we find our own tears in their eyes,
Our strength and ardour in their fearlessness!

Down there, beneath their roofs, by windowside
Or seated by the glowing fireside, thus,
Perhaps on such a night of wind and wet,
What we have thought of them they think of us.




X


When the star-lit heaven broods above our house
We sit in silence during many hours
Beneath its soft intensity of light
To feel more ardent still these selves of ours.

The silver stars are drifting on their way;
Beneath their flame and all their glistening
The great night is deeper and more deep;
Such calm there is, the sea is listening!

What matter if the sea itself be still,
If in this infinity so fair,
Pregnant now with yet unvisioned power,
Our beating hearts make all the silence there?




XI


That very love which made you be for me
A splendid garden wherein moving tree,
Made shadow over sward and docile rose,
Makes you the shelter where I now repose.

There garnered are your flowers of desire,
Your lucent goodness and your gentle fire;
But all within a peace profound are furled
Against harsh winter winds that scar the world.

My happiness is warmed within your arms;
Each little tender word you whisper charms
My ear with as familiar a delight
As in the time when lilacs blossomed white.

Your clear and merry humour daily cheers
And triumphs over the distress of years;
And you yourself smile at the silver hairs
That your lovely head so gaily wears.

When to my searching kiss your head you bow,
I care not for the lines that mark your brow,
Nor for a vein that traces its bold line
Upon your hands now safely held in mine.

You fear not; and you know most certainly
That nothing dies that dares love loyally,
And that the flame which nourishes us so
Feeds upon ruin's self that it may grow.




XII


Those clear welcoming flowers along the wall's extent
Will be no longer waiting for us at our return;
The silken waters that prolonged till they were spent,
Under a pure sweet sky no longer reach and yearn.

Of our melancholy plains the flying birds are shy;
Over the marshes pale mists begin to crawl;
Autumn, winter! Winter, autumn!—oh the cry!
In the forest do you hear the dead wood fall?

Our garden is no longer bridegroom of the light,
Where once we saw the phlox in glorious surge and flare;
Gladioli, in dust, once violent, upright,
Lingeringly have lain them down to perish there.

All is without strength or beauty, without fire,
Fleeing and quailing and crumbling and passing sadly by;
Oh, turn on me your eyes of light, for I desire
There to seek a comer of our early sky!

It is there alone our light may still abide,
The light that filled the garden once for you and me,
Long ago, when our lily lifted its white pride
And hollyhocks were an ascending ardency.




XIII


When the diamond grains of fresh snow
On our threshold lie,
I hear your steps that come and go
In the room near by.

You move the clear mirror that beside
The window stood,
And your bunch of keys strikes the