prey,
Those old grey two, more cruel for the lips that said them "Nay,"
For the bitterest foe is he who in the past
Has been repulsed when he would fain be friend.

I am sorry for women who are growing old,
I do not blame them holding youth with shameful hold,
Or doing desperate things to lips and eyes.
They have so pitifully short a flowering time,
So suddenly sweet a story so soon told.
They only strive to keep what men have taught them most to prize—
Men who have longer, fuller lives to live,
Who are not stopped and broken in their prime,
With their faces still to summer, Men do not know
What Age says to a woman. They would not wait
To feel slip from their hands without a throe,
Without a struggle, futile and desperate,
All that has given them wealth and love and power
Doomed, without hope or rumour of reprieve.
They would not smile into the eyes of that advancing hour
Who had bent all summer to their bow, and had flung
The widest rose and kissed the keenest mouth
And slept in the lordliest bed when they were young.
That bitter twilight which sun-worshipping Youth
Flies headlong keeps Age loitering on the hill,
Uneager to fold such greyness to his breast,
Knowing that none will thwart him of his will,
None be before him on that quest.

I am growing old.
I was not always kind when I was young
To women who were old, for Youth is blind—
A small, green, bitter thing beneath its fragrant rind,
And fanged against the old with boisterous tongue—
Those whose poor morning heads are touched with rime,
Walking before their misery like kings.
I did not think that I should feel such stings,
Nor flinch beneath such arrows. But now I know.
One day I shall be stupid and rather slow,
And easily cowed and troubled in my mind,
And tremulous, vaguely frightened, feeble and cold.
I am growing old.... My God! how old, how old! ...
I dare not tell them, but one day they will know...
I hope they will be kind.

ANNUNCIATION.

"The Lord appeared in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed."—EXODUS iii. 2.

When to your virgin heart, unstirred, ungiven,
Upon the quiet mountain side untrod,
The sudden naked fire came down from heaven,
Burning you with the very breath of God,

Was the sun lost? Were all the sweet stars dim
While God raised round your head those walls of light?
Were you locked dumbly, terribly with Him,
Within that burning temple day and night?

What was it to have God there like a bird—
God like a great, gold flower upon your breast—
While He spake things that only one man heard,
Face down before that glory manifest?

When that strange flame went up the mountain side,
Were your forsaken lips so burned with gold
That the creatures of the wild stood off and cried,
And in your breast no blossom dared unfold?

Did you call back the startled birds to build,
And put forth all your simple buds again,
Forgetting how your branches once were filled,
In sweet embrace of passing sun and rain?

Or were all other birds forbidden sing
After those great, gold plumes had made their nest?
Was, in its strange and awful blossoming,
That great, gold flower the last upon your breast?

BOYS BATHING.

Round them a fierce, wide, crazy noon
Heaves with crushed lips and glowing sides
Against the huge and drowsy sun.
Beneath them turn the glittering tides
Where dizzy waters reel with gold,
And strange, rich trophies sink and rise
From decks of sunken argosies.
With shining arms they cleave the cold
Far reaches of the sea, and beat
The hissing foam with flash of feet
Into bright fangs, while breathlessly
Curls over them the amorous sea.

Naked they laugh and revel there.
One shakes the sea-drops from his hair,
Then, singing, takes the bubbles: one
Lies couched among the shells, the sands
Telling gold hours between his hands:
One floats like sea-wrack in the sun.
The gods of Youth, the lords of Love,
Greeks of eternal Thessaly,
Mocking the powers they know not of,
Naked and unembraced and free!
To whom the Siren sings in vain
To-day, to-morrow who shall be
The destined sport of gods and men.

Unseen the immortal ones are here,
Remembering their mortal loves—
The strange, sweet flesh, the lips that were
Frail and most perishably fair.
Diana leaves her whispering groves,
And of Actæon dreams and sighs,
And hears the hounds bay in the wood.
Oh, Cythera, the trembling blood
Upon one petal's paling mouth
Before thee and this noon must rise
While thou remember Adon's eyes!
One mournful and complaining shade
Beyond Avernus bows his head,
Dreaming of one beloved youth
Borne from him, lost and dazed and dead,
Dragged by the nymphs' avenging hair
Into the sea-bed oozing dim,
In that cold twilight unaware
Of each great sunrise over him.

*****

One day, while still these waters run,
And noon still heaves beneath this sun,
You shall creep, unremembering,
Whom Life has humbled and subdued,
Ruined your bodies, tamed your blood,
No more the lords of anything.
But spent and racked with mortal pains,
The slow tide pushing through your veins,
Coldly you face this magic shore;
For you the disenchanted noon
Scarce haunted is with ghosts that were
Once, and were you, and are no more.

Faltering against the wind and sun
That vainly seek your hair for gold,
Stubborned with habit, grey and old,
You know not why you wander here,
Nor what vague dream pursues you still,
For Life has taken fullest toll
Of all your beauty; on each soul
Love's hand has left his bitter mark,
Has had of you his utmost will,
And thrusts you headlong to the dark.

And colder than these waters are
The stream that takes your limbs at last:
Earth's vales and hills drift slowly past...
One shore far off, and one more far.

LADY HAMILTON.

Men wondered why I loved you, and none guessed
How sweet your slow, divine stupidity,
Your look of earth, your sense of drowsy rest,
So rich, so strange, so all unlike my sea.
After the temper of my sails, my lean
Tall masts, you were the lure of harbour hours,—
A sleepy landscape warm and very green,
Where browsing creatures stare above still flowers.
These salt hands holding sweetness, the leader led,
A slave, too happy and too crazed to rule,
Sea land-locked, brine and honey in one bed,
And England's man your servant and your fool!
My banqueting eyes foreswore my waiting ships;
I was a silly landsman at your lips.

WHITE MAGIC.

Is it not a wonderful thing to be able to force an astonished plant to bear rare flowers which are foreign to it ... and to obtain a marvellous result from sap which, left to itself, would have produced corollas without beauty?—VIRGIL.

I stood forlorn and pale,
Pressed by the cold sand, pinched by the