Pity the trespass of my mouth, And things undone, and words unsaid; Shed lilies on my fever's drouth, And roses on the marshes shed! O God! The doves whose flights are gold On heavens remembered! Pity too These garments that my loins enfold, That rustle round me, dimly blue! STAGNANT HOURS Here are the old desires that pass, The dreams of weary men, that die, The dreams that faint and fail, alas! And there the days of hope gone by! Where to fly shall we find a place? Never a star shines late or soon: Weariness only with frozen face, And sheets of blue in the icy moon. Behold the fireless sick, and lo! The sobbing victims of the snare! Lambs whose pasture is only snow! Pity them all, O Lord, my prayer! For me, I wait the awakening call: I pray that slumber leave me soon. I wait until the sunlight fall On hands yet frozen by the moon. THE WHITE BIRDS Proud, indifferent, slow, they have fled, they have flown away, The peacocks white as snow, lest weariness awake; I see the birds of snow, the white birds of To-day, The birds that fly away before my slumber break; Proud, indifferent, slow, the white birds of To-day, Winning with indolent flight the shores of the sunless lake; The birds of listless thought, I hear them on their way, Indolently waiting for the sunless day to break. THE HOSPITAL The hospital on the banks of the canal, The hospital, and the month July! They are lighting a fire in the ward, While the Atlantic steamers are whistling on the canal! (Do not go near the windows!) Here are emigrants loitering through a palace, And I see a yacht in a tempest! And herds of cattle on all the ships! (It is better to keep the windows fastened; Then we are all but safe from the outside world!) One thinks of a forcing-frame placed upon a snow-drift, Or a woman being churched on a day of thunder; One catches a glimpse of plants scattered over a blanket, And a conflagration on a sunny day, And I pass through a forest full of wounded men.... O, here at last is the moonlight! A fountain is playing in the middle of the ward! And a troop of little girls has opened the door! And lo, a glimpse of lambs in an isle of meadows! And beautiful plants on a glacier! And lilies in a hall of marble! There is a banquet in a virgin forest, And the vegetation of the tropics in a cavern of ice! Listen! They are opening the locks, And the ocean steamers are churning the waters of the canal! But see, the Sister of Charity is making up the fire!