
For beauty called to beauty, and there thronged at the enchanter's will
The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still.
And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout,
And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out.
Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air?
The burning doves fly from my heart, and melt within her bosom there.
I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen,
And this adoring love has brought us back the beauty that has been.
As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies,
So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes:
One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me:
One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!

REFUGE

Twilight, a timid fawn, went glimmering by,
    And Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast,
Ceaseless pursuit and flight were in the sky,
    But the long chase had ceased for us at last.

We watched together while the driven fawn
    Hid in the golden thicket of the day.
We, from whose hearts pursuit and flight were gone,
    Knew on the hunter's breast her refuge lay.

THE FACES OF MEMORY

Dream faces bloom around your face
    Like flowers upon one stem;
The heart of many a vanished race
    Sighs as I look on them.

The sun rich face of Egypt glows,
    The eyes of Eire brood,
With whom the golden Cyprian shows
    In lovely sisterhood.

Your tree put forth these phantom flowers
    In ages past away:
They had the love in other hours
    I give to you to-day.

One light their eyes have, as may shine
    One star on many a sea,
They look that tender love on mine
    That lights your glance on me.

They fade in you; their lips are fain
    To meet the old caress:
And all their love is mine again
    As lip to lip we press.

THE SECRET LOVE

You and I have found the secret way,
None can bar our love or say us nay:
All the world may stare and never know
You and I are twined together so.

You and I for all his vaunted width
Know the giant Space is but a myth;
Over miles and miles of pure deceit
You and I have found our lips can meet.

You and I have laughed the leagues apart
In the soft delight of heart to heart.
If there's a gulf to meet or limit set,
You and I have never found it yet.

You and I have trod the backward way
To the happy heart of yesterday,
To the love we felt in ages past.
You and I have found it still to last.

You and I have found the joy had birth
In the angel childhood of the earth,
Hid within the heart of man and maid.
You and I of Time are not afraid.

You and I can mock his fabled wing,
For a kiss is an immortal thing.
And the throb wherein those old lips met
Is a living music in us yet.

THE WEAVER OF SOULS

Who is this unseen messenger
For ever between me and her,
Who brings love's precious merchandise,
The golden breath, the dew of sighs,
And the wild, gentle thoughts that dwell
Too fragile for the lips to tell,
Each at their birth, to us before
A heaving of the heart is o'er.
Who art thou, unseen messenger?

I think, O Angel of the Lord,
You make our hearts to so accord
That those who hear in after hours
May sigh for love as deep as ours;
And seek the magic that can give
An Eden where the soul may live,
Nor need to walk a road of clay
With stumbling feet, nor fall away
From thee, O Angel of the Lord.

TRANSFORMATION

In other climes as the times shall fleet
    You yet may the hero be,
And a loving heart may beat, my sweet,
    In a woman's breast for thee.

Your flight shall be in the height above,
    My wings droop low on the lea.
For the eagle must grow a dove, my love,
    And the dove an eagle be.

CHILDREN OF LIR

We woke from our sleep in the bosom where cradled together we lay:
The love of the Dark Hidden Father went with us upon our way.
And gay was the breath in our being, and never a sorrow or fear
Was on us, as singing together, we flew from the infinite Lir.

Through nights lit with diamond and sapphire we raced with the Children of Dawn,
A chain that was silver and golden linked spirit to spirit, my swan.
Till day in the heavens passed over, and still grew the beat of our wings,
And the Breath of the Darkness enfolded to teach us unspeakable things.

Yet lower we fell and for comfort our pinionless spirits had now
The leaning of bosom to bosom, the lifting of lip unto brow.
Though chained to the earth yet we mourned not the loss of our heaven above,
But passed from the vision of Beauty to the fathomless being of Love.

Still gay is the breath in our being, we wait for the Bell Branch to ring
To call us away to the Father, and then