BEAUTY like hers is genius. Not the call Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,

Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,

Is more with compassed mysteries musical:

Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall

More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes

Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes

Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

As many men are poets in their youth, But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong

Even through all change the indomitable song;

So in like wise the envenomed years, whose tooth

Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,

Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

XIX. SILENT NOON

YOUR hands lie open in the long, fresh grass,

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and

amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can

pass,

HIGH grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal

Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;

A glance like water brimming with the sky

Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall:

Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral

The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply

All music and all silence held thereby ; Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal; A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine

To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;

Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,

And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:

These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.

Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.

Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace?

Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soulstilled face

O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair?

Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair

When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance

Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance

That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring there?

Before such triune loveliness divine Awestruck I ask, which goddess here

most claims

XLVIII. DEATH-IN-LOVE

THERE came an image in Life's retinue That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon :

Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,

O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!

Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,

Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power

Sped trackless as the immemorable hour When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.

But a veiled woman followed, and she caught

The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,

Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,

66

And held it to his lips that stirred it not, And said to me, Behold, there is no breath:

I and this Love are one, and I am Death."

THE hour which might have been yet might not be,

Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore

Yet whereof life was barren,-on what shore

Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?

Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,

It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before

The house of Love, hears through the echoing door

His hours elect in choral consonancy. But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand

Together tread at last the immortal strand

With eyes where burning memory lights love home?