_A.D. Mdcccxc_

HEART all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright On wild little waters floating half of an April night, Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light,

Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea: Whither, through troubled valleys, we also follow thee.

A Song of the Lilac

ABOVE the wall that's broken, And from the coppice thinned, So sacred and so sweet The lilac in the wind! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart.

In tears it long was buried, And trances wrapt it round; Oh, how they wake it now, The fragrance and the sound! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart.

Monochrome

SHUT fast again in Beauty's sheath Where ancient forms renew, The round world seems above, beneath, One wash of faintest blue,

And air and tide so stilly sweet In nameless union lie, The little far-off fishing fleet Goes drifting up the sky.

Secure of neither misted coast Nor ocean undefined, Our flagging sail is like the ghost Of one that served mankind,

Who in the void, as we upon This melancholy sea, Finds labour and allegiance done, And Self begin to be.

Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon

"AND now, my clerks who go in fur or feather Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true To your true Lover and Avenger, whether By land or sea ye die the death undue. Then proffer man your pardon; and together Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new.

"From long ago one hope hath in me thriven, Your hope, mysterious as the scented May: Not to Himself your titles God hath given In vain, nor only for our mortal day. O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven? O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play."

An Estray

WELL we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream: Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream,

For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave, For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave.

While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering, And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing,

Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest,

As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay, Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day?

Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again,

As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light, How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight!

Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago.

Friendship Broken