Mind said, “Pass by. The garden withers, for the spring is dry. For words of thine, for tears, it will not flow. The long road calls a wanderer: rise and go.” Heart said, “Pass by. The flowers were pale and scentless; let them die, And down the road Forget your pathway take To find beneath the Song my fine, small ache, And gather flowers blue and flowers red To hear my whisper of the white ones dead.” IN EMPTY COURTS His love is warm and constant as the sun, Like sunlight in the outer spaces spent, In empty courts where tumbling fountains run, And flowers bloom, and he is well content. To you my heart must turn for all its light-- Alas, the grudging taper that you give! So small to make the inner temple bright, So dim to give the glow by which I live. He is the sun, for all the world to mark, So warm and fair he shines! nor understands That I must still be crouching in the dark, Shielding a little flame with loving hands. DOWN THE TRAIL Break camp, the dawn is here! A sea has swept beneath us in the night-- Poured outward in a wrinkled floor of white, And left our eyrie clear. There in the deeps the little trail is curled-- We plunge like divers to the under-world. The manzanita stirs! Look, in that little thicket just ahead! Down, down, the covey whirrs, Mocking us, careful, led, Slow-slipping beads along a slender thread. Here the stream flows; Here we tread yellow leaves. (Sun in the sycamores, Sun on the granite walls.) All is so still, Never wind blows, Only the singing stream Shouts little waterfalls. We round the mighty shoulder of a hill-- Oh, sweet airs damp with ferns! The day is old, the lengthening shadows chill-- The wanderer returns. Traffic, and wakeful eyes of little lights; The black crowd passing near; and far away A fading rose of sunset hanging low Above the roofs of indigo and grey. “BELLS FROM OVER THE HILLS SOUND SWEET.”--_Russian Proverb._ Oh, when the afternoon is long and hazy, So still the valley lies, so still, so still, With sweeping smoky spirals blue and lazy, With yellow light aglow from hill to hill. Sometimes the echoes startle with my singing; Sometimes a bird the heavy silence fills, And always I can hear them ringing, ringing, My mocking bells, my Bells from over the Hills. Sweetly, faintly ring they, cruel ring they: “Captive in your prison hear us call!” Message from a life of action bring they, Life beyond these hills more sweet than all. Would that I could heed their call and follow, Waking while this drowsy valley sleeps, Follow Fortune over hill and hollow, Wrest from her the treasures that she keeps!