Through the strange dusk of this, the

Debateable Land

Between their place and ours?

Like the forgetfulness

Of the work-a-day world made visible,
A mist falls from the melancholy sky.
A messenger from some lost and loving soul,
Hopeless, far wandered, dazed

Here in the provinces of life,

A great white moth fades miserably past.

Thro' the trees in the strange dead night,
Under the vast dead sky,

Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead
Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell,
And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.

XXIII

To P. A. G.

HERE they trysted, here they strayed,
In the leafage dewy and boon,
Many a man and many a maid,

And the morn was merry June. 'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,'

Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet,

While they dreamed, was yesterday.

Many a maid and many a man

Found the leafage close and boon; Many a destiny began—

O, the morn was merry June!

Dead and gone, dead and gone,

(Hark the blackbird in the may !),

Life and Death went hurrying on,

Cheek on cheek-and where were they?

Dust on dust engendering dust

In the leafage fresh and boon, Man and maid fulfil their trust

Still the morn turns merry June. Mother Life, Father Death

(O, the blackbird in the may !), Each the other's breath for breath,

Fleet the times of the world away.

XXIV

To A. C.

NOT to the staring Day,

For all the importunate questionings he pursues
In his big, violent voice,

Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,
The Trees-God's sentinels

Over His gift of live, life-giving air,

Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.
Midsummer-manifold, each one

Voluminous, a labyrinth of life,

They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams

That haunt their leafier privacies,

Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still
With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile
Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,
And disappearances of homing birds,

And frolicsome freaks

Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.

But at the word

Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,

Night of the many secrets, whose effect-
Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread-
Themselves alone may fully apprehend,
They tremble and are changed.
In each, the uncouth individual soul
Looms forth and glooms

Essential, and, their bodily presences
Touched with inordinate significance,
Wearing the darkness like the livery
Of some mysterious and tremendous guild,
They brood-they menace-they appal;

Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring

Wild hands of warning in the face

Of some inevitable advance of doom;

Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing

As in some monstrous market-place,

They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathers

Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard