We were sae happy, Mary! O think how ance we said— Wad ane o’ us gae fickle, Or are o’ us lie dead,— To feel anither’s kisses We wad feign the auld instead, An’ ken the ither’s footsteps In the green grass owerhead. My Mary, O my Mary! Are ye dochter o’ the air, That ye vanish aye before me As I follow everywhere?— Or is it ye are only But a mortal, wan wi’ care, Sin’ I search through a’ the kirkyird An’ I dinna find ye there? _EROS_ _The storm of love has burst at last_ _Full on me: All the world, before,_ _Was like an alien, unknown shore_ _Along whose verge I laughing passed.—_ _But now—I laugh not any more,—_ _Bowed with a silence vast in weight_ _As that which falls on one who stands_ _For the first time on ocean sands,_ _Seeing and feeling all the great_ _Awe of the waves as they wash the lands_ _And billow and wallow and undulate._ ORLIE WILDE A goddess, with a siren’s grace,— A sun-haired girl on a craggy place Above a bay where fish-boats lay Drifting about like birds of prey. Wrought was she of a painter’s dream,— Wise only as are artists wise, My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem, With deep sad eyes of oversize, And face of melancholy guise. I pressed him that he tell to me This masterpiece’s history. He turned—_re_turned—and thus beguiled Me with the tale of Orlie Wilde:— “We artists live ideally: We breed our firmest facts of air; We make our own reality— We dream a thing and it is so. The fairest scenes we ever see Are mirages of memory; The sweetest thoughts we ever know We plagiarize from Long Ago: And as the girl on canvas there Is marvellously rare and fair, ’Tis only inasmuch as she Is dumb and may not speak to me!” He tapped me with his mahlstick—then The picture,—and went on again: “Orlie Wilde, the fisher’s child— I see her yet, as fair and mild As ever nursling summer day Dreamed on the bosom of the bay: For I was twenty then, and went Alone and long-haired—all content With promises of sounding name And fantasies of future fame, And thoughts that now my mind discards As editor a fledgling bard’s.