Only a glance it was, Only a word! What a romance it was All but absurd! All but absurd, you see, Yes but not quite. There’s one more word you see “Death” we must write! She had the knack of it --Less than a kiss, And for the lack of it Look he is this. O what a king he was (Drowned in a pool), What a brave thing he was O what a fool! While all the rest of us Struggle to fame, Here is the best of us Dead with his shame. Shame? Oh I wonder now. What do you say? If you should blunder now Choose me your way! If you’d thrown hope away; Well would you care Through life to grope a way? Or would you dare Take up the lot of it Life, love and fame, Make a clean shot of it Into the flame? Ah it was brave of him Let them cry “shame.” Life made no slave of him! But you’ll exclaim, Was she worth trying for? He thought her so. Was she worth dying for? Yes, and then no. “No,” for a wiser man. “No,” for a less. But the heart cries “Amen,” When he says “yes.” There in the pool he was Just a dead thing. O what a fool he was, O what a king! DEAD LOVER. Tell me, dead lover, you who broke my heart (O dead indeed, since love himself is dead). Need I remember that we came to part, May I forget to whom and why you fled? Tell me, dead lover, since the grave is strong, And those who sleep are cured of joy and pain, And now no love may reach you, do I wrong If I begin to love you all again? And see, dead lover, since the shadows fall And nothing now is false and nothing true. Might I not dream (you would not know at all) That I, O love, was loved once more by you. And since, dead lover, death defeats your pride, And ere it dreamed of pride my love awoke, O let me think, it was because you died, And not because you left me, my heart broke. THE GODS OF THE COPY-BOOK HEADINGS. A REPLY. Fenris the wolf, and Jörmungand the snake In the slime and the swamp remorseless wait. For not the years nor human hopes can break Valhalla’s sentence thus pronounced by Fate. “These gods that are the children of men’s dreams-- Virtue and honour, courage and the songs Men sing about their hearthstones--stolen gleams In the poor heart unbroken by its wrongs, “These gods, of man’s refusal of the beast The half pathetic, wholly fleeting sign Who in that tenderness are gods the least Where human weakness finds them most divine, “These pitiful gods, fabric of mankind’s tears A dream of what all human hearts have wanted The vision at the end of all the years The holy ghost that half the world has haunted,