This Brook of Shadows, whose dark waters purled Solace to his deep mind, it felt his smile Haunted, and melancholy, and remote.

LATE SUMMER

THO' summer days are all too fleet,
Not yet the year is touched with cold;
Through the long billows of the wheat
The green is lingering in the gold.

The birds that thrilled the April copse,
Ah! some have flown on silent wings;
Yet one sweet music never stops:

The constant vireo sings and sings.

AN HOUR IN A STUDIO

EACH picture was a painted memory

Of the far plains he loved, and of their life,—
Weird, mystical, dark, inarticulate, -
And cities hidden high against the blue,

Whose sky-hung steps one Indian could guard.
The enchanted Mesa there its fated wall

Lifted, and all its story lived again -
How, in the happy planting time, the strong
Went down to push the seeds into the sand,
Leaving the old and sick. Then reeled the world
And toppled to the plain the perilous path.
Death climbed another way to them who stayed.
He showed us pictured thirst, a dreadful sight;
And many tales he told that might have come,
Brought by some planet-wanderer- fresh from Mars,
Or from the silver deserts of the moon.

A SONG OF THE ROAD

But I remember better than all else

261

One night he told of in that land of fright-
The love-songs swarthy men sang to their herds
On the high plains to keep the beasts in heart;
Piercing the silence one keen tenor voice
Singing "Ai nostri monti" clear and high:
Instead of stakes and fences round about
They circled them with music in the night.

ILLUSION

WHAT strange, fond trick is this mine eyes are playing!
I know 'tis but the visioning mind perplexes,-
The inward sight the outer sense betraying,-
Yet the sweet lie the spirit wounds and vexes:
As at still midnight pondering here, and reading,
Right on the book's white page, and 'twixt the lines,
And wreathing through the words, and quick receding,
Only to come again (as 'mid the vines

The dryads flash and hide), white arms are gleaming,
A light hand hovers, curvèd lips are red,

Locks in a warm and soundless wind are streaming Across the image of one glorious head;

No more,

no more, shut now the volume lies On that swift, piercing look, those haunting eyes.

A SONG OF THE ROAD

SPEED, speed, speed

Through the day, through the night!

Cities are beads on the thread of our flight;

Peaks melt in peaks and are lost in the air.
Speed, speed, speed –

But, O, the dearth of it,
Thou not there!

Every journey is good if love be the goal of it. What's all the world if love's not the soul of it; What were the worth of it

Thou not there!

"NOT HERE"

I

NOT here, but somewhere, so men say,

More bright the day,

And the blue sky

More nigh;

Somewhere, afar, the bird of dawn sings sweeter;

Somewhere completer

The round of hopes and heart-beats that make life More than a bootless strife.

II

But, ah! there be that know
Where joy alone doth grow.
Led by one true star,

The journey is not far.

'Tis in a garden in no distant land,

High-walled on every hand;

And the key thereof

Nay, nay, I needs must flout thee!"

"THIS HOUR MY HEART WENT FORTH, AS IN OLD DAYS"

THIS hour my heart went forth, as in old days,
To one I loved, forgetting she was dead
So fluttered back the message, like the dove
That found no rest in all the weltering world.
Is it then so all blankness and black void,
No welcome, no response, no voice, no sign?
Ah, Heaven! let us be foolish — give us faith
In what is not; cheat us a little longer;
Comfort us mortals with envisioned forms;
Let us, tho' but in dreams, see spirits near,