And up the bossy column Quick tails of squirrels wave, And black, prodigious, solemn, A forest fills the nave. Still faithfuller, still faster, To ruin give thy heart: Perfect before the Master Aye as thou wert, thou art. But I am wind that passes In ignorant wild tears, Uplifted from the grasses, Blown to the void of years, Blown to the void, yet sighing In thee to merge and cease, Last breath of beauty’s dying, Of sanctity, of peace! Tho’ use nor place forever Unto my soul befall, By no belovèd river Set in a saintly wall, Do thou by builders given Speech of the dumb to be, Beneath thine open heaven, Athassel! pray for me. [Illustration] _Florentin_ HEART all full of heavenly haste, too like the bubble bright On loud little water 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, thro’ troubled valleys, we also follow thee. [Illustration] _Friendship Broken_ I WE chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend, Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak, Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke Strange things and deep as any poet penned, Such truth as never truth again can mend, Whatever arts we win, what gods invoke; It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke: Be what it may, it had a solemn end. Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers, Each a wise sceptic of the other’s star. Silently, as we went our ways alone, The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters, Drew high between us his majestic bar. II Mine was the mood that shows the dearest face Thro’ a long avenue, and voices kind Idle, and indeterminate, and blind As rumors from a very distant place; Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase Of the first swallows where the lane ’s inclined, An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind For round Spring’s vision. Ah, some equal grace (The calm sense of seen beauty without sight) Befell thee, honorable heart! no less In patient stupor walking from the dawn; Albeit thou too wert loser of life’s light, Like fallen Adam in the wilderness, Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn. [Illustration] _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! And 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; O 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. [Illustration] _In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm_