her secret house;
The wind at tourney comes and goes,
Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
He knew the beauty of all those
Last year, and who remembers him?

Love sometimes walks the waters still,
Laughter throws back her radiant head;
Utterly beauty is not gone,
And wonder is not wholly dead.
The starry, mortal world rolls on;
Between sweet sounds and silences,
With new, strange wines her beakers brim
He lost his heritage with these
Last year, and who remembers him?

None remember him: he lies
In earth of some strange-sounding place,
Nameless beneath the nameless skies,
The wind his only chant, the rain
The only tears upon his face;
Far and forgotten utterly
By living man. Yet such as he
Have made it possible and sure
For other lives to have, to be;
For men to sleep content, secure.
Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyes
Because his heart beats not again:
His rotting, fruitless body lies
That sons may grow from other men.

He gave, as Christ, the life he had—
The only life desired or known;
The great, sad sacrifice was made
For strangers; this forgotten dead
Went out into the night alone.
There was his body broken for you,
There was his blood divinely shed
That in the earth lie lost and dim.
Eat, drink, and often as you do,
For whom he died, remember him.

MADALA GOES BY THE ORPHANAGE.

Unaware of its terror,
And but half aware
Of the world's beauty near her—
Of sunlight on the stones,
And trembling birds in the square,
Lightly went Madala—
A rose blown suddenly
From Spring's gay mouth; part of the Spring was she.
Warmed to her delicate bones,
Cool in its linen her skin,
Her hair up-combed and curled,
Lightly she flowered on the sin
And pain of the Spring-struck world.
Down the street went crazy men,
The winter misery of their blood
Budding in new pain
While beggars whined beside her,
While the streets' daughters eyed her,—
Poor flowers that kept midsummer
With desperate bloom, and thrust
Stale rose at each newcomer,
And crime and hunger and lust
Raged in the noisy dust.
Lightly went Madala,
Unshaken still of that spell,
Coral beads and jade to buy,
While her thoughts roamed easily—
Thoughts like bees in lavender,—
Thoughts gay and fragile as a robin's shell.
Till suddenly she had come
To grim age-stubborned wall
Behind whose mask of bars
Starts up in shame the Foundlings' Hospital.*
At the gates to watch her pass
A caged thing eyed her dumb,
Most mercifully unaware
Of its own hurt, but Madala
Stopped short of Spring that day.
The air grew pinched and wan,
A hand came over the sun,
Birds huddled, stones went grey.
Her lace and linen white
Seemed but her body's sin,
Her flesh unscarred and bright
Burnt like a leper's skin.

Her mouth was stale with bread
Flung her by strangers, she was fed,
Housed, fathered by the State, and she had grown
A thing belonging to, and loved by, none.
Though the shut mouth said no word,
From the caged thing she heard,
"Who has wronged me, that this Spring
"Gives me nothing and you everything,
"Who alike were made,
"Who beckon the same dreams?
"You buy coral and jade,
"I sew long hungry seams
"To pay for charity..."
Then Madala's heart, afraid,
Cried the first selfish cry:
"Is it my fault? Can I
"Help what the world has done?
"Can the flower in the shade
"Blame the flower in the sun?"
Then quick the caged thing said,
As if to ask pardon that its words had made
Madala's spring so spoiled for her that day:
"But there's a way, a way!
"If flowers would share their Spring
"There'd be sunshine enough for all the flowers.
"Such sunshine you could bring,
"Such joy that swings and flies
"With posies your hours through,
"So just beyond my hours.
"If I could walk with you—
"Not in pitiful two by two
"Flayed by free children's eyes,
"Your sister for an hour to be,
"It would double joy and woo
"Spring back to you, and more than Spring to me."

Then something quaked in Madala,
Quaked with magic, quaked with awe.
Love-quickening, she became a part
Of this caged thing, she was aware
Of strange lips tugging at her heart.
So clear the way was! Tenderer
Grew her eyes, and as they grew,
Back to the flowers rushed the dew,
The earth filled out with the sun,
The cold birds in the square
Unbundled and preened upon
Their twigs in the softening air;
The cold wind dwindled and dropped,
And love and the world were one.
Nearer drew Madala,
At the dumb thing she smiled,
And Spring that a child had stopped
Came back from the eyes of a child.

* Guilford Street, London, the gates of which face the street.

OBSESSION.

I will not have roses in my room again,
Nor listen to sonnets of Michael Angelo
To-night nor any night, nor fret my brain
With all the trouble of things that I should know.
I will be as other women—come and go
Careless and free, my own self sure and sane,
As I was once ... then suddenly you were there
With your old power ... roses were everywhere
And I was listening to Michael Angelo.

ENOUGH.

Did he forget? ... I do not remember,
All I had of him once I still have to-day;
He was lovely to me as the word "amber,"
As the taste of honey and as the smell of hay.

What if he forget if I remember?
What more of love have you than I to say?
I have and hold him still in the word "amber,"
Taste of honey brings him, he comes back with the hay.

IN MEMORY OF DOUGLAS VERNON COW

This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.

To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,
As with the gentle fading of the year
Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end
Unquestioning draw near,
Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,
Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

But for June's heart there is no comforting
When her full-throated rose
Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,
By some stray wind is tossed,
Her swelling grain that goes
Heavy to harvesting
In a black gale is lost,
And her round grape that purpled to the wine
Is pinched by some chance frost.
Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,
For the stricken wheat, and for the finished vine!
Such were you who sleep now, who have foregone
So many of Life's rich secrets almost learned;
Winning so much, so much as yet unwon,
Yet to be dared, to discover, to reveal.
Quick still with ardour, hand still at the wheel
On wide and unsailed seas, eyes turning still
Towards the morning, while the keen brain burned
To the imperative will.

Upon your summer Death seems to set his heel,
Writes on the page "No more,"
And brings the sign of sunset, shuts the door
And the house is dark and the tired mourners sleep.
Yet says he too, "Though quiet at last you lie,
"And have done with