once done are no more undone
Than last year's frost and last year's fruit.

For what has come of love and me
Who knew the first joy that loving is?
Where has love led and beckoned me
But to the end where nothing is?
I have seen my blood beat out again
Red in the hands of all my line,
My sin has swelled and flowered again
Corrupt and fierce through Sparta's line.
Bred through me—bred through delicate hands
And wandering eyes and wanton lips,
Sighing after strange flesh as sighed these lips,
Straying after new sin as strayed these hands.
Mother of Helen! She whose breasts
To new desires unshaped the world;
Above Troy's summit towered these breasts,
Helen who wantoned with the world!
Helen is dead (she had love enough
To laugh at doom and mock at shrine)
And Clytemnestra, quiet enough
To-night beneath Apollo's shrine.
And I am left, the source, the spring
Of all their madness. They are dead
While I still sit here, the old spring
That fouled them flows above the dead.

But I have paid. I have borne enough.
I am very old in love and woe.
For all souls these things are enough—
Who have known love are the friends of woe.
There those who love, and who escape,
There are those who love and do not die.
I loved, and there was no escape,
Long since I died and daily die.
And death alone makes hate and love
Friends with each other and with sleep...
All's quiet here that once was love,
This that is left belongs to sleep.

THE HAREBELL.

You give no portent of impermanence
Though before sun goes you are long gone hence,
Your bright, inherited crown
Withered and fallen down.

It seems that your blue immobility
Has been for ever, and must for ever be.
Man seems the unstable thing,
Fevered and hurrying.

So free of joy, so prodigal of tears,
Yet he can hold his fevers seventy years,
Out-wear sun, rain and frost,
By which you are soon lost.

WORDS.

    Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles!—
    Usumcasane and Theridamas,
    Is it not passing brave to be a king,
    And ride in triumph through Persepolis?—MARLOWE.

Bring the great words that scourge the thundering line
With lust and slaughter—words that reek of doom
And the lost battle and the ruined shrine;—
Words dire and black as midnight on a tomb;
Hushed speech of waters on the lip of gloom;
Huge sounds of death and plunder in the night;—
Words whose vast plumes above the ages meet,
Girdling the lost, dark centuries in their flight,
The slave of their unfetterable feet.

Bring words as pure as rills of earliest Spring
In some far cranny of the hillside born
To stitch again the earth's green habiting;—
Words lonely as the long, blue fields of morn;—
Words on the wistful lyre of winds forlorn
To the sad ear of grief from distance blown;
Thin bleat of fawn and airy babble of birds;
Sounds of bright water slipping on the stone
Where the thrilled fountain pipes to woodland words.

Bring passionate words from noontide's slumber roused,
To slake the amorous lips of love with fruit,
Dripping with honey, and with syrups drowsed
To draw bee-murmurs from the dreaming lute—
Words gold and mad and headlong in pursuit
Of laughter; words that are too sweet to say
And fade, unsaid, upon some rose's mouth;—
Words soft as winds that ever blow one way,
The summer way, the long way from the south.

For such words have high lineage, and were known
Of Milton once, whose heart on theirs still beats;
Marlowe hurled forth huge stars to make them crown;
They are stained still with the dying lips of Keats;
As queens they trod the cloak in Shakespeare's streets;
Pale hands of Shelley gently guard their flame;
Chatterton's heart was burst upon their spears:
Their dynasty unbroken, and their name
Music in all men's mouths for all men's ears.

But now they are lost, their lordliest 'scutcheon stained;
Upon their ruined walls no trumpet rings;
Their shrines defiled, their sacraments profaned:
Men crown the crow, they have given the jackal wings.
Slaves wear the peplum, beggars ride as kings.
They couple foolish words and look for birth
Of mighty emperor, Christ or Avatar,
They mate with slaves from whom no king comes forth;
No child is theirs who follow not the Star.

Lyric Apollo! Thou art worshipped still!
We quest for beauty on Thy hills like hounds,
Let these poor rhymers babble as they will,
Filling their pipes with shrill and crazy sounds.
Poets still praise Thee, music still abounds,
And Beauty knows the hour of Thy return,
For the Gods live albeit temples burn,
Suffer the fools their folly, let them be,
Wreathing each other with their wreaths of straw,
Trailing their pageants of the mud; but we
Await Thy laurel on our brows with awe.
And if Thou wreathe not, let us still be found
Thy slaves: Thou dost not bind unworthy things.
Them hast Thou chained not. Better heads uncrowned
Than mock regalia of the rabble's kings!

SHRIFT.

I am not true, but you would pardon this
If you could see the tortured spirit take
Its place beside you in the dark, and break
Your daily food of love and kindliness.
You'd guess the bitter thing that treachery is,
Furtive and on its guard, asleep, awake,
Fearing to sin, yet fearing to forsake,
And daily giving Christ the Judas kiss.

But piteous amends I make each day
To recompense the evil with the good;
With double pang I play the double part
Of all you trust and all that I betray.
What long atonement makes my penitent blood,
To what sad tryst goes my unfaithful heart!

THE THIEF OF BEAUTY.

The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes
The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms
Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes,
And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms.
Her ring the poppy snatches, and the rose
With laughter plunders all her gusty plumes.
He steals behind her, gathering, as she goes
Heedless of summer's end certain and soon,—
Of winter rattling at the door of June.

When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still,
Forsaken of her lovers and her lords,
And winter keeps cold watch upon the hill
Then he lets fall his bale of coloured words.
At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame,
Move at his magic with her bells and birds;
The rose will redden as he speaks her name,
He shall release earth's frozen bosom there,
And with great words shall cuff the whining air!

FORGOTTEN DEAD, I SALUTE YOU.

Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
Night has gone out beneath the hill
Many sweet times; before our eyes
Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
The magic that we call the rose.
The gentle history of the rain
Has been unfolded, traced and lost
By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
Birds in the hawthorn build again;
The hare makes soft