Mine open enemy hath no power to wound— His poison shafts fall hurtless to the ground; He may wreak a treach’rous lynx-like deed And yet will never cause my heart to bleed. If he should glare on me in hottest hate, With tiger fierceness, plan the direst fate, With claws distended, lusting for the roon, I’d smile and do him kindness over soon, Or, give a sure nepenthe for his wrath By silent, strewing favors in his path. But when those to whom my heart is bound in trust, With aim concealed, make unexpected thrust,— When those I’d counted friends, as friends had served, Whose joy and weal my strongest effort nerved— If THEY shall stab and gaze with hungry eyes To catch my wince of pain, ’neath friendship’s guise, Then, a wound is made, that all the quivering senses feel— A wound, that only trusted friends could deal; And, saddest hurt of all, the heart will find, The same stab struck its faith in human kind. “Destiny.” She freighted a thistle-down once with a wish, And gave to the breeze with her breath; The Fates were to hold its invisible leash And, if to be granted ere death, Bring back, at her will, to her out-reaching hand This wealth-laden embassy sent. Unheeding her will and its pleading command, Up, up toward the zenith it went, Till will, it would seem, at the last had controlled, When, earthward it came, like a fairy rigged sail— Came straight toward the hand that was eager to hold The zephyr-tossed feather, whose course should unveil What Destiny held, in the Future concealed— Life’s weightiest questions decide. Almost within grasp and it wavered and reeled, Then, mounting again the etherial tide, It floated—was lost in the depths of the blue. That thistle down, swayed by a pulse of the air, Had wrecked her heart’s hopes on the rocks of despair, As billows of ocean rich argosies strew. Now listless and faithless she sits on the shore Where Time’s restless surge casts its wrack at her feet; She sees not the sunshine—hears only the roar Of dark, sullen waves as they ceaselessly beat. In Fate-ridden weakness she shrinks from all strife— Lets Destiny’s elves to her fancy repeat The early “decrees” that have shadowed her life— No effort essays that might wreak a defeat— Just waits for the stroke of pale Atropos’ knife. * * * * * A faith in the hidden controllings of FATE, Enchains, with its might, even Reason and Will: In wreakless inaction her devotees wait For the slow-turning grind of her mill—Let circumstance bind them with torturing gyves, Pass doors that would open to Industry’s keys And when, with his braided pangs, Poverty drives, Receive all his lashings as “Fortune’s decrees.”