Thy emptiest solitude can bring Only a subtler questioning In thy divided heart. Thy bed Recalls at dawn what midnight said. Seek how thou wilt to feign content, Thy flaming ardour's quickly spent; Soon thy last company is gone, And leaves thee--with thyself--alone. Pomp and great friends may hem thee round, A thousand busy tasks be found; Earth's thronging beauties may beguile Thy longing lovesick heart awhile; And pride, like clouds of sunset, spread A changing glory round thy head; But fade will all; and thou must come, Hating thy journey, homeless, home. Rave how thou wilt; unmoved, remote, That inward presence slumbers not, Frets out each secret from thy breast, Gives thee no rally, pause, nor rest, Scans close thy very thoughts, lest they Should sap his patient power away, Answers thy wrath with peace, thy cry With tenderest taciturnity. THEY TOLD ME [Illustration] They told me Pan was dead, but I Oft marvelled who it was that sang Down the green valleys languidly Where the grey elder-thickets hang. Sometimes I thought it was a bird My soul had charged with sorcery; Sometimes it seemed my own heart heard Inland the sorrow of the sea. But even where the primrose sets The seal of her pale loveliness, I found amid the violets Tears of an antique bitterness. THE SUNKEN GARDEN [Illustration] Speak not--whisper not; Here bloweth thyme and bergamot; Softly on the evening hour, Secret herbs their spices shower. Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh, Lean-stalked, purple lavender; Hides within her bosom, too, All her sorrows, bitter rue. Breathe not--trespass not; Of this green and darkling spot, Latticed from the moon's beams, Perchance a distant dreamer dreams; Perchance upon its darkening air, The unseen ghosts of children fare, Faintly swinging, sway and sweep, Like lovely sea-flowers in its deep; While, unmoved, to watch and ward, Amid its gloomed and daisied sward, Stands with bowed and dewy head That one little leaden Lad. SNOW No breath of wind, No gleam of sun-- Still the white snow Swirls softly down-- Twig and bough And blade and thorn All in an icy Quiet, forlorn. Whispering, nestling, Through the air, On sill and stone, Roof--everywhere, It heaps its powdery Crystal flakes, Of every tree A mountain makes: Till pale and faint At shut of day, Stoops from the West One wintry ray. Then, feathered in fire, Where ghosts the moon, A robin shrills His lonely tune; And from her dark-gnarled Yew-tree lair Flits she who had been In hiding there. [Illustration] THE WORLD OF DREAM