Some said her silent wheels would roll Rutless on softest loam, And even that her steeds’ footfall Sank not upon the foam. Where drives she now? It may be where No mortal horses are, But in a chariot of the air Towards some radiant star. A WOMAN’S TRUST IF he should live a thousand years He’d find it not again That scorn of him by men Could less disturb a woman’s trust In him as a steadfast star which must Rise scathless from the nether spheres: If he should live a thousand years He’d find it not again. She waited like a little child, Unchilled by damps of doubt, While from her eyes looked out A confidence sublime as Spring’s When stressed by Winter’s loiterings. Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled, She waited like a little child Unchilled by damps of doubt. Through cruel years and crueller Thus she believed in him And his aurore, so dim; That, after fenweeds, flowers would blow; And above all things did she show Her faith in his good faith with her; Through cruel years and crueller Thus she believed in him! BEST TIMES WE went a day’s excursion to the stream, Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam, And I did not know That life would show, However it might flower, no finer glow. I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road That wound towards the wicket of your abode, And I did not think That life would shrink To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink. Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night, And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light, And I full forgot That life might not Again be touching that ecstatic height. And that calm eve when you walked up the stair, After a gaiety prolonged and rare, No thought soever That you might never Walk down again, struck me as I stood there. Rewritten from an old draft. THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE WHILE he was here in breath and bone, To speak to and to see, Would I had known—more clearly known— What that man did for me When the wind scraped a minor lay, And the spent west from white To gray turned tiredly, and from gray To broadest bands of night! But I saw not, and he saw not What shining life-tides flowed To me-ward from his casual jot Of service on that road. He would have said: “’Twas nothing new; We all do what we can; ’Twas only what one man would do For any other man.” Now that I gauge his goodliness He’s slipped from human eyes; And when he passed there’s none can guess, Or point out where he lies. INTRA SEPULCHRUM WHAT curious things we said, What curious things we did Up there in the world we walked till dead Our kith and kin amid!