the spring;
You have I seen, you have I known
—The word you have written, your pictured head—
And they say you are laid at Lemnos among the English dead.

Soul that is gone—is gone—
Whether into the dark,
Or into knowledge complete and the blinding light;
Soul that was swift and free,
Passionate, eager, bright,
Armed with a weapon for shams,
And set with wings for flight;
Soul that was questioning, restless, and all at odds with life,
Greedy for it, yet satiate, and sick with the shows of things
—And all laid down at Lemnos, the hunger, the love, the strife,
And the youthful grace of body, and the body's ministerings.

Darkness, darkness, or light!
You have leapt from the circle of sense,
And only your dust remains and the word you said:
"If I should die," ... and we name you among the dead.
Yet have I a hope at heart
That somewhere away, apart,
Knowledge is yours and joy of the act fulfilled
To still your fever of soul as your fever of blood is stilled;
So shall you soar and run
In water and wind and air,
With your old clean joy of the sun,
And your gladness in all things fair,
Untouched by mortality's sadness, simple, perfect, at one.

"COMFORT ME WITH APPLES, FOR I AM SICK OF LOVE"

Red lilies under the sun,
Red apples hanging above,
And red is the wine that is spilled
On your bare white feet, O Love.

The poppies sullenly glow
In the smouldering red from the West,
And black are the dregs of the wine,
O Love, on your bare, white breast.

Aie! aie! when the wild swan flies
Lonely and dark is the place
That the white wings lightened, and death
Will cover your glowing face.

O thief that is night, O thieves!
Cold years that devour us all;
The lilies blossom and wilt,
The apples ripen and fall,

The apples, the apples of Love!
—Lo, where we have spilled the wine,
This quenchless earth is agape,
O Love, for your body and mine.

OF ENGLAND

White is for purity, blue for heaven's grace,
Purple is for Emperors, sitting in their place,
Yellow is for happiness, rose for Love's embrace,
But green—oh green, the green of England—that's for Paradise!

From seashore to seashore races the green tide;
With the pricking green of hedges by the wet roadside
—Or ever March triumphant comes with great, glad stride—
There is green, there's green in England, and a tale of Paradise.

Then the hawthorns flush and tremble in their early wondrous green,
And the willows are resplendent in a green-and-golden sheen,
Like the golden tents of princes, Babylonish, Damascene,
Or enchanted silent fountains of a Persian Paradise.

There are beech and birch and elm-tree—evening-still or
            morning-tossed—
And the splendid generous chestnuts with their flame-like
            blooms embossed,
There are oak and ash and elder, till the very sun is lost
In the green, delicious gloaming that's the light of Paradise.

Deeper, wider, steadier this beauty ever grows,
And from field-side up to tree-top the endless colour flows,
Till road and house and wayside, in the first days of the rose,
Are fathoms deep in waves of green, submerged in Paradise.

Oh dim and lovely hollows of all the woods that be;
Oh sunlight on the uplands, like a calm, great sea;
I think indeed the souls of those from circumstance set free
Look down, look down on England, saying: "Ah, dear Paradise!"

QUESTION

What of this gift of Life?
Passionate, swift, and rife
With pleasure or pain in the hand of the hurrying hours?
Oh little moment of space,
Oh Death's averted face,
How shall we grasp, shall we grasp what still is ours?

Chill, chill on either hand
Eternities must stand,
And pants between them, passionate and brief,
The moment's self, to make
Or unmake, but to take
Just here, just now, before death turns the leaf.

Ah, if the leaf but turn,
And if the soul discern
Another message on another page!
But if death shuts the book?
We may not know nor look;
We are fenced in upon a narrow stage;

While, splendid and intense,
Quick-strung in every sense
Life burns in us, and earth lies all around—
Far blue of summer seas,
Young green of age-old trees—
Bound by the season, by the horizon bound.

Oh colour, sound, and light,
Oh wondrous day and night,
Pale dawns, and evenings' splendid stretch of gold;
Keen beauty like a spear,
Half pleasure and half fear,
Goes through us for the things we may not hold.

Hot blood, hot noons, hot youth—
When Life seems all the truth,
And Death a mumbled far old fairy-tale;
When just the splendid days
Suffice our eager gaze,
The wondrous present that will never fail.

Then one day, with a fierce
Clamour of heart, we pierce
The light and see the shadows all behind,
And then, and not till then,
By the brief graves of men
The utter loveliness of flowers we find.

So little stretch of days,
And earth, with all her ways
Lovely enough, I think, for Paradise;
And body, mind, and heart,
Each separate complex part,
Wondrously made, and never quite made twice.

What of this gift of Life?
Shall it be worn in strife?
Shall it be idly spent, or idly stored?
Each for himself must dare
If the answer is here—or there,
Here for regret—or there for hope, O Lord?

LEONARDO TO MONNA LISA

I wish you were a beaker of Venetian glass
That I might fill you with most precious wine
And drink it, breathless—lo! the moments pass
Of that subliminal communion.
I take you from my lips, and crush you—so!—
Into a thousand shining particles;
So, at the last, my passionate greed shall know
That you were wholly mine.

I wish you were a rare, stringed instrument
Beneath my hand, and from you I would wring
Such unimagined music, as was sent
Never before, along the quivering nerves;
Such strange, sharp discords, out of which I'd mould
Music more sweet than the spring nightingale's;
Then, ere the magic of the sound was old,
Would I not rend each string?

Possess you? Ah, not with the world's possession,
You still, strange creature; neither force nor will
Could make you serve a man's mere earthly passion.
I would dissolve you, in one blinding flash,
Into a drop of elemental dew,
And let you trickle down the barren rock
Into the black abyss, if so I knew
That you henceforth were powerless to mock
My spirit with your smile.

THE ETERNAL FLUX

Let us hold April back
One splendid hour
To bless the passionate earth
With golden shower
Of sunlight from the blue;
Oh April skies,
That earth yearns up to; blue has burned to gold,
Gold pales and dies
In delicate faint rose,
Oh flowing time,