On either side the feathered tops are high, A tracery of broken arabesques Upon the sullen crimson of the sky. Into the west the narrowing rails are sped. They cut the crayon softness of the dusk With thin converging gleams of bloody red. A PLACE OF DREAMS Here will we drink content, comrade of mine-- Here, where the little stream, to meet the sun, Flows down a yellow rock like yellow wine. Here will we launch a leaf to distant shores, And in it shut a word for Wonderland-- The blue Unknown beyond the sycamores. THINK NOT, O LILIAS[7] Think not, O Lilias, that the love of this night will endure in the sun. Hast thou beheld fungi, white, evil, rosy-lined, poisonous, shrivel in the eyes of day? In this wilderness of strange hearts it is not thine alone that concerns me. Many brave hearts of men are more to me than thine. The hearts of men breathe deeply. As for thy heart, it runs from me, it is quicksilver, it does not concern me greatly. “TO ROSY BUDS....” To rosy buds in orchards of the spring, To melting clouds in endless deeps of air, My love shall lift a swelling throat and sing, Akin to all things fugitive and fair. They shut love from his heaven and he sings? But captive eyes are pitiful to see! Oh, flashing sun on upward-beating wings-- Oh, tumbling notes of joy--my bird is free! Dear love, forever strange, beloved most! Dear fleeting buds, bear not your fruit and die! Be this a path forever found and lost, A drift of bloom upon an April sky. YESTERDAY[8] Now all my thoughts were crisped and thinned To elfin threads, to gleaming browns. Like tawny grasses lean with wind They drew your heart across the downs. Your will of all the winds that blew They drew across the world to me, To thread my whimsey thoughts of you Along the downs, above the sea. Beneath a pool beyond the dune-- So green it was and amber-walled A face would glimmer like a moon Seen whitely through an emerald-- And there my mermaid fancy lay And dreamed the light and you were one, And flickered in her sea-weed’s sway A broken largesse of the sun. Above the world as evening fell I made my heart into a sky, And through a twilight like a shell I saw the shining sea-gulls fly. I found between the sea and land And lost again, unwrit, unheard, A song that fluttered in my hand And vanished like a silver bird. THE MOURNER Because my love has wave and foam for speech, And never words, and yearns as water grieves, With white arms curving on a listless beach, And murmurs inarticulate as leaves-- I am become beloved of the night-- Her huge sea-lands ineffable and far Hold crouched and splendid Sorrow, eyed with light, And Pain who beads his forehead with a star.