When the purple twilight is unbound, To watch her slow, tall grace and its wistful loveliness, And to know her face is in the shadow there, Just by two stars beneath that cloud— The soft, dim cloud of her hair, And to think my voice can reach to her As but the rumour of some tree-bound stream, Heard just beyond the forest’s edge, Until she all forgets I am, And knows of me Naught but my dream’s felicity. GREEK EPIGRAM Day and night are never weary, Nor yet is God of creating For day and night their torch-bearers, The aube and the crepuscule. So, when I weary of praising the dawn and the sunset, Let me be no more counted among the immortals; But number me amid the wearying ones, Let me be a man as the herd, And as the slave that is given in barter. HISTRION No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass through us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One François Villon, ballad-lord and thief Or am such holy ones I may not write, Lest blasphemy be writ against my name; This for an instant and the flame is gone. ’Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere Translucent, molten gold, that is the “I” And into this some form projects itself: Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine; And as the clear space is not if a form’s Imposed thereon, So cease we from all being for the time, And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on. PARACELSUS IN EXCELSIS “Being no longer human, why should I Pretend humanity or don the frail attire? Men have I known and men, but never one Was grown so free an essence, or become So simply element as what I am. The mist goes from the mirror and I see! Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath— Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace, And we that are grown formless rise above, Fluids intangible that have been men, We seem as statues round whose high risen base Some overflowing river is run mad; In us alone the element of calm! A SONG OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER _In “Los Pastores de Belen.”_ From the Spanish of Lope de Vega. As ye go through these palm-trees, O holy angels; Sith sleepeth my child here Still ye the branches. O Bethlehem palm-trees That move to the anger Of winds in their fury, Tempestuous voices, Make ye no clamour, Run ye less swiftly, Sith sleepeth the child here Still ye your branches. He the divine child Is here a-wearied Of weeping the earth-pain, Here for his rest would he Cease from his mourning, Only a little while, Sith sleepeth this child here Stay ye the branches.