The child is gone, O crimson rose, And stained and hardened are the hands, And who shall find your golden heart And who shall kiss your withered soul? Happy are you, O crimson rose, But I have stains upon my hands; You died with kisses in your heart, I live with sorrow in my soul. "MY PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU" He pondered long, and watched the darkening space Close the red portals whence the hours had run, As like young wistful angels, one by one, The stars cast timid flowers about His face. "Yea, now another scarlet day is done!" He cried in anguish, and with sudden grace Stretched forth His arms, as though He would erase The few, dim embers of the scattered sun. "The scarlet day is done, and soon the light Will wake again my desecrated skies. Oh, that another dawn might never rise!-- My foolish children!" Through the vast of night The young stars shivered in a silver horde Before the Infinite Sorrow of their Lord. THE RECOMPENSE When the last song is sung, and the last spark Of light dies out forever, and the dark, The voiceless dark eternal shrouds the earth; When the last cries of pain and shouts of mirth Sink in the desolate silences of space; Where then shall flower the beauty of your face, O Love the laughing, Youth the rose-in-hand, In what unknown and undiscovered land Shall flower then the beauty of your face? I know not but I know that all returns At last unchanged, and to the heart that yearns Shall be repaid all loneliness and loss. Sometime with shadowy sails shall fly across The shoreless ocean of infinity A ship from out the past, and the great sea Of life shall bear you from the strange worlds over The waves, and back again to the old lover. Yes, in some future far beyond surmise You will dream here with half-remembering eyes, And I shall write these words, content awhile In the slow round of time to see you smile. * * * * * R. S. MITCHELL POPPY SONG I Footsteps soft as fall the rose's Petals on a dewy lawn, Shaken when the wind uncloses Golden gateways for the dawn; Laughter light as is the swallows' Chatter in the evening sky, Wafted upward from the hollows Where the limpid waters lie; Weeping faint as is the willow's By the margin of the lake, Trembling into tiny billows That the silent teardrops make; Phantoms fitful and uncertain As the pearly autumn rain, Sweeping on in cloudy curtain Down the wide way of the plain. II Oh, unhappy now to waken When the dream had scarce begun! Out of gentle twilight taken Into realms of burning sun: Oh, unhappy now to find me Lost 'neath heavens hot with noon; All that fairy land behind me; Poppy fields and rising moon! Drawbridge and portcullis screeching, Bugles braying soon and late; Who are they that come beseeching, Calling at my castle gate?