He is not banished, for the showers Yet wake this green warm earth of ours. How can the summer but be sweet? I shall not have him at my feet, And yet my feet are on the flowers. REGRETS As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour Out by the low sand spaces, The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore With lingering embraces,-- So in the tide of life that carries me From where thy true heart dwells, Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee With lessening farewells; Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets; A care half lost in cares; The saddest of my verses; dim regrets; Thy name among my prayers. I would the day might come, so waited for, So patiently besought, When I, returning, should fill up once more Thy desolated thought; And fill thy loneliness that lies apart In still, persistent pain. Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart, As the tide comes again, And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets Seaweeds afloat, and fills The silent pools, rivers and rivulets Among the inland hills? SONG My Fair, no beauty of thine will last Save in my love's eternity. Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully, Are lost for ever--their moment past-- Except the few thou givest to me. Thy sweet words vanish day by day, As all breath of mortality; Thy laughter, done, must cease to be, And all thy dear tones pass away, Except the few that sing to me. Hide then within my heart, oh, hide All thou art loth should go from thee. Be kinder to thyself and me. My cupful from this river's tide Shall never reach the long sad sea. SONNET--IN FEBRUARY Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn, Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers, And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers. A poet's face asleep is this grey morn. Now in the midst of the old world forlorn A mystic child is set in these still hours. I keep this time, even before the flowers, Sacred to all the young and the unborn; To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat, And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal, And to the future of my own young art, And, among all these things, to you, my sweet, My friend, to your calm face and the immortal Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart. SAN LORENZO GIUSTINIANI'S MOTHER I had not seen my son's dear face (He chose the cloister by God's grace) Since it had come to full flower-time. I hardly guessed at its perfect prime, That folded flower of his dear face. Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears When on a day in many years One of his Order came. I thrilled, Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled. I doubted, for my mists of tears. His blessing be with me for ever! My hope and doubt were hard to sever. --That altered face, those holy weeds. I filled his wallet and kissed his beads, And lost his echoing feet for ever.