V

Tired, tired am I Of this earthly air, And my wraith asks: Why, Since these calm lie, Are not Five out there?

December 1915.

AT A SEASIDE TOWN IN 1869 (Young Lover’s Reverie)

I WENT and stood outside myself, Spelled the dark sky And ship-lights nigh, And grumbling winds that passed thereby.

Then next inside myself I looked, And there, above All, shone my Love, That nothing matched the image of.

Beyond myself again I ranged; And saw the free Life by the sea, And folk indifferent to me.

O ’twas a charm to draw within Thereafter, where But she was; care For one thing only, her hid there!

But so it chanced, without myself I had to look, And then I took More heed of what I had long forsook:

The boats, the sands, the esplanade, The laughing crowd; Light-hearted, loud Greetings from some not ill-endowed;

The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk, Hailings and halts, The keen sea-salts, The band, the Morgenblätter Waltz.

Still, when at night I drew inside Forward she came, Sad, but the same As when I first had known her name.

Then rose a time when, as by force, Outwardly wooed By contacts crude, Her image in abeyance stood . . .

At last I said: This outside life Shall not endure; I’ll seek the pure Thought-world, and bask in her allure.

Myself again I crept within, Scanned with keen care The temple where She’d shone, but could not find her there.

I sought and sought. But O her soul Has not since thrown Upon my own One beam! Yea, she is gone, is gone.

From an old note.