class="poem">I would not have the love of lips and eyes,
    The ancient ways of love:
But in my heart I built a Paradise,
    A nest there for the dove.

I felt the wings of light that fluttered through
    The gate I held apart:
And all without was shadow, but I knew
    The bird within my heart.

Then, while the innermost with music beat,
    The voice I loved so long
Seemed only the dream echo faint and sweet
    Of a far sweeter song.

I could not even bear the thought I felt
    Of Thee and Me therein;
And with white heat I strove the veil to melt
    That love to love might win.

But ah, my dreams within their fountain fell;
    Not to be lost in thee,
But with the high ancestral love to dwell
    In its lone ecstasy.

MISTRUST

You look at me with wan, bright eyes
    When in the deeper world I stray:
You fear some hidden ambush lies
    In wait to call me, "Come away."

What if I see behind the veil
    Your starry self beseeching me,
Or at its stern command grow pale,
    "Let her be free, let her be free?"

THE DREAM

I woke to find my pillow wet
    With tears for deeds deep hid in sleep.
I knew no sorrow here, but yet
    The tears fell softly through the deep.

Your eyes, your other eyes of dream,
    Looked at me through the veil of blank;
I saw their joyous, starlit gleam
    Like one who watches rank on rank.

His victor airy legions wind
    And pass before his awful throne—
Was there thy loving heart unkind,
    Was I thy captive all o'erthrown?

THE FEAST OF AGE

See where the light streams over Connla's fountain
                Starward aspire!
The sacred sign upon the holy mountain
                Shines in white fire:
Wavering and flaming yonder o'er the snows
                The diamond light
Melts into silver or to sapphire glows,
                Night beyond night:
And from the Heaven of Heaven descends on earth
                A dew divine.
Come, let us mingle in the starry mirth
                Around the shrine.
O Earth, Enchantress, Mother, to our home
                In thee we press,
Thrilled by thy fiery breath and wrapt in some
                Vast tenderness.
The homeward birds, uncertain o'er their nest
                Wheel in the dome,
Fraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest,
                Another home.
But gather ye, to whose undarkened eyes
                Night is as day,
Leap forth, immortals, Birds of Paradise,
                In bright array,
Robed like the shining tresses of the sun,
                And by his name
Call from his haunt divine, the ancient one
                Our Father Flame.
Aye, from the wonder light, heart of our star,
                Come now, come now.
Sun-breathing spirit, ray thy lights afar:
                Thy children bow,
Hush with more awe the heart; the bright-browed races
                Are nothing worth,
By those dread gods from out whose awful faces
                The earth looks forth
Infinite pity set in calm, whose vision cast
                Adown the years
Beholds how beauty burns away at last
                Their children's tears.
Now while our hearts the ancient quietness
                Floods with its tide,
The things of air and fire and height no less
                In it abide;
And from their wanderings over sea and shore
                They rise as one
Unto the vastness, and with us adore
                The midnight sun,
And enter the innumerable All
                And shine like gold,
And starlike gleam in the immortal's hall,
                The heavenly fold,
And drink the sun-breaths from the Mother's lips
                Awhile, and then
Fail from the light and drop in dark eclipse
                To earth again,
Roaming along by heaven-hid promontory
                And valley dim,
Weaving a phantom image of the glory
                They knew in Him.
Out of the fulness flow the winds, their song
                Is heard no more,
Or hardly breathes a mystic sound along
                The dreamy shore,
Blindly they move, unknowing as in trance;
                Their wandering
Is half with us, and half an inner dance,
                Led by the King.

A WAY OF ESCAPE

There's a way of escape through the Gate of Sorrow,
    A light at the end of the Path of Pain:
But our joy and our love can have no to-morrow,
    And to drink is to sink to the earth again.

There is death in the breath when our lips draw nigher,
    And we lay waste the plain for a flower to grow;
And we build up the tower of an hour's desire
    With dust from the pit of its overthrow.

RECALL

What call may draw thee back again,
    Lost dove, what art, what charm may please?
The tender touch, the kiss, are vain,
    For thou wert lured away by these.

Oh, must we use the iron hand,
    And mask with hate the holy breath,
With alien voice give love's command,
    As they through love the call of death?

THE VOICE OF THE WATERS

Where the Greyhound River windeth through a loneliness so deep,
Scarce a wild fowl shakes the quiet that the purple boglands keep,
Only God exults in silence over fields no man may reap.

Where the silver wave with sweetness fed the tiny lives of grass
I was bent above, my image mirrored in the fleeting glass,
And a voice from out the water through my being seemed to pass.

"Still above the waters brooding, spirit, in thy timeless quest;
Was the glory of thine image trembling over east and west
Not divine enough when mirrored in the morning water's breast?"

With the sighing voice that murmured I was borne to ages dim
Ere the void was lit with beauty breathed upon by seraphim,
We were cradled there together folded in the peace in Him.

One to be the master spirit, one to be the slave awoke,
One to shape itself obedient to the fiery words we spoke,
Flame and flood and stars and mountains from the primal waters broke.

I was huddled in the heather when the vision failed its light,
Still and blue and vast above me towered aloft the solemn height,
Where the stars like dewdrops glistened on the mountain slope of night.