It was the twilight, and we sat alone. We sat alone beside the winter fire-- My friend and I--a fire that crackled well, And sounded through the stillness as a flame Shoots through the dark. The embers of the sun Had died to ashes. While it sunk we talked Of Love, of Beauty, Poetry and Hope, Which are religion. For, is Beauty loved, Then God is loved, and in our loving we Do emulate his noblest attribute. But all our words had failed to silentness, And memories clustered in the heart’s twilight, As shadows in a wood; and all was still. But in the quietness there seemed to grow A sympathetic mood, and we to look, As through glass, into each other’s mind, Calm reading, while our thoughts and feelings verged In a soft sadness to one common point. Then low I spoke:--“Were it not sweet and well To die from out this chaos of a life Into the waiting dark, and leave our toil To stronger minds and hands? To spurn the clay, And mount the crystal air in spiral gyre, Glad-voiced, and angel-winged, like bird uncaged? I think it sweet! or so it seemeth now, When I look back, as down a charnel-vault, Into the retrospect, and see it all;-- See every should-be that was never done, And every would-be that has died its death, And my hot dreams, and my distempered hopes, Pictured in light and dark as on a wall.” Then in the dusk I ceased, and so we sat, With hearthward faces, but with upward thought. I saw my words drop, pebble-like, down deep Into his inmost mind, and there they lay, While he, with careful quiet, shaped response, And then, abstract, as to himself, replied:-- “’Tis speaking well, and yet not speaking well! For in the web of life are golden threads-- And in the sky of life are brilliant stars-- And on the sea of life are favoring gales-- Or we should wither all as flowers in drought. He who doth pilot the great universe, Doth mete and parcel out the light and dark, Strange, varicolored, like a wanderer’s dream;-- And He that made the man hath made his work. And in the bark of life hath given the oar At which to tug and toil until the death; Nor yet all toil; for oft the summer sea Ripples on bloomy shores, whence balmy winds Bring a rich, spicy life to make one glad. We thrid wild mazes not without a clue-- We sink again to soar as eagles do-- We deeply quaff at the rare desert founts, And so plod on to fair oases green,