between the beatings of the heart,
And inaccessible in dewy eyes
I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips,
Lingering between white breasts inviolate,
And fleeting ever from the passionate touch,
I shine afar, till men may not divine
Whether it is the stars or the beloved
They follow with rapt spirit. And I weave
My spells at evening, folding with dim caress,
Aerial arms and twilight dropping hair,
The lonely wanderer by wood or shore,
Till, filled with some deep tenderness, he yields,
Feeling in dreams for the dear mother heart
He knew, ere he forsook the starry way,
And clings there, pillowed far above the smoke
And the dim murmur from the duns of men.
I can enchant the trees and rocks, and fill
The dumb brown lips of earth with mystery,
Make them reveal or hide the god. I breathe
A deeper pity than all love, myself
Mother of all, but without hands to heal:
Too vast and vague, they know me not. But yet,
I am the heartbreak over fallen things,
The sudden gentleness that stays the blow,
And I am in the kiss that foemen give
Pausing in battle, and in the tears that fall
Over the vanquished foe, and in the highest,
Among the Danaan gods, I am the last
Council of mercy in their hearts where they
Mete justice from a thousand starry thrones.

THE GREY EROS

We are desert leagues apart;
    Time is misty ages now
Since the warmth of heart to heart
    Chased the shadows from my brow.

Oh, I am so old, meseems
    I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
    From the long-forgotten prime.

You have come a path of flowers.
    What a way was mine to roam!
Many a fallen empire's towers,
    Many a ruined heart my home.

No, there is no comfort, none.
    All the dewy tender breath
Idly falls when life is done
    On the starless brow of death.

Though the dream of love may tire,
    In the ages long agone
There were ruby hearts of fire—
    Ah, the daughters of the dawn!

Though I am so feeble now,
    I remember when our pride
Could not to the Mighty bow;
    We would sweep His stars aside.

Mix thy youth with thoughts like those—
    It were but to wither thee,
But to graft the youthful rose
    On the old and flowerless tree.

Age is no more near than youth
    To the sceptre and the crown.
Vain the wisdom, vain the truth;
    Do not lay thy rapture down.

REST

On me to rest, my bird, my bird:
    The swaying branches of my heart
Are blown by every wind toward
    The home whereto their wings depart.

Build not your nest, my bird, on me;
    I know no peace but ever sway:
O lovely bird, be free, be free,
    On the wild music of the day.

But sometimes when your wings would rest,
    And winds are laid on quiet eves:
Come, I will bear you breast to breast,
    And lap you close with loving leaves.

THE NUTS OF KNOWLEDGE

A cabin on the mountain side hid in a grassy nook
Where door and windows open wide that friendly stars may look.
The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free,
Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy.

And when the sun sets dimmed in eve and purple fills the air,
I think the sacred Hazel Tree is dropping berries there
From starry fruitage waved aloft where Connla's Well o'erflows;
For sure the enchanted waters run through every wind that blows.

I think when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew,
How every high and lonely thought that thrills my being through
Is but a ruddy berry dropped down through the purple air,
And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere.

THE BURNING GLASS

A shaft of fire that falls like dew,
    And melts and maddens all my blood,
From out thy spirit flashes through
    The burning glass of womanhood.

Only so far; here must I stay:
    Nearer I miss the light, the fire;
I must endure the torturing ray,
    And with all beauty, all desire.

Ah, time long must the effort be,
    And far the way that I must go
To bring my spirit unto thee,
    Behind the glass, within the glow.

THE TWILIGHT OF EARTH

The wonder of the world is o'er:
    The magic from the sea is gone:
There is no unimagined shore,
    No islet yet to venture on.
The Sacred Hazels' blooms are shed,
The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.

Oh, what is worth this lore of age
    If time shall never bring us back
Our battle with the gods to wage
    Reeling along the starry track.
The battle rapture here goes by
In warring upon things that die.

Let be the tale of him whose love
    Was sighed between white Deirdre's breasts,
It will not lift the heart above
    The sodden clay on which it rests.
Love once had power the gods to bring
All rapt on its wild wandering.

We shiver in the falling dew,
    And seek a shelter from the storm:
When man these elder brothers knew
    He found the mother nature warm,
A hearth fire blazing through it all,
A home without a circling wall.

We dwindle down beneath the skies,
    And from ourselves we pass away:
The paradise of memories
    Grows ever fainter day by day.
The shepherd stars have shrunk within,
The world's great night will soon begin.

Will no one, ere it is too late,
    Ere fades the last memorial gleam,
Recall for us our earlier state?
    For nothing but so vast a dream
That it would scale the steeps of air
Could rouse us from so vast despair.

The power is ours to make or mar
    Our fate as on the earliest morn,
The Darkness and the Radiance are
    Creatures within the spirit born.
Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might
Forget how we imagined light.

Not yet are fixed the prison bars;
    The hidden light the spirit owns
If blown to flame would dim the stars
    And they who rule them from their thrones:
And the proud sceptred spirits thence
Would bow to pay us reverence.

Oh, while the glory sinks within
    Let us not wait on earth behind,
But follow where it flies, and win
    The glow again, and we may find
Beyond the Gateways of the Day
Dominion and ancestral sway.

NIGHT

Burning our hearts out with longing
    The daylight passed:
Millions and millions together,
    The stars at last!

Purple the woods where the dewdrops,
    Pearly and grey,
Wash in the cool from our faces
    The flame of day.

Glory and shadow grow one in
    The hazel wood:
Laughter and peace in the stillness
    Together brood.