PS 35?5 
 A?653 S6 
 19?0 
 
 Copy ? 
 
 PINDRIFT 
 
 By James L. McLane, Jr. 
 
Class 
 
 
 
 Book. — 
 
 GopightN i 
 
 COESKIGHT BEPOSm 
 
 -fc-yw 
 
SPINDRIFT 
 
SPINDRIFT 
 
 BY 
 
 J. L. McLANE, Jr. 
 
 Author of "Driftwood" 
 
 Boston 
 
 The Four Seas Company 
 
 1920 
 
 t^Mi 
 

 - 
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 The Four Seas Company 
 
 The Four Seas Press 
 Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
 ^l, 2~ 1920 
 
 ©CI.A604562 
 
 *w^ *v- 
 
TO 
 CHARLES MACVEAGH Jr. 
 
 vuv Se 6ava)v Xaputecs "EaiueQog ev (p6t[Asvot?. 
 
Oh no more dead than the unsleeping stars, 
 
 The music of your lips shall sing for ever, 
 Beauty exalted, and your love wane never, 
 
 Though year by year the lustre of the moon 
 Wither, and Spring go from us all too soon; 
 
 Yet shall Time's fingers twist Love's binding 
 bars 
 Closer about our hearts, for your mute breath 
 
 Has stirred to song the silences of Death. 
 You were the moon of all our devious ways: 
 
 Yours was the faith of flowers: yours the pride 
 Of Beauty's final laughter — now the days, 
 
 Hallowed by your pervading light, sweep by 
 Till Death, grown golden since the hour you died, 
 
 Calls us to you . . . it will be good to die. 
 
 It will be good to die since you have died: 
 
 It will be good to go the way you trod 
 Wide-eyed, undreaming, like some lovely god 
 
 Flushed with the dawn of an unearthly pride. 
 It will be good to try the ways you tried, 
 
 And venture unafraid into the dark 
 That lies beyond the furthest planet's spark — 
 
 // will be good to die since you have died. 
 And yet you have not left us; you are here 
 
 In the unfolding leaves that tell of Spring, 
 And in the throats of birds whose voices sing 
 
 Your beauty's resurrection . . . you are near 
 When day is ended — we, remembering, 
 
 Shall never lose you, lonely year by year. 
 
 [7] 
 
We who have looked on Death and found him 
 fair — 
 
 We who have read his poem in your face 
 And seen his quiet fingers pause to trace 
 
 Their dusky legend, and to linger there 
 On lips that have forgotten song and prayer 
 
 And the swift light of laughter, and the grace 
 Of Love that no long shadow can deface — 
 
 Of your dear presence we are more aware. 
 To live is to remember, and to die 
 
 Ultimate recollection — we through you 
 Have touched on things eternal, and the sky 
 
 That in your new nativity is blue 
 With unprevisioned radiance shall keep 
 
 The sanctity of your untroubled sleep. 
 
 Faltering words that cannot tell my love — 
 
 Faltering songs that cannot sing your praise — 
 The searching loneliness of twilit days 
 
 My hearfs dumb, stumbling impotence shall 
 prove. 
 Always your light is with me, near or far, 
 
 Eventual love, a light that stoops to bless 
 One who but feels his kinship with a star 
 
 — A love transcending love — a loneliness. 
 But you and I and these you love are sure 
 
 That all is well with you . . . and yet we feel 
 A strange futility has set its seal 
 
 Upon our hearts, knowing we must endure 
 Silence — God is so silent in His pride — 
 
 It will be good to die since you have died. 
 
 February, 1920. 
 [8] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Spindrift 15 
 
 The Beggar's Shadow 16 
 
 The Great Bell 27 
 
 From Catullus ........ 30 
 
 Poetry 31 
 
 To Some Modern Poet 32 
 
 Mock Not the Poet 33 
 
 Learning . 34 
 
 True Beauty 35 
 
 'Thou Shalt Be Free as Mountain 
 
 Wind: ..." 36 
 
 Nevertheless $7 
 
 On Reading Some Elizabethan Love 
 
 Songs 38 
 
 Songs to Lesbia 39 
 
 Hyacinthus 57 
 
 Demeter's Lament 59 
 
 'EXsvy; l\<x -pvawto 60 
 
 Alcaeus 61 
 
 In a City 62 
 
 Life's Unity ......... 63 
 
 From a Grave in Flanders . . . . .64 
 
 One Killed in Action 65 
 
 Aftermath 67 
 
 April, 1919 68 
 
 Song in Dejection 70 
 
 The Ships of Night . 71 
 
 Fantasia J2 
 
 Winter in New Hampshire .... 73 
 
 First Violets . 75 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Blue-Birds 76 
 
 April Song 77 
 
 The Reed j8 
 
 A Lark Sings 79 
 
 An Elegy of Spring 80 
 
 My Pear Tree 81 
 
 Judas-Tree 82 
 
 Sunday, September 14, 1919 .... 83 
 
 An Autumn Garden 84 
 
 The Last Rose 85 
 
 Autumn, A Rhapsody 86 
 
 Autumnal .87 
 
 Lament 88 
 
 Late Moon 89 
 
 Wild Geese . 90 
 
 All Souls' Eve 91 
 
 On Watch 92 
 
 Stockbridge 93 
 
 November Wind 94 
 
 Written During the Parade of the First 
 
 Division, New York City .... 95 
 
 St. Paul's School 96 
 
 To a Friend With Some Verses ... 97 
 
 To the Same Friend . 98 
 
 To One Who Is a Voice 99 
 
 Harbour Court 100 
 
 To a Poet 101 
 
 On Returning 102 
 
 Imperfection 103 
 
 Could I But Find 104 
 
 Stars 105 
 
 Icarian 106 
 
 At Parting 109 
 
 To Augusta 110 
 
 To Augusta On Her Birthday . . . .111 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 To Undine 112 
 
 To Two Sisters 113 
 
 Christina 115 
 
 To Laura Louise 116 
 
 Midnight . . . 117 
 
 My Friend . . . 118 
 
 His Friendship ........ 119 
 
 The Quest 120 
 
 January 23RD, 1919 . 122 
 
 At Daybreak 124 
 
 Others Have Given More 125 
 
 Sunset 126 
 
 To One Long Silent 127 
 
 Always the Sunset ....... 128 
 
 To You 129 
 
 Love's Triumph 130 
 
 Promise 131 
 
 The Answer 132 
 
 Beauty 133 
 
 My Song . . . . . 134 
 
 Remembered 135 
 
 Treasure 136 
 
 Apologia 137 
 
 Finis 141 
 
 L'Envoi 142 
 
SPINDRIFT 
 
"A lonely surge of ancient spray 
 Told of an unforgetful sea — " 
 
 E. A. Robinson 
 
SPINDRIFT 
 
 Spindrift its evanescent beauty flings 
 
 Into the glad, glad wind — the silver breath 
 Of beauty-haunted waves that seek their death 
 
 Along the sands where the grey, lonely wings 
 Of sea-birds sweep, 
 
 And where the ageless deep 
 Breathes its eternal tumult, moaning low 
 
 With the long urge of its moon-maddened tides 
 Reaching in hunger up the naked sides 
 
 Of windy dunes, and when its waters glow 
 Under the moon's elusive traceries, 
 
 It flings its silver spindrift to the skies. 
 
 The moon of Beauty draws the tides in me, 
 
 Moon-gathered tides of an immortal quest, 
 Along the golden strand of Poetry ; 
 
 The waters of my spirit seeking rest 
 Break wave on wave their hungry hearts, and 
 fling 
 
 Glad spindrift to the windy arch of sky, 
 And spend their strength — so the swift songs I 
 sing 
 
 Are but the spindrift of mad waves that cry- 
 Within my heart — spindrift of waves that die. 
 
 [15] 
 
THE BEGGAR'S SHADOW 
 Dramatis Personae: 
 
 BEGGAR 
 POET 
 BISHOP 
 
 WOMAN OF THE STREETS 
 CHILD 
 LADY 
 KNIGHT 
 
 BURGHERS, THEIR WIVES, CHILDREN, CHORISTERS 
 AND ATTENDANTS. 
 
 Scene: 
 An open market place before the doors of a great 
 Gothic Cathedral. The Cathedral fills the 
 entire right of the background. The doors 
 are very large, of carven oak, and studded 
 with immense nails. . . They stand at the top 
 of three stone steps. All that may be seen 
 of the Cathedral are the doors, dusky 
 carvings and niches containing the old, 
 weather-stained Saints, and an oriel- 
 window above the doors. Off to the left, 
 above the roof-tops and beyond the town, 
 can be seen the far, blue hills over which, as 
 the play progresses, the moon rises. When 
 the play opens, dusk gradually deepens into 
 night and the scene is illumined only by the 
 growing moonlight and the suffused glow 
 [16] 
 
from the Cathedral windows. Whenever 
 the doors are opened, a path of warm rich 
 light pours across the moon-silvered empti- 
 ness of the square. Chimes ring out a clear 
 melody which is echoed away among the 
 hills. The Beggar, totally muffled in a great 
 cloak, hobbles across the market-place and 
 settles himself on the steps of the Cathedral 
 to await the evening worshippers. Silence. 
 Then a song drifts down the street: 
 
 Poet [singing without] : 
 Lean, silver- footed winds 
 
 Have winged my heart with song — 
 And yet my way, it has been long, too long! 
 
 The dew upon the wayside grass 
 
 Kissed my tired feet — alas, alas, 
 My way has been too long! 
 
 I quaffed the sunset's living wine 
 
 And trod the paths of dusk — at last 
 Came down the wind a breath divine 
 
 Of pealing chimes, and looming vast 
 Athwart the sunset rose the towers 
 
 Of this far city of my quest — 
 Light-girdled towers in the west; 
 
 I left the fields all mute with flowers — 
 Bound on the sandals of my song — 
 
 [17] 
 
Over the dust of crumbling hours 
 I came — and, oh, the way was long ! 
 [The Poet enters, a tall, slender figure shabbily 
 clad and wearing sandals. He catches sight 
 of the Beggar who reaches out supplicating 
 hands. The Poet turns pityingly toward 
 him. ] 
 
 Poet: 
 Beleaguered by the hosts of Poverty, 
 
 Hungry and cold, brother to beg of me 
 Is begging of the moon! I cannot give, 
 
 Unless it be the shadowy gold of song 
 
 Or precious metal of my heart's one poem. . . . 
 
 [Then as the Beggar shrinks back into his corner 
 
 and the moonlight gradually floods the scene 
 
 with luminous gloom, the Poet turns again 
 
 to the Beggar.] 
 
 Poet: 
 Lo, now the moon goes dreaming through the sky 
 
 And all the sea is lifted as the hills 
 And pleads in husky whispers of its love; 
 
 Upon its troubled heart the moon's pale feet 
 Ruthlessly trample in calm, cold disdain . . . 
 See! Down the lonely streets slim moon- 
 beams steal 
 To dance with the shy shadows — I will sing 
 This little song — 'tis all I have for thee. 
 [And the Poet sings] : 
 Urge of the moon within my heart, 
 Urge of the moon across the sea, 
 [18] 
 
Sundering anguish, sudden smart 
 Of Beauty calling me — 
 
 Murmuring music of a reed 
 
 Breathed from the old wind's foolish lips, 
 Moon-maddened poet, tell thy creed, 
 
 Thy moon-conceived apocalypse: 
 
 That men are starlit flakes of foam 
 
 Lifted on Beauty's tide to thee, 
 Homeless, yet seeking for a home 
 
 Beyond the bourne of memory — 
 
 Obeying thine eternal urge, 
 
 Oh moon, he spends his fragile breath — 
 
 Foam-tossed along the waves that surge 
 From lonesome seas of death. 
 
 [As the Poet's song ends, the great doors of the 
 Cathedral swing slowly open. Singing is 
 heard floating down the street and a proces- 
 sion streams in across the square and 
 proceeds up the path of golden light into the 
 Cathedral; crucifer, choristers, priests, and 
 last of all, the Bishop who remains alone on 
 the steps silhouetted against the light. The 
 Beggar's mute supplications have been 
 passed unheeded. To him the Bishop ad- 
 dresses himself. The Poet stands aside 
 apparently lost in his dreams]. 
 
 [19] 
 
Bishop : 
 Beggared of this world's goods, I, priest of God, 
 
 Give thee my blessing! Poverty herself 
 Is a stern mistress; yet Lord Jesus Christ 
 
 Did not disdain her lowly company. 
 The good God bless thee ! May the Prince of 
 Peace 
 Receive thee washed of sin into His realms 
 And keep thee His for all eternity! 
 [The Beggar shrinks back into the shadows and 
 the Bishop turns to enter the Cathedral, but 
 a Woman of the Streets runs suddenly 
 across the square and throws herself, sob- 
 bing hysterically, at his feet. Clinging about 
 his knees, her voice broken by weeping, she 
 speaks. ] 
 
 Woman : 
 Most holy Father of the Church of Christ, 
 
 Although my life is steeped and dyed in sin 
 And all my body's beauty sold for lust, 
 
 I come to beg the blessing of the Cross 
 And the sure shelter of thy church — May God 
 Soften thine heart! Succor and shelter me! 
 Bishop : 
 Misguided daughter! Fallen angel! Thou 
 
 Derelict beauty, pray for grace. May He 
 Whose sacred word forgave the Magdalene 
 
 Bidding her sin no more, forgive thy sin, 
 That one day thou mayest dwell in chastity 
 Under the hallowed shadow of God's House 
 
 [20l 
 
And take that sacrament thou mayest not now 
 Receive . . . 
 
 Poet [coming suddenly and angrily forward] : 
 Oh, lying, base extortioner — 
 
 Thou parasite upon the dogs of state, 
 Invoke thy foolish God! In vain thou callest 
 
 The blessings of an empty heaven down ! 
 Thou who dost weave thy lies and sell them dear 
 
 For hard-earned pennies ! False interpreter 
 Of that young Christ who died for common men, 
 Blaspheme no longer! 
 
 Bishop: 
 Singer of swift songs, 
 
 Voice of the faery people, evil folk 
 Who mock believers, dream-deluded one, 
 
 All these thy words but crucify thy soul 
 Upon the crooked cross of thy black heart! 
 
 Poet: 
 They do but seek the shelter of God's house — 
 Grant them but this . . . 
 Bishop : 
 May Christ in heaven forgive 
 
 This bitter ignorance and sin of thine! 
 [The Bishop makes the sign of the cross and 
 goes into the Cathedral. Music from a 
 great organ within and occasional chanting 
 float from the Cathedral and continue, now 
 soft, now louder, throughout the rest of the 
 play. The Poet is again lost in dreams — 
 the Woman sobs on the steps — and the 
 
 [21] 
 
Beggar waits to beg by her side. Slowly the 
 Burghers and their wives and children enter 
 and pass along the light into the Cathedral. 
 All pass the Poet and the Woman with 
 contempt and refuse the Beggar's mute ap- 
 peals. At last a Child breaks from his 
 mother's side, and, running over to the 
 weeping Woman, puts his small arms about 
 her neck and kisses her. ] 
 Child : 
 
 Poor girl, thou shalt not cry! Lift up thine 
 eyes ! 
 
 [And then as the Beggar reaches out to beg, the 
 Child gives him a penny and kisses him. 
 With a cry of apprehension the mother runs 
 toward him, but the lad goes quickly to the 
 Poet and kisses him also.] 
 Child : 
 
 Here is another — I must kiss him too. 
 
 [The frightened mother catches the Child in her 
 arms and hurries into the Cathedral] 
 Woman : 
 
 Great God ! His kiss has burned into my soul — 
 Yet I am merchandise ! Come buy ! Come 
 buy! 
 
 [She breaks into hysterical laughter and disap- 
 pears into the darkness whence she came, 
 brushing past the last people to approach the 
 Cathedral, a tall, fair Lady and her 
 Knight.] 
 
 [22] 
 
Poet: 
 
 [Springing suddenly and eagerly forward at sight 
 
 of the Lady.] 
 Love, thou, art come! And thou hast kept the 
 tryst! 
 
 [He seizes her hands and kisses them.] 
 
 Lady: 
 
 [Laughing lightly and putting the Poet from 
 
 her.] 
 Poor poet, truly maddened by the moon 
 Thou art! That was a month ago — 
 And all the foolish promises I made 
 Are as thy kisses, as the silver dew 
 That feeds the secret hunger of the flowers. 
 
 The dust upon thy sandals, it is dust 
 And the first wind will carry it away. 
 
 The kisses that I gave thee, they were given 
 Because the moonbeams made thee beautiful — 
 
 And I was lonely. Now the dawn of Love, 
 Upgathering all the beauty that was mine 
 In other days, as the sun gathers dew, 
 Has flamed and has consumed my promises 
 Which are as shadows . . . 
 Poet: 
 Can it, can it be 
 
 That thou art as the rest? 
 Lady: 
 Forget. Forgive. 
 
 [Turning to take her Knight's hand, she ap- 
 proaches the Cathedral] 
 
 [23] 
 
Lady [As the Beggar draws near beseechingly'] : 
 Drive off this beggar! 
 
 [The Knight strikes him down with the fiat of 
 his sword, and the Lady, laughing, turns to 
 the Poet who stares hopelessly after her.] 
 Lady: 
 Poet, fare thee well! 
 
 [They enter the Cathedral and the great doors 
 swing to behind them. Music and singing 
 of voices praising God float from the Cathe- 
 dral windows. Alone in the gloom, the 
 Poet raises the fallen Beggar in his arms.] 
 Poet: 
 Ephemeral it may be! For a day 
 
 Man threads the lovely mazes of the world — 
 Laughter and tears, the mockery of Love, 
 
 And the great call of Beauty shake his soul, 
 Until his days like autumn leaves drift down, 
 
 And Death comes sweeping like a mighty wind 
 Through his soul's branches, till at last he stands, 
 Glimmering, spectral, in some pale, new dawn, 
 Alone upon the far edge of the world — 
 
 Mocked and derided by the birds of thought 
 Whose swift wings trembled through his mind — 
 Alone, 
 Treading at dawn the dew, at noon the dust, 
 And after sunset lying weary down 
 
 In the white dew again to take his rest — 
 To dream his dreams — and rise again with dawn 
 Obedient to that far, imperious call 
 
 [24] 
 
Of beauty — so man treads the way of life — 
 
 And be he prophet, poet, priest of God — 
 Or be he Christ — at sunset he shall sleep! 
 [The Poet has propped the Beggar before the 
 doors of the Cathedral and turning to go 
 addresses him.] 
 
 Poet: 
 Fare thee well, brother! At the doors of God 
 
 We stand and wait; and on the other side 
 Are only mockery and other doors 
 
 Where other men shall stand and wait in 
 vain. . . . 
 [The Poet goes down the street and his last song 
 
 rings out into the night.] 
 Man with his hands has slain 
 
 Much that was good and fair; 
 Yet from his blood and pain 
 Beauty shall spring again 
 With star-dust in her hair ; 
 
 Beauty, man cannot slay, for she 
 Is mother of eternity ! 
 
 [The singing within the Cathedral surges through 
 
 the night and the moon is lost in clouds.] 
 
 Choir : 
 
 [Chanting within.] 
 
 "Lift up your heads, oh ye Gates, 
 
 and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors : 
 
 and the King of Glory shall come in!" 
 
 [The immense doors of the Cathedral thunder 
 
 down from their hinges. Without his cloak 
 
and wearing only a loin-cloth, his arms 
 outstretched, the Beggar stands before the 
 open doorway, the figure of the crucified 
 Christ silhouetted against the light.] 
 Beggar [crying in a loud voice] : 
 Father, forgive them, for they do not know! 
 
 [26] 
 
THE GREAT BELL 
 (An old Chinese Legend) 
 
 [This poem was printed in an anonymous 
 paper, in Cambridge, March, 1919, and is here 
 reprinted with the kind permission of the 
 editors. ] 
 
 "Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngai, 
 Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
 Over the temples and the town 
 
 The great bell peals — its golden moan 
 Shudders, and dies into a lone, 
 
 Thin silver sigh, 
 A maiden's cry 
 
 Calling, pleading for her shoe, 
 A silken slipper, yellow, blue . . . 
 
 "Ko-Ngai . '. . Ko-Ngai, 
 Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
 The great bell tolls above the town! 
 Ko-Ngai is calling for her shoe, 
 
 u Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngai, 
 Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
 In China many years ago 
 
 The august Emperor Yong-Lo 
 Reigned in the dynasty called Ming. 
 
 Yong-Lo wished a mighty bell 
 Hanged in the towers of Pe-King, 
 
 A bell to sound one hundred li; 
 He summoned the Mandarin Kouan-Yu 
 And bade him cast an iron bell 
 
 [27] 
 
Strengthened with brass, deepened with gold, 
 Sweetened with silver, and carved with old 
 
 Buddhist prayers, a bell four- fold, 
 To hang in the towers of Pe-King — 
 
 The greatest bell in all the land 
 Cast at the Emperor's command 
 
 In the golden dynasty called Ming. 
 
 Twice were the molten metals met 
 
 Yet would not mingle, and the bell 
 Could not be cast. The Emperor sent 
 
 And bade Kouan-Yu try yet again — 
 Failure? Well then he must lose his head — 
 
 Thus writ on a scroll of yellow silk 
 And sealed with the august seal it read, 
 
 "Failure again will mean thy head." 
 
 Now Kouan-Yu had a daughter, slim 
 
 And fair — a lily-maiden she — 
 And when she read the celestial word 
 
 Of the Son of Heaven, she feared and went 
 To her troubled father and said to him 
 
 "Now that the Emperor hath sent, 
 Let the bell be cast another time, 
 
 Oh, father, yet another time!" 
 Thus spake the maid Ko-Ngai. 
 
 The seething metals met in wrath, 
 
 Silver and gold and iron and brass, 
 A molten lake of white-hot flame . . . 
 
 [28] 
 
"Let the bell be cast !" — a cry ! Ko-Ngai 
 Leapt into the fiery hell, 
 
 And the metals mingled! Lo, the bell 
 Was cast. Of the girl no trace remained 
 
 Save a tiny shoe her father grasped 
 As she sprang to her death — She died that she 
 
 Might save him — through her sacrifice 
 The metals join, the bell be cast. 
 
 And still to-day — 
 
 "Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngai!" 
 The Great Bell moans to the sunset sky 
 
 The little Chinese maiden's name — 
 A great, deep golden sob, a sigh 
 
 Of silver sweetness "Hiai . . . Hiai!" 
 As each day dies in the sunset's flame, 
 The Great Bell sobs the maiden's name, 
 (f Ko-Ngai . . . Ko-Ngail" 
 "Hiai . . . Hiail" 
 
 [29] 
 
FROM CATULLUS 
 
 "Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus . . . " 
 
 Let us live long, oh love, my love, 
 
 And love while yet we have the light, 
 For once our sun has set, dear love, 
 
 Remains the long, unbroken night 
 For us to sleep, oh love, my love. 
 
 Give me a thousand kisses, love, 
 A second thousand, sweet as death. 
 
 An hundred thousand thousand more — 
 Yet more until we lose our breath, 
 
 Confuse our reckoning, and then 
 Kiss madly, love, my love, the more. 
 
 [30] 
 
POETRY 
 
 When day is broken up in violet gleams 
 
 Across the western windows of the sky, 
 Then dreams and all the mystery of dreams 
 
 Quicken the world with passion such as seems 
 Half melody; 
 
 And in my heart I hear the far-off calling, 
 The far-off calling of some wistful star 
 
 Lost in the dizzy heavens, falling, falling, 
 Falling, bewildered, far . . . 
 
 And seeking out beyond the world's bold 
 ramparts 
 Into eternity, I find thy soul, 
 
 Daughter of Song, Mother of hidden Music, 
 My star, my quest, my dream, my flaming goal. 
 
 [31] 
 
TO SOME MODERN POETS 
 
 Go, teach the thrush your anapaests and rhymes 
 
 And make a sonnet of the cricket's song. 
 Or sing with dark amazement of the crimes 
 
 Committed in the gutter. It is strong, 
 Virile and living to insist that one 
 
 Sing of contagion reeking, black with flies, 
 Under the hot kiss of the lustful sun, 
 
 And so extol the mind's obscenities. 
 Nature and all the ineffectual dreams 
 
 That shadow forth the poet's apocalypse 
 Are thin and vapid; — poetasters, fools, 
 
 Think you to rein the impetuous mountain- 
 streams, 
 Or with the ordered chatter of your schools 
 
 Still the Memnonian music of Song's lips? 
 
 [32] 
 
MOCK NOT THE POET 
 
 Blushing deep golden to the azure tips 
 
 Of her warm fingers, the uplifted Dawn 
 Snatched a swift kiss from Night's half-parted 
 lips 
 
 Petulant, as a hamadryad slips 
 Impatient of caresses from a faun 
 
 To splash her length and linger in the cool 
 Quivering waters of a poet's pool, 
 
 Ruffled, so mortals say, by winds of dawn. 
 Oh ye who cannot know whereof the bard 
 
 Sings in his heart of hearts, and cannot see 
 The beauty-riven steeps where he must climb, 
 
 Mock not his singing, lest your hands have 
 marred 
 The secret sources of the melody 
 
 Your hearts shall hunger for in aftertime. 
 
 [33] 
 
LEARNING 
 
 Learning vouchsafes to each his scanty fare; 
 
 For some must find contentment in a crumb, 
 While others stand inapprehensive, dumb — . 
 
 Of their abundant blessings unaware; 
 Some break the bread of wisdom, glad to share 
 
 Their separate advantages, and some 
 Hoard their achievements, till Death's fingers 
 numb 
 
 Their hearts and bring at last surcease of care. 
 A poor petitioner at Learning's shrine, 
 
 I came and found the crowded tables full ; 
 All the gregarious scholars of the age 
 
 Devoured, gluttonous, the bread and wine 
 That Beauty, of her wisdom bountiful, 
 
 Set forth before the poet and the sage. 
 
 [34] 
 
TRUE BEAUTY 
 
 Poets who throng the thoroughfares of fame 
 
 And clamor for the laurels and the bays 
 That bind the brows of Homer, or who claim 
 
 That all the spent renown of other days 
 And other poets be their just reward, 
 
 Clamor but vainly, for remote, austere, 
 God has unsheathed eternal Beauty's sword 
 
 And the bold stars are hushed and pale with 
 fear. 
 Look you ! The very battlements of Dawn 
 
 Are flushed with sudden splendor, and the 
 spears 
 Of the true hosts of Beauty gleam, and drawn 
 
 Are all the moon-bright sabres of the Years 
 Where winging up the slopes of light I heard 
 
 God's angels rustle ... in my arms you 
 stirred. 
 
 [35] 
 
"THOU SHALT BE FREE AS MOUNTAIN 
 
 WINDS ..." 
 
 (The Tempest) 
 
 Oh to be free as mountain winds — 
 
 As mountain winds be free! 
 To sweep down on the joyous fields, 
 
 And all the wealth that summer yields 
 Of thyme and honeysuckle sweet, 
 
 To gather in my happy flight 
 As with contemptuous, dizzy feet 
 
 I dance down to the sea — 
 To crown the waves all silver-white 
 
 With crests of starry foam, and sing 
 Along the shore the melody 
 
 Which from the lonely hills I bring. 
 Oh to be free as mountain winds — 
 
 As mountain winds be free! 
 
 [36] 
 
NEVERTHELESS 
 
 Slim, adolescent, with what leafy greeting 
 
 The dryad birches to the wind's will bend! 
 Can Winter keep the truant Spring from meeting 
 
 Her unknown lover? And can you, dear 
 friend, 
 Gather the constellations, near and far, 
 
 And hang them on the bosom of the Moon? 
 Or can you light your taper with a star? 
 
 Or read the rubric of the sunset's rune? 
 Beauty forefend! For if the hand of man 
 
 Could lift his chisel to the ordered skies 
 Wind-pillared and enduring, he would mar 
 
 Those measureless, blue archways 'neath 
 whose span 
 The swift years bubble . . . Ah, but God is wise 
 
 And Beauty kind: a star is just a star. 
 
 [37] 
 
ON READING SOME ELIZABETHAN 
 LOVE SONGS 
 
 The long-remembered lisp of leaves 
 And the remembered hush of hills — 
 
 The wind that passing by bereaves 
 Fleet April of her daffodils — 
 
 Stir in the heart the memory 
 
 Of Beauty smiling through her tears — 
 Man in his love-wrung litany 
 
 Mocked by the laughter of the years. 
 
 [38] 
 
SONGS TO LESBIA 
 
 I. 
 
 The lilies bloom about your door 
 And every night they sing to you ! 
 
 For you they guard their precious store 
 Of golden pollen and white dew; 
 
 And in the twilight of the days 
 The lilies glimmering and blue 
 
 Lift up their voices in your praise. 
 
 [39] 
 
II. 
 
 My heart was as a broken reed 
 
 Wherein Life breathed a song, and blew 
 As on the pipes of Pan, a poem 
 
 That was my love for you. 
 
 And Love's low music filled my heart 
 With simple beauty, and it seemed 
 
 That this was music lovlier far 
 Than ever Poet dreamed. 
 
 [40] 
 
III. 
 
 The wings of dusk, all silvery 
 With stars and drops of dew, 
 
 Shadow my heart with mystery . 
 Or is it love for you? 
 
 And when the silver star-bells ring 
 Their windy melodies, it seems 
 
 That I can almost hear you sing, 
 Love of my lonely dreams. 
 
 [41] 
 
IV. 
 
 When shadows fall and evening brings 
 Peace to the world, when twilight flings 
 
 Over the fields a veil of blue, 
 
 Then you and all the dreams of you 
 
 Beat on my heart's glad, wounded wings, 
 When shadows fall. 
 
 The fragrance of remembered springs 
 In other lives, Love's murmurings 
 
 Plead in my lonely heart for you, 
 When shadows fall. 
 
 And all the empty, foolish things 
 I said to you, the whisperings 
 
 Of love as silver-frail as dew, 
 
 All plead within my heart for you, 
 
 My heart with happy, bleeding wings, 
 When shadows fall. 
 
 [42] 
 
V. 
 
 Where sunsets go when they have died, 
 Where perished dreams and visions go, 
 
 I long to lose myself and hide 
 Where sunsets go. 
 
 Quit of the golden chains of pride 
 
 — The chains of self that fetter so — 
 Where sunsets go shall I abide. 
 
 When on the shores of Time, Life's tide 
 Ebbs in its slumber, long and slow, 
 
 My soul along the waves shall glide, 
 Where sunsets go. 
 
 [43] 
 
VI. 
 When the Day's golden footfall left me lonely 
 
 And left my garden luminous with dew, 
 I sought among the starlit flowers only 
 
 Some little sense of you. 
 
 And one frail lily lifting silver laughter 
 Greeted me with its beauty — so, at last, 
 
 Lady of lilies, you came to me after 
 The day was past. 
 
 [44] 
 
VII. 
 
 As the waves waste the tawny sands 
 To feed the splendor of the sea, 
 
 Girl with those frail, unhappy hands 
 You waste the heart of me. 
 
 Yet as the waves have made the sands 
 All rich with treasure of the sea, 
 
 So you with your enslaving hands 
 Have decked the heart of me. 
 
 [45] 
 
VIII. 
 
 Inscrutably the shadows work their rune 
 
 Over the crannied bleakness of the wall, 
 And there is sorrow in the hollow call 
 
 Of an indifferent vender whose words croon 
 Their meaningless advertisement — the moon 
 
 Silvers the city with its solemn pall, 
 And down the aching streets, antiphonal, 
 
 Echo the phrases of some favorite tune; — 
 Oh, it is all quite common ! You and I, 
 
 The moon and city, day by day we meet 
 Only to part with inarticulate 
 
 And sorrowful surrender to a fate 
 That we have forged from our own poverty 
 
 To crown our laboring visions with defeat. 
 
 [46] 
 
IX. 
 
 Through Gate of Horn or Gate of Ivory, 
 
 Disturbing apparition, have you come 
 To trouble me with dreaming? Is there some 
 
 Prophetic utterance you bring to me? 
 Or have your lips learned of Love's minstrelsy 
 
 To syllable the passion of the Spring — 
 That the still night's star-sown immensity 
 
 Dwindles before the loveliness you bring? 
 It may be that illusory and cold 
 
 You came, a phantom from the realms of 
 sleep — 
 It may be that when Dawn's white flowers unfold 
 
 Their petals, you have other trysts to keep — 
 But it may be that in your guile you came 
 
 To scorch my spirit in your beauty's flame. 
 
 [47] 
 
X. 
 
 On furtive, dewy sandals, shadows creep 
 
 Along the valley, through the songs of birds, 
 
 And the shy Dawn comes over meadows deep 
 With wakening flowers — and through my 
 curtained sleep 
 
 Tremulous, float your words. 
 
 [48] 
 
XL 
 
 Although the dawn was grey, I was not sad, 
 For you came to me in the waiting gloom 
 
 And broke the throbbing silence of my room 
 With sudden singing — and my heart was glad, 
 
 Although the dawn was grey. 
 
 Swift from your laughing lips the music fell 
 And the dark mists of passion rolled away, 
 
 And I was lifted from the night's long hell, 
 Although the dawn was grey. 
 
 [49] 
 
XII. 
 
 Oh undiscerning and indifferent, 
 
 The heart has prescience of infinity, 
 Thrilled by the touch of mutability, 
 
 And strives to solve its own bewilderment — 
 We with our ineffectual ways content 
 
 Eke out our lives' poor triviality, 
 And heed not in their unreality 
 
 The precious metal of the heart soon spent. 
 Doubt not I love you — were it otherwise, 
 
 Another's lips had sung ere now your praise! 
 The fortitude of foolish and of wise 
 
 Could not unravel my entangled days ; 
 You in the innocence of your bright ways 
 
 Have failed to compass my apostasies. 
 
 [50] 
 
XIII. 
 
 Doubt not I love you! In the loneliness 
 
 Of ultimate surrender when your barque 
 Ventures alone into death's sequent dark, 
 
 High on the topmost mast my heart shall 
 swing, 
 A golden lantern, and the bitterness 
 
 And sorrow of departure, vanishing, 
 Shall melt away — and you shall know me there 
 
 By the wind's whispered laughter in your hair. 
 Doubt not I love you! It were sacrilege 
 
 And profanation to think otherwise; 
 For though my offering be only flowers, 
 
 Deem it not other than poet's pledge — 
 Finding in this unworthy sacrifice 
 
 Some shadow of the beauty that was ours. 
 
 5i 
 
XIV. 
 
 Always the mist in your hair, the sea in your 
 eyes, 
 Grey with the beauty of sea- spun reveries, 
 And the faint touch of your hand 
 
 And the sound of the sea 
 On the cold, inarticulate land, 
 
 Poor, passionate sea, 
 There on the rocks where we trod, 
 
 Apart, alone . . . 
 Came, like the breath of God, 
 
 To the dumb stone, 
 Swift the far call of the sea, 
 On your lips a song: 
 
 "Always a child-friend to me, 
 Though drear, though long, 
 Life, Love, Eternity." 
 Your song, your song! 
 
 [52] 
 
XV. 
 
 The Year has played her last uncertain pawn 
 
 And waits the sure achievement of defeat, 
 Knowing that the indifferent hands of Dawn 
 Must strangle her — of Dawn beneath whose 
 feet 
 The east is wounded gold — whose coming brings 
 
 Another Year to whet the lusts of Time 
 And scatter all the songs your poet sings 
 
 And cheat Youth's heart of its appointed 
 prime — 
 Love, I have burned my old, unworthy songs 
 And held for my dead dreams proud obse- 
 quies ; 
 I care not if with laurels or with thorns 
 
 The new Year binds my brows — the righted 
 wrongs 
 And unavenged crimes of the world: the scorns 
 That Time shall lash men with are more than 
 these. 
 
 December 31st, 1919. 
 
 [53] 
 
XVI. 
 
 Shivering leaves my heart put forth 
 To rustle in the breath of Spring 
 Whose summer-hunted feet wend north, 
 
 Songless winter following, 
 To touch to life the silver froth 
 
 Of his snowy covering- 
 Quicken it to blossoming. 
 
 Swift, singing thoughts like mating birds 
 
 Nested in my heart's green shade 
 Uttering their winged words 
 
 From their leafy ambuscade — 
 And the poems that they made, 
 
 Love-lisped, the mute branches stirred: 
 "Love and Beauty cannot fade: 
 
 This is Love's own word." 
 
 With eyes brimmed blue with mockery 
 And wind-looped, sunlight- ruffled hair, 
 
 Came a maiden dizzily 
 
 Through the summer-sleepy air, 
 
 Shook the branches merrily 
 Of my heart's uplifted tree — 
 
 There was autumn everywhere. 
 
 Leafless in the gloom it stands; 
 
 All the birds have taken wing ; 
 Autumn's slender, sunburned hands 
 
 Mock the beauty of the Spring! 
 
 [54] 
 
Yet where the grey branches swing, 
 Spectral in their withering, . 
 
 Unseen lips are murmuring . . . 
 Murmuring . . . 
 
 [55] 
 
XVII. 
 
 When you have trod my last dream down 
 Into the dust of withered things, 
 
 And Time with neither smile nor frown 
 Gathers the songs your poet sings, 
 
 Look back, and through the eyes of age 
 Interpret — if you can divine — 
 
 The parable ; then turn the page 
 
 And smile at this moth-love of mine. 
 
 [#] 
 
HYACINTHUS 
 
 Hyacinth-flowers along the sea 
 
 Are strewn by Zephyr's sobbing breath; 
 
 Hyacinths from the windy hills, 
 Blossoms of Hyacinthus' death, 
 
 With purple petals breathing woe 
 For the Greek lad of long ago. 
 
 There where the sea was foaming on the strand 
 
 Stood Hyachinthus, slender, sunburned lad 
 With wide brown eyes and tawny, wind-sweet 
 hair; 
 
 Naked he plunged among the waves, and Dawn 
 Flung far the portals of the east, and lo ! 
 
 The golden- throated Muses sang to greet 
 Apollo as he came across the sea; 
 
 And Hyacinthus rising from the waves 
 Laughed in the glory of the sun-god's smile, 
 
 And with the sea's grey kiss upon his lips 
 And the dawn's sudden splendor in his eyes 
 
 Greeted his friend — and all that day they 
 played, 
 The god and boy at discus, ran and swam, 
 
 And dreamed at night under the whispering 
 trees. 
 
 But one night Zephyr, lonely in the leaves, 
 Was making little poems for the moon 
 
 [57] 
 
And singing them, until it chanced he saw 
 
 Young Hyacinthus sleeping on the grass. 
 The timid dew had touched his clustering curls 
 
 All glimmering with moonshine, and his lips 
 Were parted in a smile, and with one hand 
 
 He clasped the god's. Then Zephyr loved the 
 lad, 
 
 And wept in loneliness among the leaves. 
 
 But on a day when Hyacinthus played 
 
 With his god-friend, poor jealous Zephyr stole 
 Un seen among the near-by trees, and caught 
 
 And deftly turned a flying discus — so 
 He thought to wound Apollo, but, alas 
 
 Struck Hyacinthus . . . 
 
 With a sob of pain 
 
 And a low moan of anguish, the boy died; 
 From his spilled blood sprang fragrant hyacinths 
 
 Whose petals, graven with Apollo's tears, 
 Spell a heart's sorrow for a dying friend . . . 
 
 And yet at dusk poor Zephyr, sobbing, comes 
 To kiss the blossoms and to strew them far 
 Along the sounding billows of the sea. 
 
 [58] 
 
DEMETER'S LAMENT 
 
 The hearts of nightingales still bleed, still bleed 
 For the sweet daughter that my heart has lost ; 
 
 And the mute meadows riotously tossed 
 
 With wind and flowers, bleed, in sorrow 
 bleed — 
 
 Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 
 
 Long have I wandered on my weary quest. 
 
 The dawn-flushed east and sunset-hearted west 
 Laugh me to scorn because my heart is sad. 
 
 The frowning north and laughter-loving south 
 Make mock of me — and yet my heart is sad 
 
 As withered meadows in an autumn drouth. 
 Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 
 
 The foolish winds that dance among the stars 
 And sing of all the beauty of the sky 
 
 Have mocked me also — still I hear their song; 
 And at their hollow music sorrows throng 
 
 My old, old heart — far older than the stars. 
 Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 
 
 The hearts of nightingales still bleed, still bleed — 
 Persephone, dear-loved Persephone! 
 
 [59] 
 
'EXsvyj 8ta Yuvatxcov 
 
 "Hold up the glass that I may see !" The queen 
 
 Gazed and was silent . . . Then imperiously 
 She laughed and turned away: 
 
 "Am I that Helen for whose sake 
 Cities were sacked, the blood of heroes spilled, 
 
 The tears of mothers shed? Am I that queen 
 For whom men strove and died? 
 
 And shall Time's finger write the poem of age 
 Across my brow ? And shall my hair grow grey, 
 
 Chilled by his kiss? Is Time my lover now? 
 And all my body's beauty, shall it be 
 
 The victim of his gradual desire?" 
 Only the autumn wind laughed in her hair . . . 
 
 And as she passed along the leaf-strewn ways 
 A lingering rose 
 
 Showered its starry petals at her feet. 
 In her far-gazing eyes a sudden light 
 
 Flashed, and was gone — "Though I must 
 go !" she cried, 
 "Yet shall my death be beautiful!" — She bent 
 
 Above the fallen petals of the rose 
 And wove of them a crown about her head, 
 
 And went to her last lover, Time, to die, 
 Bright with the living beauty of the dead. 
 
 [60] 
 
ALCAEUS 
 
 Lips long stilled in the dust, 
 
 Passionate heart that sang 
 A wild low music by the Lesbian shore — 
 
 Lover of Sappho, thou whose singing rang 
 Loud in the clangor of tumultuous arms — 
 
 Whose songs the Lesbian girls were wont to 
 sing 
 Over the drowsy wine-cups, 
 
 Thou whose word 
 Was winged with magic music, 
 
 Thou who heard 
 The coming of the flower-girdled Spring — 
 
 I heard thee singing, singing yestereve. 
 The sudden passion of a thrush's note, 
 
 The tawny wings, the throbbing breast, the 
 throat 
 Of golden melody were all thine own ! 
 
 Lo, the swift beauty of the sunset smote 
 My heart to silence. 
 
 In that thrush's song, 
 So that it seemed out of the past a breath 
 
 Of Lesbian hyacinths and aching hearts, 
 I heard thee singing from the Lands of Death. 
 
 [61] 
 
IN A CITY 
 
 The sea is crying in my heart to-night 
 
 With all its haunting passion and its pain; 
 The stars above the sleeping roofs gleam white 
 
 Against the sky's dark beauty, and again 
 I feel the salt wind through tall pines, and know 
 
 That I am far away . . . 
 The muttering of distant streets moans low. . . . 
 
 Ah, somewhere languid Day 
 Laughs lazily, and happy flowers blow. 
 
 But here Night broods alone 
 Above the city — and I too alone 
 
 Wonder that life should bind and fetter so. 
 
 [62] 
 
LIFE'S UNITY 
 
 The soul which trembles through the universe 
 
 Touching to life both blade of grass and star; 
 The deep, unspoken sympathy that links 
 
 All living things — the beauty, the swift pain 
 Of new-born love — the sense of hidden wings 
 
 Fluttering in the soul — this unity 
 Which man calls God is but the inner flame 
 
 That gives us life! 
 
 And although clouds hang low 
 And the whole world grows dark — though love 
 and truth 
 
 Seem lost forever — yet beyond our gloom 
 Somewhere stars laugh and little children sing 
 
 And flowers blossom on the rood of Time. 
 
 [63] 
 
FROM A GRAVE IN FLANDERS 
 
 Petals grow grey with sorrow by his grave, 
 
 Faded rose-petals, these you send to me, 
 Dim with the beauty of his memory, 
 
 The memory of your dear boy, my friend — 
 Withered rose-petals from his lonely grave 
 
 Fragrant with all the love you bore for him 
 Where in a war-scarred forest, sweet and dim, 
 
 He sleeps the sleep of God's eternity. 
 
 [64] 
 
ONE KILLED IN ACTION 
 
 Sorrow and silence: through the dusk there 
 thrilled 
 A shivering sigh that stirred the lonely 
 grass . . . 
 Day lifted Beauty's chalice to her lips 
 
 And flung it from her — in the heavens spilled 
 The starry wine of evening — we must pass 
 
 Like Day into the greater Night's eclipse — 
 We, too, must pass ! 
 
 Dear friend gone out before us in the Night 
 Is there no Dawn, no glimmering of Light 
 Where we shall pass? 
 
 Low through the lifted leaves a murmur came 
 And the stars quivered, little tongues of flame. 
 
 It seemed an angel stooped among the trees 
 With wings that shadowed his dim-haloed hair, 
 
 And eyes love-haunted with love's memories, 
 And spectral lilies wreathed about his head — 
 
 And in a voice untroubled by despair 
 
 He murmured, "I am near you, near though 
 dead!" 
 
 Was it a vision? Did I really see 
 
 An angel? Nay, it seemed that as he leant 
 
 Out of the twilight and his whispered kiss 
 Bade me farewell, his face was troubled, spent 
 
 [65] 
 
With longing for the living — wistfully 
 
 He smiled and faded . . . can it be that this 
 
 Glimmering on my hand is only dew, 
 The sorrow of the never-ending years? 
 
 Ah, in the dusk it trembles, silvery, blue, 
 Silently- falling tears. . . . 
 
 [66] 
 
AFTERMATH 
 
 The lonely leaves have fallen on his grave 
 And sobbed to silence ; yellow leaves and gold 
 
 Have buried him, and twilight's star- foamed 
 wave 
 Had borne his spirit to eternal night ; 
 
 The poor, dead moon gleams miserably white 
 Over his body lying stiff and cold. . . . 
 
 They tell me he is dead, and yet I hear 
 Him singing in the dawning of each day: 
 
 They tell me he is dead, yet trembling near 
 He whispers, "I am only far away 
 
 Waiting for you — am only far away." 
 
 [67] 
 
APRIL, 1919 
 
 Oh April, April, happy, happy April 
 
 Maiden with flower-tangled, flower-shadowed 
 hair, 
 Dancing along the windy meadows, dancing 
 
 On feet that glimmer like the feet of stars, 
 Daughter of Dawn, 
 
 Where will you now be wending? 
 Whither, oh whither, that you haste away 
 
 Toward the moon's mountains? 
 Do the feet of Summer, 
 
 The golden-sandaled, quiet feet of Summer, 
 Follow you all too swiftly, that you flee 
 
 Into the snow-kissed mountains of the moon? 
 Yet I am grateful, laughter-loving April, 
 
 For with your music you have brought again 
 Beauty to veil the dark, death-glutted trenches — 
 
 Beauty to lift the fallen hearts of men ! 
 
 The April twilight falls upon the world 
 Muffling the riven trenches, ugly scars 
 
 That mar the beauty of the broken meadows — 
 Fields of Flanders, 
 
 Blood-drenched fields of Flanders, 
 
 The desolation of blind human hearts. . . . 
 
 But April, April, foolish-hearted April, 
 
 Dancing across the windswept meads of heav- 
 en 
 
 [68] 
 
Has filled the sky with lovely, silver blossoms, 
 
 Stars shaken from the solemn trees of God. 
 Shell-craters, rimmed with wind-flowers, glim- 
 mer far 
 
 And violet-girdled trenches melt to shadows, 
 And all the gloom grows mystical with stars; 
 
 Deep in the west a crescent moon, a jewel 
 Tremulous, glows on Day's departing brow — 
 
 A crescent moon, and in her arms enfolded 
 The semblance of her dear, dead mother-moon; 
 
 Lo, God is whispering to us through the 
 stars — 
 Whispering us the secret of His Love: 
 
 Eternal Beauty wounding with great passion 
 And exultation the dumb hearts of men! 
 
 April and Peace! 
 Ah, once again shall Beauty 
 
 Thrill mortal hearts with ecstasy and song. 
 
 [69] 
 
SONG IN DEJECTION 
 
 Oh, life is only a fever of dreams 
 
 And death a slumber sweet and deep 
 And God a foolish Shadow-king. 
 
 We sow, we labor, and we reap — 
 And as we reap, we bend and sing 
 
 Praising the foolish Shadow-king 
 Whose realms of starshine pulse and ring 
 
 With song and laughter: Shadow-play 
 Is this our life — the Shadow-play 
 
 Of children of a Shadow-king. 
 
 [70] 
 
THE SHIPS OF NIGHT 
 
 The ships of night are waiting for my soul; 
 
 Tall galleons with dusk-filled sails they lie 
 Moored in the twilight by the shore of dreams; 
 
 My shattered hopes and unfulfilled desires, 
 And all my broken words and unsung songs 
 
 Throng the dim decks — Oh, I shall go to them 
 And cut the ropes that bind me to my past 
 
 And sail the silent seas of Death alone. 
 
 [71] 
 
FANTASIA 
 
 I got this wisdom from a star 
 
 And keep it ever in my heart ; 
 And though my way be lone and far, 
 
 And though I see my friends depart 
 Along the vistas of dead days, 
 
 This little wisdom sheds its rays 
 Over my night; 
 
 From its pure light 
 I learn that man is but a part 
 
 Of some great Scheme, and cannot be 
 More than a wave in a vast sea 
 
 That swells up from the deep and dies 
 In a white foam of memories. 
 
 \7A 
 
WINTER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 "Fasnacloich" 
 
 Illimitable storms of winter weigh 
 
 With living crystals the gaunt, leafless trees; 
 Monadnock looms in purple majesty 
 
 Above the cloudy tumult of the hills ; 
 A sudden shaft of winter sunlight flames 
 
 Across the mountain's summit, and it glows 
 Like an imperious jewel on the brow 
 
 Of some old god whom poverty of prayer 
 And long neglect have left to slow decay; 
 
 So from the very sorrow of the year, 
 Tortured and reft by winter's savagery, 
 
 Nature with proud triumphant eyes aflame 
 And with a song of gladness on her lips 
 
 Mocks the small vanities that trouble men: 
 Apocalyptic visions, empty dreams, 
 
 Impossible, high hopes of worlds to be. 
 Turn thou to Nature! Look within her heart 
 
 And learn the wisdom of her inmost soul; 
 Her laughter in the meadows and her tears 
 
 Dew-scattered on the petals of the rose: 
 Her irony in the cold, wandering stars 
 
 And her mute sadness in the waning moon: 
 Her pulse in the eternal tides: her calm 
 
 In the far beauty of the thyme-sweet hills . . . 
 Oh ye who toil in cities making hells 
 
 Of living desolation — ye who sweat 
 
 [73] 
 
That Property may rule the human heart 
 
 And break the large, free spirit of mankind, 
 Seek in the heart of Nature where all Truth, 
 Where Force and Love and Beauty dwell, and 
 where 
 Burns the white flame of man's eternity. 
 
 February, 1919. 
 
 [74] 
 
FIRST VIOLETS 
 
 The twilight-haunted pools of evening gleam 
 
 With broken images of stars; 
 The lonely snows of lingering winter dream 
 
 In the deep, brooding dusk — the hungry stream 
 Of night sweeps down and with its shadow mars 
 
 The twilit beauty of the pregnant earth 
 Soon to give birth 
 
 To Spring and all the pageantry of Spring. 
 Veiled in the dusk-enfolding covering 
 
 Of muffled darkness, the dumb mouth of Death 
 Breathes silent kisses on the earth's warm breast ; 
 
 And yet untroubled by Death's numbing breath 
 Violets waken from their winter rest 
 
 And lift their faces to the frosty stars. 
 
 175] 
 
BLUE-BIRDS 
 
 With rush of blue-birds in the windy dawn 
 
 And swelling, surging bursts of melody, 
 Spring dances down across the sleepy hills 
 
 And brings to meadows mute with mystery 
 Wind-flowers, hyacinths, and daffodils — 
 
 Spring dancing, laughing with the happy 
 Dawn! 
 Oh blue-birds, blue-birds lifting voices wild 
 
 With pain of love to greet the morning, bear 
 My heart a gift to the eternal child 
 
 Of Winter, Spring with sunlight in her hair: — 
 Take her my heart and all the songs I sing 
 
 Oh happy blue-bird legions of the Spring! 
 
 [76] 
 
APRIL SONG 
 
 Oh, April art thou come again 
 
 With all the panoply of Spring? 
 And wilt thou touch to life again 
 
 Our hearts, and make them sing? 
 
 Ploughed by the ploughshare of War's pain 
 And sown with Sorrow's seed, the clod 
 
 Within man's heart shall bloom again 
 Tilled by the hand of God. 
 
 Far, golden meadows, deep with grain, 
 
 Shall mock War's splendor, and His hand, 
 
 Who lit the stars, unbar again 
 The happy gates of Faery-land. 
 
 Oh April, thou art come again 
 Into our fettered hearts to prove 
 
 That Death and all his dusky train 
 Are but the fools of Love. 
 
 [77] 
 
THE REED 
 
 Mute by the lapping water's edge 
 
 Among the fragile iris bloom, 
 Where winds come dreaming through the sedge 
 
 And willows weave a silver gloom, 
 A slender reed grew wistfully . . . 
 
 Until one day a child passed by 
 And broke the reed and went away . . . 
 
 But when the dew- fringed robe of day 
 Fell from the sky, and star on star 
 
 Melted into the blue, washed grey 
 With twilight, Pan came from afar 
 
 And plucked the broken reed and played 
 A strange, strange melody that made 
 
 Even the stream's chill heart afraid. 
 
 Long, long ago a poet dreamed 
 
 His lonely dreams, until a child, 
 A child with elfin eyes that seemed 
 
 To mirror all the sweet and wild 
 Disturbing passion of the sea 
 
 Passed by, and broke the poet's heart . . . 
 And yet today the poet sings 
 
 A simpler, lovelier melody, 
 Though shattered all his poet's art, 
 
 For Beauty gave his spirit wings. 
 
 [78] 
 
A LARK SINGS 
 
 With long, slim fingers 
 
 The swift wind 
 Has ruffled the grey tresses of the river; 
 
 Over the billowy, green meadow lingers 
 The fluting of a mocking-bird, and blind 
 
 Low clouds have veiled the laughter of the sky 
 And darkened all the east as with a frown; 
 
 Then, soft across the distant furrows brown 
 With promise of fulfillment, comes a quiver 
 
 Of passionate melody, 
 Where some bird lover, 
 
 Singing among the fragrant tufts of clover, 
 Chants Love's old riddle to the fields and sky. 
 
 [79] 
 
AN ELEGY OF SPRING 
 
 The lips of Dawn among the leaves 
 
 Lisped the low poem of Day; 
 And the tall poplars trembling grey 
 
 Against the pallor of the stars 
 Were tipped with flame, blue-gold; 
 
 The threshold of the west gleamed white 
 Under the swarthy feet of Night, 
 
 And the gaunt moon glowed cold. . . . 
 'Twas then I heard her laughing from the hills, 
 
 The dark hills of the north ; 
 Came on the wind a breath of daffodils, 
 
 The fragrance of her tresses — she was fled — 
 Proud, barefoot Spring, seeking the long dark 
 hills 
 
 That fringe the wind-tossed meadows of the 
 north. 
 She left the Summer all her wealth of flowers 
 
 And all the singing passion of her hours, 
 And strewing blossoms as she passed, Spring fled. 
 
 But shall we mourn her in a time of roses? 
 And mourn her when the happy flowers throng 
 The lap of Summer, Summer who discloses 
 
 To every poet his song? 
 Ah, no! I turned to greet the Dawn, and after 
 
 The east flushed crimson at the touch of Day, 
 I heard from the far, northern hills her laughter 
 
 And glimpsed her eyes, blue-grey. 
 
 [80] 
 
MY PEAR TREE 
 
 A tiny pear tree in my garden grows, 
 
 A kindly little tree, quiet and grave; 
 A friendly neighbor to the proud red rose, 
 
 Casting betimes a welcome patch of shade 
 To screen her beauty — yet to none a slave, 
 
 To none a master; calm and undismayed 
 Through the long heat of summer — glad to give 
 
 A few most fragrant pears to me, and glad 
 To share the garden's loveliness, and live 
 
 Free and untrammeled in the garden-close; 
 A happy-hearted little tree, yet sad 
 
 When Autumn's fingers paint its green leaves 
 gold 
 And the wind steals them — when the glad-lipped 
 rose 
 
 Withers away and the warm grass grows cold, 
 And Winter fills the garden with chill snows; 
 
 Yet joyful when Spring comes again and 
 weaves 
 Over its nakedness a shift of leaves. 
 
 [8iJ 
 
JUDAS-TREE 
 
 Then shuddering he flung the silver down. . . . 
 
 "Betrayed Him with a kiss!" — Shaken with 
 sobs, 
 Fierce sobs of anguish, Judas rushed away 
 
 Into the night to hang himself, alone, 
 Crying with madness, broken, jealous, blind; 
 
 His sobbing rent the pitying heart of Night . . . 
 Until with one long strangled cry of pain 
 
 He died, the traitor, Judas, the false friend. 
 
 Over dewy meadows fair with flowers, 
 
 Out of the pillared portals of the Dawn, 
 Came One with a grave beauty in His eyes 
 
 And kissed the shrivelled lips of Judas — low 
 His words were, low and swift with love: 
 
 "Friend, I forgive you." 
 At His voice there sprang 
 
 Dark purple blossoms, bleeding flowers of pain, 
 Out of the blood of that bewildered heart, 
 
 The heart of him who in his madness sold 
 His dearest friend for silver ! Ah, and so 
 
 When Easter lilies laugh to greet the Dawn 
 And resurrection brings us life again 
 
 And love and beauty, purple flowers of pain 
 Bloom on the tree of Judas, passionate-dark 
 
 Penitent flowers of pain . . . 
 
 [82: 
 
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1919 
 
 As when Saint Francis walked the ways of earth 
 And preached the simple beauty of God's 
 word, 
 Angel of Love to man and flower and bird 
 
 Alike, so to the long, self-fostered dearth 
 Within my spirit, from your soul to mine, 
 
 As the cool greenness in the heart of rain 
 Quenches the thirst of meadows parched with 
 pain, 
 Came on strong wings of faith a breath divine. 
 Pilgrim of Beauty, I who sought alone 
 
 In the chill hearts of stars, and found not 
 grace, 
 Knew at your word that I could still atone — 
 Beheld through crumbling mists of right and 
 wrong, 
 Lifted before the Silence of His face, 
 The Grail of Beauty and the Wine of Song. 
 
 [83] 
 
AN AUTUMN GARDEN 
 
 A riot of asters and wine-dark leaves, 
 The garden dreams away the days, 
 
 And all the patterns Summer weaves 
 Across the grassy paths and ways 
 
 Grow richer and darker with Autumn's dyes- 
 Colors that lend a deeper stain 
 
 To Summer's tinted traceries — 
 Colors that bring a sense of pain 
 
 To hearts that feel the weight of years 
 And know that life is only tears — 
 
 And laughter; yet who fail to see 
 In Autumn's touch life's unity. 
 
 [8 4 ] 
 
THE LAST ROSE 
 
 This last dew-scented rose that lifts its face 
 
 To greet the sun 
 With sleepy petals pouting for a kiss — 
 
 This hungry-hearted child of Summer, this 
 Her youngest and her fairest flower to grace 
 
 With perfumed passion Autumn's early days, 
 Is the last pledge of Summer's motherhood — 
 
 The last great crimson drop of her heart's 
 blood 
 To stain with beauty the fast-fading grass — 
 
 Or is it wine spilled from Youth's shattered 
 glass ? 
 Or Love's last lingering laugh made visible 
 
 Among the tawny blades of autumn grass 
 To mock my fleeting shadow as I pass? 
 
 [85] 
 
AUTUMN, A RHAPSODY 
 
 Autumn's fingers are stained 
 
 With the blood of wounded leaves; 
 She reels across the world, 
 
 Her sunburnt body glowing 
 Through tattered raiment 
 
 Of flaming gold; 
 Laughing she lures her lover Winter. 
 
 Shaken and pale with wind-reft passion, 
 He tears her fluttering garments, 
 
 Tears her tawny hair. 
 Soon he will enfold her 
 
 In a white embrace of snows — 
 Will clasp her lithe brown body, 
 
 Will clothe her with desire, 
 And crown her wild, sweet loveliness 
 
 With rainbow-glinting crystals. 
 Wind-passioned, he will woo her 
 
 With a savage tenderness — 
 And of Autumn's sacrifice 
 
 Is born another year. 
 
 [86] 
 
AUTUMNAL 
 
 The wearied songs of crickets thrill the night 
 
 With a lorn music, tremulous and far; 
 Over the oak-trees blinks a lazy light, 
 
 A sleepy star; 
 And half a moon swings low above the trees 
 
 Drowsed by the crickets' plaintive melodies. 
 And also in my heart a waning moon 
 
 Drifts, and I know that summer's days are fled 
 Even as the swallows, and all the flowers are 
 dead; 
 
 Winter's pale feet will cross the meadows soon 
 And leave a wake of silver like the moon. 
 
 [87] 
 
LAMENT 
 
 The ivy dyes the marble dark 
 
 With autumn's heavy, crimson stain 
 Across the smooth, pale stone a mark 
 
 Of pain ; 
 The ruthless gusts of autumn rain 
 
 Scatter the asters on the grass 
 Among the fallen leaves — alas 
 
 That lovely summer should be slain 
 
 So soon, so soon. 
 
 [88] 
 
LATE MOON 
 
 Lifted in sacramental calm 
 
 Above a lonely leafless tree 
 The white moon dreams . . . 
 
 Around her gleams 
 A halo of pale clouds — 
 
 She seems 
 Contemptuous of you and me 
 
 In her remote security. 
 
 [89] 
 
WILD GEESE 
 
 With hollow cries that shake the mists of autumn 
 
 Clinging like ghostly leaves to the dead trees, 
 Over the pale, frost-girdled fields and marshes — 
 
 With lonely cries, their pulsing wings fast- 
 cleaving 
 The trembling azure of the autumn dawn 
 
 A flock of wild geese seek the windy ocean, 
 Southwards, forever southwards winging on — 
 
 There where the old moon drifts, a sorry 
 emblem 
 Of days forgotten and of faith foresworn, 
 
 They fade away — shadows on the horizon — 
 Dark frowns upon the silver brow of morning — 
 
 Mute prophecies of winters to be born. 
 
 [90] 
 
ALL SOULS' EVE 
 
 The shadows gather; it is All Souls' Eve; 
 
 The rain is spent 
 And the dumb, falling leaves 
 
 Plead with mute pity as they drift and cling 
 To the sere, withered grass. 
 
 Tis All Souls' Eve ! 
 The spirits of departed friends seem near 
 
 In the fast- falling twilight — like a dream 
 The mantle of the night muffles the world — 
 
 And hearts grown weary from the stress of 
 life 
 Seek in the dark forgetfulness and peace. 
 
 The touch of Death, 
 The swift, inscrutable 
 
 Breath of Oblivion, how kind it is 
 To wearied mortals ! 
 
 Now, on All Souls' Eve, Death's enigmatic 
 eyes 
 Lift for a space their cold obscurity 
 
 And in their passion-haunted depths man reads 
 The legend of the unborn years 
 
 Beyond to-morrow's dawn. 
 Lo, at this magic time 
 
 The kiss of Death is on Life's laughing lips, 
 For on this evening Love has made them one. 
 
 [91] 
 
ON WATCH 
 
 (Written at a Naval Training Station) 
 
 The fretful leaves in restless eddies swirl 
 
 And gambol in the gutters with the wind; 
 The dying moon glints hard against the stars, 
 
 Blue jewels in the mantle of the sky; 
 The icy fingers of the winter wind 
 
 Caress to numbness all my limbs; 
 My thoughts in senseless eddies like the leaves 
 
 Rustle their foolish music in my brain . . . 
 "Two hours more to watch!" — The shuddering 
 trees 
 
 Reaching fantastic arms among the stars 
 Mutter with pain, "Two hours more to watch — 
 
 Two hours more before the frost-pale dawn." 
 
 [92] 
 
STOCKBRIDGE 
 
 Only moon-misted mountains, sleeping meadows, 
 
 The mirrored stars in the quiet river's heart, 
 And this old house dreaming among its trees — 
 
 A solemn beauty, still and sacramental, 
 Silvers the shadows with the moon's pale frost 
 
 Of faery splendor — and this old house dream- 
 ing 
 Until the Dawn with spectral fingers loosens 
 
 Day's golden hair across the moon-blanched 
 hills, 
 Smiles in the silence, for its deep heart shelters 
 
 All that it loves and all it holds most dear. 
 
 [93] 
 
NOVEMBER WIND 
 
 The proud-lipped wind with mockery of rain 
 Has flung his challenge to the naked fields; 
 
 In vain they veil with pearly mists 
 
 Their withered loveliness — in vain . . . 
 
 With laughter he has torn away 
 The summer that was yesterday. 
 
 [94] 
 
WRITTEN DURING THE PARADE OF 
 THE FIRST DIVISION, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Sensed in the acclamation of the crowd 
 
 And in the fierce, impatient tread of feet 
 Against the fettered earth, the incomplete 
 
 Brief breath of Beauty pierces the dense shroud 
 That folds about me as a darkling cloud 
 
 Enwreathes the horns of the uplifted moon; 
 Victory's visage veils untold defeat 
 
 And Beauty has withheld the spirit's boon. 
 So, as I stand above the multitude 
 
 And cry my Ave to the passing throng, 
 It seems that through the shouting and the rude 
 
 Acclaim of many tongues, there comes the long 
 Far cry of Beauty — the sensed solitude 
 
 Of poets round the battlements of Song. 
 
 [95] 
 
ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL 
 
 Oh, ye who in your youth's unsullied splendor 
 
 Through the fleet-footed hours bear your trust 
 Unvanquished, till the final, dark surrender 
 
 When you enrich Death's dumb, indifferent dust 
 With the spent passion of your clear endeavor 
 
 To grasp and to attain eternal truth, 
 Though steep the heights of your achievement, 
 never, 
 
 Never forget the heart that fired your youth! 
 Time may efface the past and in the skies 
 
 Promise to mend a thousand present ills ; 
 But we who falter, deeming only wise 
 
 The old, deny the source of our desire : 
 The benediction of a Gothic spire 
 
 And the mute blessing of New Hampshire hills. 
 
 October, 1919. 
 
 [96] 
 
TO A FRIEND WITH SOME VERSES 
 
 When Spring has touched the hills of Thessaly 
 
 And Summer's argosy with leafy sails 
 Bears down the southwest wind whose azure flails 
 
 Lash into angry foam the Aegean Sea, 
 Then in my visions of an Arcady 
 
 Long wasted by the years, in dreams I bring 
 To Hermes' temple — I, his votary, 
 
 The withered poppies of my gathering. 
 Friend in whose soul the sea's hushed murmuring 
 
 Upbuilds the perfect poem of its heart 
 Pleading in music lovelier than art, 
 
 I bring you but the momentary gleams 
 Of Beauty that is ever on the wing — 
 
 Child of the Sea, scorn not my slender dreams. 
 
 [97] 
 
TO THE SAME FRIEND 
 
 You who are one with the eternal sea, 
 
 Within whose heart the ghost of her far song 
 Reverberates — murmurous music strong 
 
 With the grim passion of her harmony, 
 Together we have climbed the wind-reft steeps 
 
 Of poetry — together we have heard 
 The call of Beauty where enfolded sleeps 
 
 Eternity within one little word. 
 As Hermes, shadowy evangelist, 
 
 Walked among mortals, so to me you came, 
 Fleet of foot with glad friendship that could claim 
 
 The measured pulse of Time's sidereal wings — 
 It seemed you came to an appointed tryst 
 
 Bringing me earnest of eternal things. 
 
 [98] 
 
TO ONE WHO IS A VOICE 
 
 Only a voice — the wind among the leaves 
 
 Shivered — a wistful, haunting melody 
 Under the lilacs where great drops of dew 
 
 Mirrored the pale, star-dusty evening sky; 
 Was it the wind? Or was it only you, 
 
 Dear distant friend, calling me from afar 
 Through the long leagues of dusk, remote and 
 blue? 
 
 Or was it just a star? 
 
 [99] 
 
HARBOUR COURT 
 
 Here where the final leaves of Summer sleep 
 
 Under the benediction of those boughs 
 Whose suppliant and aspiring branches keep 
 
 The secret of shy April's nuptial vows — 
 Here where the old sea dreams along the shore, 
 
 Since grey-eyed Autumn laid aside her lute, 
 Our hearts have hallowed and enshrined once 
 more 
 
 A friendship in whose presence love is mute. 
 Look where the Dawn has silvered all with mist 
 
 And tipped the stark December trees with 
 gold! 
 Has she forgotten her appointed tryst, 
 
 Though she be sad and her Tithonus old? 
 Oh, though the sunlight of our day depart, 
 
 Your love is graven in my heart of heart. 
 
 [100] 
 
TO A POET 
 
 Autumn, a dark Medea, in her flight 
 
 Strewed the blood-dabbled foliage of the year, 
 Fugitive from the swift-pursuing night 
 
 Of Winter, whose grim, windy legions jeer 
 And chide the solemn passing of the world, 
 
 The bright, leaf-scattered ways where Autumn 
 trod 
 Gold as the gleaming wings of angels furled 
 
 At dusk about the citadel of God. 
 So these fleet pages, poetry-scattered songs, 
 
 Sweep through my spirit as the Autumn's 
 breath 
 Sweeps singing through the tree-tops with glad 
 throngs 
 
 Of leaves that kindle to dull flame the gloom: 
 Your singing sunders the dumb dream of Death 
 
 And thrills with melody the voiceless tomb. 
 
 [101 
 
ON RETURNING 
 
 You, in the joyance of your youth returning 
 To tread again the un forgotten ways, 
 
 Found in your heart the past's chill ashes burning 
 With the fleet friendship of remembered days. 
 
 And I, who with you up the pathway wending 
 Paused for a moment at my childhood's grave, 
 
 Could only marvel at your lavish spending 
 And bless the beauty that your friendship gave. 
 
 [102] 
 
IMPERFECTION 
 
 It seemed that you were but a grey-eyed lad 
 
 And wistful in your life's fleet transiency, 
 Uncomprehended angel ! He could see 
 
 Only the simple virtue that you had — 
 And though he marvelled not, he could be glad 
 
 At your so subtly wise simplicity — - 
 Not apprehending in your amity 
 
 The beauty that would make his spirit sad. 
 Your pilgrim heart was swift to sense defeat 
 
 In his misunderstanding, though his love 
 Was ultimate and in itself complete; 
 
 Yet was there coldness in your clear grey eyes, 
 And sorrow, for you saw that he but strove 
 
 To bind you to love's inconsistencies. 
 
 [103] 
 
COULD I BUT FIND 
 
 Could I but find in you the child that was — 
 
 The grey-eyed, elfin lad with wistful ways 
 And simple love for all of life, because 
 
 He did not know the shadow-haunted days 
 Of men who sell the sunlight — could I find 
 
 That loved, lamented beauty — could the trust 
 I had in you be caught again, refined 
 
 And tempered clean of Time's corroding rust — 
 Then would sheer rapture of achievement wing 
 
 My heart with pinions of diviner song, 
 And I should rise above the suffering 
 
 Of present loss and disappointment, strong 
 With untried strength — and, oh, the songs I'd sing 
 
 To flaunt love's triumph and to prove men 
 wrong ! 
 
 [104] 
 
STARS 
 
 The dream-flowers in thy heart of clay, 
 
 Frail blossoms of eternal fire, 
 Are children of some larger day, 
 
 Star-flames of infinite desire. 
 
 The breath of Beauty stirs within thy soul ; 
 
 Oh turn thee from life's sordid prison-bars ! 
 Within thy heart God's hand has set a whole 
 
 White armament of stars. 
 
 Over the waters of thy spirit glide 
 
 The silent ships of Truth; 
 Oh turn thee from the lonely paths of pride, 
 
 And seek eternal youth. 
 
 The dream-flowers in thy heart of clay 
 Shall flame for thee as Beauty's mark — 
 
 Tapers to light thee on thy way 
 Out of the dark. 
 
 [105] 
 
ICARIAN 
 
 i. 
 
 I sought to give you wings that you might soar 
 
 On sheer dream-pinions over the dark sea 
 That folds its solemn waters round the shore 
 
 Of Life's beginnings, when the Year, grown 
 hoar, 
 And chill at heart, nursed infant Memory, 
 
 And sighed the autumn of her days that we, 
 Having been young, should now be young no 
 more, 
 
 Until another Spring's Epiphany. 
 Icarus- winged, you fell — but not to die — 
 
 And swam the waters dark with mystery 
 Of strife and anguish, and the tempered urge 
 
 Of a new purpose strengthened you to be 
 Clear-visioned as the winds whose winnowing 
 scourge 
 
 Ruffles the waves of the Icarian Sea. 
 
 [106] 
 
II. 
 
 If I have failed you, it was as a dream 
 
 That melts beneath the Dawn's warm-fingered 
 touch 
 And leaves the dreamer troubled, inasmuch 
 
 As I so loved you that I sought to prove 
 The stark impossibilities of love 
 
 Eternal, all-enduring! It would seem 
 That I am vanquished — vanquished though I be, 
 
 Still I protest my love's fidelity. 
 Failure will garner lilies of my heart 
 
 Instead of poppies — she will bind my brows 
 With hope- frail lilies and not laurel boughs, 
 
 Where in the courts of Beauty, mute, apart, 
 I worship, silent, at her hallowed fane 
 
 And offer flowers gathered from your pain. 
 
 [107] 
 
III. 
 Beauty has claimed me — I must follow after 
 
 Her lonely footsteps through the dust and 
 dew — 
 Through vales of tears and over hills of laughter, 
 
 Bearing within my heart the thought of you — 
 Whether I lose me in the moon's white wonder, 
 
 A poet's wilderness, or in the blue 
 Still hills of dream, no hand can mar or sunder 
 
 The unsung music of my love for you ; — 
 Icarus fell — and, falling, died, — you, falling, 
 
 Found deeper, larger life, and found the goal 
 I strove to show you — found the spirit's wonder, 
 
 The heart of day pulsing through midnight's 
 thunder — 
 And now at dawn, clear-voiced about you calling, 
 
 I hear the starry angels of your soul. 
 
 108] 
 
AT PARTING 
 
 If you have come with unaccustomed feet 
 
 To tread the gardens of my heart and found 
 The way less lovely, and have sensed defeat 
 
 In the great hush of daisies which the browned 
 And fruitful meadows of my heart puts forth, 
 
 Glad with the infelicity of Spring, 
 When all importunate she seeks the North 
 
 To pleasure in her beauty's blossoming — 
 If you have come and found the sunlight cold 
 
 Along the borders and the leaves grown sere, 
 Pause and remember, ere the last leaves fold 
 
 Their frail-veined beauty in the dust, for here 
 Our love was hallowed when the foolish Year 
 
 Mocked us with sunlight that you thought was 
 gold. 
 
 109] 
 
TO AUGUSTA 
 
 Tawny the marshes and the meadows umber 
 
 That skirt the russet hills whereon the wind 
 Rocks the sere leaves in their Autumnal slumber 
 
 Until the sound of Winter's onslaught, dinned 
 And echoed by the rout of Autumn ceases, 
 
 And the mysterious hush of coming snow 
 Smoothes from the wrinkled brow of Earth 
 care's creases 
 
 And dims in Heaven the starry tapers' glow. 
 But you, dear sister, in whose eyes is treasured 
 
 The memory of beauty that is ours 
 No less to-day than in the past, have measured 
 
 And apprehended all my love's surmise 
 To meet the present need of present hours, 
 
 And in love's wisdom I have found you wise. 
 
 [no] 
 
TO AUGUSTA ON HER BIRTHDAY 
 
 It may be that the morning stars 
 
 Which on the night's keen edge do gleam, 
 Distort with their dawn-shadowed scars 
 
 The mirrored image of my dream. 
 
 It may be that the wheel of day 
 
 Will grind into the quiet dust 
 The flower that was yesterday 
 
 My love and trust. 
 
 It may be, when the healing dark 
 
 Of the last sleep shall lap me round, 
 
 That Death will smooth away the mark 
 Where ancient sorrow frowned. 
 
 In that prophetic, midnight hour 
 
 It may be Time will tear away 
 My dreams — even to the merest flower — 
 
 And there be no more day. 
 
 And yet I doubt me if the night, 
 Though it be moonless, can obscure 
 
 Your love, a certitude of light 
 That shall endure. 
 
 [in] 
 
TO UNDINE 
 
 My dreams have crumbled into dust 
 And over them the daisies grow ; 
 
 All love and beauty, fear and lust, 
 Passions that scorched my spirit so — 
 
 Unlovely, lovely — just, unjust — 
 Buried long ago. 
 
 And yet you came and bent above 
 My daisies, and you gathered them, 
 
 Frail flowers born of other love, 
 And wove a starry diadem, 
 
 And as I watched the wreath you wove, 
 It seemed you sang Love's requiem. 
 
 Oh, keep the wreath that you have made, 
 Dear little friend, for it may prove 
 
 As one by one its daisies fade 
 The lorn mortality of Love. 
 
 [112] 
 
TO TWO SISTERS 
 
 Grey as the shadows of dawn and as dew from 
 furtive flowers, 
 Sweet as the wind's clear song is sweet and 
 wild, 
 God gathered all the beauty of the winged- footed 
 hours 
 Into the grey eyes of a little child. 
 
 He wove a woof of laughter from the sun 
 To clothe a sister heart — and grey eyes too — 
 
 That she might be as was this other one, 
 Ethereal as dew. 
 
 He gave them feet as swift as silver stars — 
 He gave them wings to lift their feet when 
 tired — 
 
 Infinite wings of dream no iron bars 
 
 Can bind or fetter — and when Day aspired 
 
 To quench with fiery kisses the mute moon, 
 God brimmed their hearts with sunlight ! And 
 a rune 
 
 Of roses and of lilies with His hand 
 
 He wrote across their foreheads — as the sea 
 
 Etches pale poems upon the crumbling sand, 
 The long-lisped utterance of ecstasy. 
 
 [113] 
 
Upon their laughing lips the song of day 
 
 Rang far — their laughter took me back again 
 To realms of childhood — and their eyes, dew- 
 grey, 
 Lifted my heart above the gates of Pain — 
 For, lo, they bore me on their childhood's wings 
 To dreams where children, and not men, are 
 kings. 
 
 [»4] 
 
CHRISTINA 
 
 Pale Oread with the moon-kissed hair, 
 
 Wind-fostered lily from the hills 
 Whose feet are swift as daffodils 
 
 That laugh to greet the lilting Spring, 
 The dusk-blue magic of your eyes 
 
 Has thrilled my heart with memories 
 Where through tall birches, gaunt and bare, 
 
 When Autumn shook their leafy hair 
 Across the dawn-flushed mountain snow, 
 
 I heard a faery-maiden sing 
 Till dark November turned to Spring 
 
 And all the leafless woodland rang 
 With melody, for as she sang 
 
 She woke a dream of long ago . . . 
 So when you look at me, it seems 
 
 You are that faery of my dreams. 
 
 [US] 
 
TO LAURA LOUISE 
 
 Oh little faery of the yellow sands, 
 
 What secret of the sea is in your eyes? 
 
 What music, that you stretch your little hands 
 Laughing to hear the sea's far melodies ? 
 
 For in your eyes the sea has sung a song 
 And poured the haunting magic of its blue. 
 
 Oh teach me in your childishness the song 
 It made for you. 
 
 [1x6] 
 
MIDNIGHT 
 
 What was it smote within the muffled pealing 
 
 Of those prophetic, sullen midnight chimes, 
 When the scarce moonlight wavered on the 
 ceiling, 
 And you and I remembered other times? 
 For at the echo of the last beat, broken 
 
 Between a sob and laughter, you grew still 
 And in your eyes love's promise died unspoken, 
 
 As April's touch upon a daffodil — 
 Only our hearts throbbed on, and in their 
 throbbing 
 Recognizant, abiding, love was mute — 
 While Night against the sightless windows 
 sobbing 
 Strummed with vain hands upon her star- 
 strung lute 
 And sleep stole on us with his hours, robbing 
 Our hearts of any power to refute. 
 
 ["7] 
 
MY FRIEND 
 
 To-day, a welter of futility, 
 
 Marks the slow sinking of the spirit's sun; 
 Alien, apart, men stumble — and the tongue 
 
 That once gave voice to golden melody 
 Is mute, or garrulous with gutter-songs. 
 
 The dull solemnity of Time's bell tolls, 
 Mocking the poor in spirit, vanquished throngs 
 
 That hoard the separate solace of their souls. 
 Against the shuttered windows of my heart 
 
 He knocked and asked me shelter, and I gave 
 Of my so meagre hospitality; 
 
 He had in the poor present world no part, 
 And yet he came not from the voiceless grave 
 
 Nor sought an unprevisioned Sicily. 
 
 [118] 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Communion such as friendship brings, 
 
 Mute music of the human heart, 
 Awakes within my spirit wings; 
 
 Calling from dim remembered springs 
 Veiled in the mist of memory, 
 
 Echoes within my spirit start 
 And break in waves of melody; — 
 
 Gradual music in my heart, 
 Hushed rhythm of Love's harmony. 
 
 [119] 
 
THE QUEST 
 
 I sought you in the falling of the leaves, 
 
 The sunny shadows of the falling leaves — 
 I sought you in the ebbing of the year 
 
 Among the leaves of autumn, golden, sere 
 And bleeding leaves wounded by Autumn's hands ; 
 
 Again I sought you by the foaming sea 
 Along illimitable, lonely sands . . . 
 
 Oft in the lavish legacy of Day 
 I sought you, and the swarthy feet of Night 
 
 Pursued me, shadowy and far away — 
 The pale moon girdled with eternal light 
 
 Hunted me with her yelping pack of stars — 
 The waving plumes of Dawn and all her host, 
 
 The vast, triumphant panoply of Day, 
 Guided me from the pathless wastes of night. 
 
 And still I sought you, and your mocking ghost 
 Fled me among the hungry frosts of Death. 
 
 Ever I sought you; 
 And when winter's breath 
 
 Breathed desolation on the happy fields 
 And shook the last leaves from the shivering 
 trees, 
 
 My heart grew numb — only a sense of pain, 
 Of hope deferred, taunted me, 
 
 Haunted me . . . 
 And yet I sought you, sought you once again 
 
 Over the windy meadows dumb with snow . . . 
 
 [120] 
 
I thought to find you never, when at last 
 
 I found you — the brief pressure of your hand — 
 The deep, clear light of friendship in your eyes — 
 
 And all the waves of darkness, troubled, vast, 
 Large-sounding waters moaning on the sand 
 
 Of my dead days, ebbed — and the mysteries 
 Of this your simple friendship thrilled me through 
 
 With all the tender lovingness of you. 
 
 [121] 
 
JANUARY 23d, 1919 
 
 Stars trembled on the margin of the day 
 
 And danced along the ebbing tides of night ; 
 The old imperious moon still lingered white 
 
 Above the bare, fantastic winter trees; 
 The long slow waves of day broke into light 
 
 Over the eastern ramparts of the world, 
 And a soft foam of pearl-gray clouds o'erspread 
 
 The lonely sky — then in my soul I sought 
 And found, beyond the living and the dead, 
 
 Deeper than passion is or mortal thought, 
 The dark flame of your spirit, oh my friend ! 
 
 In the clear eyes of Dawn I read 
 The poem of another's heart 
 
 Veiled in his friendship's mystery. 
 And now, whate'er Time's passing brings 
 
 Of grief or love or joy or pain, 
 I'll bear within my spirit wings 
 
 To lift me from the little things 
 Of life, to take me back again 
 
 To hours of friendship such as we 
 Have stolen from eternity. 
 Though Death may fill my heart with gloom 
 
 And sorrow shroud my soul, yet I 
 Shall rise above my old self's tomb 
 
 Out of the dust of memory. 
 
 [122] 
 
Proud, laughing melodies shall thrill 
 
 My resurrected spirit through 
 With flames of love eternal, till 
 
 Beating against the boundless blue 
 Of heaven, my soul shall fall and find 
 
 Your eyes, deep infinite and kind, 
 The wistful tenderness of you 
 
 Forever near me, oh my friend. 
 
 [123] 
 
AT DAYBREAK 
 
 I saw the dawn grow wistful in your face 
 Watching you slumber in the dove-grey gloom, 
 
 And saw the first, faint sunbeams, quivering, trace 
 Each dark, familiar object of your room. 
 
 And Day bound on her sandals and arose 
 
 And trod the valleys where the hushed hills 
 bend, 
 
 Gaunt spectres, in whose solitudes repose 
 The secrets of our friendship, oh my friend. 
 
 124] 
 
OTHERS HAVE GIVEN MORE 
 
 Others have given more — but in your giving 
 
 There was a splendor and a sacrifice ; 
 You in the sorry loneliness of living 
 
 Wrought of his devious ways your love's 
 device ; 
 And it was meet that in your alien keeping 
 
 His heart should rest and find divine surcease, 
 As when the pitying night with starry weeping 
 
 Folds the long valleys in her sheltering peace. 
 Others have given more — but you, befriending 
 
 One who was fugitive of mortal ways, 
 Brought to his solitude immediate ending 
 
 And filled with beauty his slow-shambling days, 
 As hill-girt rivers from the hills descending 
 
 Trouble the deeps of the eternal bays. 
 
 [125] 
 
SUNSET 
 
 Over the fields a fading beauty lingers, 
 
 The golden wake of day; 
 And through my hair the wind's caressing fingers 
 
 In gentle passion stray. 
 
 Through the long solitude of evening calling 
 
 The night-wind lisps your name; 
 And in the gloom are voiceful shadows falling, 
 
 Shadows of dusky flame. 
 
 Friend of my heart, I sense you in the embers 
 
 Of the fast-fading day; 
 And lovingly my heart again remembers 
 
 You who are far away. 
 
 126J 
 
TO ONE LONG SILENT 
 
 The dusk within my clover-scented garden 
 Veils with a gradual beauty all the flowers; 
 
 And Night's mute lips breathe on my forehead 
 pardon 
 For the day's wasted hours. 
 
 And through the twilight the tall poplars bending, 
 Whisper, it almost seems your name, dear 
 friend — 
 
 Oh when shall this long silence have an ending? 
 For all things have an end. 
 
 Silence — and on the shadowy, pale roses, 
 Warm with the lingering fragrance of the day, 
 
 Night breathes a kiss, and with her ringers closes 
 The blossoms where they sway. 
 
 Yet in my garden blooms without your knowing, 
 Silvery with untrodden stars of dew, 
 
 A little flower at whose heart lies glowing 
 The memory of you. 
 
 [127] 
 
ALWAYS THE SUNSET 
 
 Always the sunset — shall we always see 
 
 The rich Day spend his bounty and depart 
 And Evening tear with blue-veined hands the 
 heart 
 
 Of her false lover whose inconstancy 
 Stabs with deliberate, starry poignards through 
 
 Her sheltering beauty, and the afterglow 
 Breathe benediction sorrowful and low, 
 
 And Night distil her chalices of dew? 
 Always the sunset — Listen to the croon 
 
 Of summer-hearted crickets in the grass; 
 Their song is one of love and death and birth, 
 
 Knowing that where Tomorrow's feet must 
 pass, 
 New days shall blossom and another Earth 
 
 Yearn with her tides to reach another Moon. 
 
 [128] 
 
TO YOU 
 
 I saw you once with sunset in your eyes 
 
 And after sunset saw the twilight glow 
 With star on star within your heart, and slow 
 
 Vast waves of love within my spirit broke, 
 For you were near me, and the words you spoke 
 
 Were as the touch of vanished memories ; 
 And all my heart, a tremulous blue smoke, 
 
 Burned at your feet in silent sacrifice. 
 Oh you within whose eyes the sunset died, 
 
 Whose heart grew wistful with a wealth of 
 stars, 
 Whose feet were swift with love — the years may 
 bring 
 
 You other love than mine, and other pride, 
 And other beauty, yet the songs I sing 
 
 Have brought you love that shall outlive the 
 stars. 
 
 [129] 
 
LOVE'S TRIUMPH 
 
 Continuous grey storms of wind and rain 
 
 Made cruel laughter through the leaf-strewn 
 
 air 
 
 And stripped the branches of our friendship bare, 
 
 Covering all with dark-winged mists of pain . . . 
 
 Veiled in the gradual gloom of dawn it stands, 
 
 Emblem of this our love, a tall, gaunt pine, 
 And lifts new strength to touch the stars which 
 shine 
 Ghostly against the growing light — no hands 
 Have marred this Beauty which is yours and 
 mine. 
 
 [130] 
 
PROMISE 
 
 There will be jonquils where the snow now lies, 
 
 Anemones and violets, and sprays 
 Of rathe arbutus ; and the tell-tale days, 
 
 Companioning the fleet Spring's truancies, 
 Will hound detested Winter from the skies; 
 
 Love from the lips of leaves will celebrate 
 April's betrothal; and the birds amaze 
 
 Melodiously earth regenerate. 
 True — but the proud, glad Spring shall soon 
 decline : 
 
 Summer reiterate her cricket-songs: 
 Autumn's exalted flattery malign 
 
 Spring's all-apparent promises: the wrongs 
 That earth has suffered once again return . . . 
 
 Yet shall Love's promontoried watch-fires 
 burn. 
 
 [131 
 
THE ANSWER 
 
 The dust the wind has scattered, where, oh, 
 
 where 
 
 Shall it find solace? And the seed once furled 
 
 And sheathed in darkness, shall the sentient air 
 
 Return it to the dust? Shall the round world, 
 
 Wearied of its exacting orbit, turn 
 
 And search the blazing heavens, as it were 
 Inquisitive to know why systems burn 
 
 Their foolish stars, or if the moon's wings 
 whir ? 
 Ask of the wind whose passing scattereth 
 
 The dust — aye, and the crumbling constella- 
 tions too — 
 Perchance the lips of that grey Sphinx called 
 Death 
 Will stir with laughter Night's untroubled 
 blue; 
 Or the swift song of her eventful breath 
 
 Startle your searching heart . . . and answer 
 you. 
 
 132] 
 
BEAUTY 
 
 As flowers within the grey heart of the rain 
 
 Breathe promise of new fragrance — as the 
 Day, 
 A hushed, mute shadow at the breast of Night 
 
 Lies suckled — so beneath despair and pain, 
 Hedged with the stress of life, and overlain 
 
 With sorrow, triviality, dismay, 
 The root of Beauty strives to reach the light 
 
 And puts forth leafy branches in the soul; 
 Man can attain his oneness with the whole 
 
 Of life. Through ultimate Beauty he can be 
 Stronger than God or Time or Nature — free 
 
 Through the fierce forging of his spirit's blade 
 To conquer self with Self, when he has made 
 
 Beauty his goal — he, Beauty's votary. 
 
 133] 
 
MY SONG 
 
 I made a song because the sky was blue, 
 And sang it to the buttercups, and they 
 Laughed through their happy tears of morning 
 dew, 
 Tears shed at parting when the dawn grew 
 grey 
 And the stars kissed them — for my heart was 
 glad 
 Because the grass was green and no one sad, 
 And all the sky above my head was blue. 
 
 I sang my song, but only flowers heard; 
 
 And day died and stars rippled through the 
 sky; 
 Swift wings brushed by me in the dusk, a bird 
 
 Poured forth his throbbing melody, and I 
 Was silent as the stars, for then I knew 
 
 He, too, was singing because skies were blue, 
 And fretted not that only flowers heard. 
 
 [134] 
 
REMEMBERED 
 
 Sere, unlamented as a falling leaf, 
 
 The day has breathed its last, its beauty spent 
 In lavish compensation for the grief 
 
 That lurks reluctant in the dark intent 
 Of the Night's onslaught, until Dawn the thief 
 
 Who plunders all the starry firmament 
 And winnows the tall shadows, sheaf on sheaf, 
 
 Pitches on heaven's high hill his windy tent. 
 So in the aftermath and afterglow 
 
 That lingers in the day's recessional 
 Whose echoes stir the cloistered eventide 
 
 With their autumnal, whispered ritual, 
 Love sets the ashes of my dreams aglow 
 
 And I, remembering, am sanctified. 
 
 135] 
 
TREASURE 
 
 What sequent splendor, oh most wise and true, 
 
 Can dull the simple love that you have given? 
 No orient sapphire can outshine the dew 
 
 Of Dawn's apparel — and the waves, moon- 
 driven, 
 Along the gleaming shoulders of the land, 
 
 Urge after urge, oh they are lovlier far 
 Than the frail dust that once was Helen's hand, 
 
 Though both create the beauty that they mar. 
 Unreckoned wealth of love is yours and mine, 
 
 Within which knowledge we can rest secure. 
 Time may bring drowsy death's dark anodyne, 
 
 Yet shall the tenets of our love endure, 
 When at the final Dawn we have kept tryst 
 
 And pilgrim love has proved evangelist. 
 
 136] 
 
APOLOGIA 
 
 I. 
 
 You said you valued not the lutanist 
 
 Who only sings his songs because he must, 
 But rather him whose singing has in trust 
 
 A more portentous matter — yet the tryst 
 That every poet keeps is with the dust 
 
 And darkness; — while he lives, the singer's 
 crust 
 Is meed enough although his lips have kissed 
 
 The feet of Beauty — for the world is just ! 
 I know that poets love to plead their case 
 
 Oppressed and trammelled by an alien fate — 
 It is their weakness : if you will, disgrace ; 
 
 And yet I charge you to forgive them this ; 
 So when you reach the dead you shall not miss 
 
 Their singing, though the Night be long and 
 late. 
 
 [137] 
 
II. 
 
 Blindly we palter — barter, sell and buy 
 
 Achievement even in a little thing; 
 The careless days that shuffle by us bring 
 
 Their pain and pleasure, till the sunset sky 
 Deepens to darkness and the end — we die 
 
 And have no part in Time's last winnowing 
 Of the cold constellations — what we sing 
 
 Is swallowed in the Night's obscurity; 
 The friendship you have given me is more 
 
 Than the scant comfort of a thousand songs; 
 And all the laboring world and all its wrongs 
 
 Are hushed forever in a little grave ; 
 Grant, in forbearance, from your spirit's store 
 
 Some pittance for the friendship that I gave. 
 
 [138] 
 
III. 
 
 You in the syllables of love once uttered 
 
 Absolved my spirit — I need not atone; 
 For in my heart, close-hedged about and shut- 
 tered, 
 
 The alien lustre of your fancy shone — 
 In your beneficence so all-bestowing, 
 
 Illumined my dull heart with friendship's 
 gleams, 
 Leaving behind you in your silent going 
 
 A beauty that should haunt my failing dreams. 
 And now the winds that gather round November 
 
 To close the chill grey frost-light of her eyes, 
 Snuff out the dying day's last paschal ember 
 
 And shroud me in the gloom of winter skies — 
 Yet in my loneliness shall I remember 
 
 Your love, and in this memory grow wise. 
 
 [139] 
 
IV. 
 Granted that stars are stars, and after all 
 
 Not slim, aspiring tapers lit by God 
 To glimmer down the nave, pontifical, 
 
 Of His high Heaven — and that Beauty's rod 
 Be but a pen of science, and the sod 
 
 No grassy glade for faeries — in the end 
 Death wraps us in his cold, Lethean pall — 
 And you, oh friend of friends, are still my 
 friend ! 
 Now in the gilded glamour of the year 
 
 When Autumn fleets it down the hills and 
 vales, 
 And the up-pinioned bulk of Winter sheer 
 Above us looms, cloaked in his snow-fringed 
 gales, 
 We know that life is other than it seems 
 
 And Spring returning shall bring back our 
 dreams. 
 
 [140] 
 
FINIS 
 
 The russet legions of the autumn drifting 
 
 Over the vanquished sword-blades of the grass, 
 Rustle their elegies — the trees uplifting 
 
 Their spectral boughs to greet the winds that 
 pass 
 In mad, exulting tumult through the sky 
 
 Shiver and bend 'neath the swift-girdling 
 scythe 
 Of Time, whose annual harvesting posts by 
 
 Paying to death its inconsiderate tithe. 
 We, who in autumn shutter close our hearts 
 And screen our spirits from the gathering 
 gloom 
 Of voiceless winter, kindle memory's fires 
 
 Which, from the gradual life their warmth 
 imparts, 
 Awake the mute, remembered dust to bloom 
 With the spent beauty of spring's dead desires. 
 
 [hi] 
 
L'ENVOI 
 
 I wrought a strange device in rhyme 
 
 Of stars and dreams and drops of dew- 
 
 And dipped my pen into the blue 
 
 Of heaven — and on the scroll of Time 
 
 Copied it, word for word, for you. 
 
 [142] 
 
To dare, whether for failure or achievement, 
 
 And break man's circle of compelling doom, 
 Facing the joy of life and life's bereavement 
 
 With certain fortitude — nor chasmed gloom 
 Nor alien sunrise fearing — swift to render 
 
 Measure for measure, with unswerving trust 
 In Truth to whom alone you made surrender 
 
 Of all you loved in this fleet dream of dust: 
 Always was this your single proud endeavor — 
 
 Always your ardor and untiring quest: 
 To sift the Truth from life, obeying ever 
 
 The searching kindness of your heart's behest; 
 From your dear ashes now no hand can sever 
 
 The love that broods above your final rest. 
 
 Quiet your passing on the mountainside 
 
 With only love and the enduring dark 
 About you, and the snow that left no mark 
 
 Of your departure where you turned aside 
 And strode with confidence of youth's clean pride 
 
 Into Death's shadows — did you toss your head 
 And laugh imperiously, and make the dead 
 
 Suddenly glad to know that you had died? 
 Quiet your passing in the hush of hills 
 
 And hallowed by the whispering fall of 
 snow, — 
 Swift as the April wind whose daffodils 
 
 Gladden Earth's rain- filled pools before they go 
 Again into her dark ancestral womb — 
 
 So swift your passing was from tomb to tomb. 
 
 February, 1920. 
 
 [143] 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
 Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Daje:p 
 
 JO 15 
 
 IKKEEPER 
 
 PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES, LP 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724)779-2111 
 
DEC 
 
 2 9 ?92&