“Your priests have trampled the dust of mine without rueing, Despising the joys of man whom I so much loved, Though my springs boil on by your Gothic arcades and pewing, And sculptures crude . . . Would Jove they could be removed!” “—Repress, O lady proud, your traditional ires; You know not by what a frail thread we equally hang; It is said we are images both—twitched by people’s desires; And that I, like you, fail as a song men yesterday sang!” * * * * * And the olden dark hid the cavities late laid bare, And all was suspended and soundless as before, Except for a gossamery noise fading off in the air, And the boiling voice of the waters’ medicinal pour. BATH. SEVENTY-FOUR AND TWENTY HERE goes a man of seventy-four, Who sees not what life means for him, And here another in years a score Who reads its very figure and trim. The one who shall walk to-day with me Is not the youth who gazes far, But the breezy wight who cannot see What Earth’s ingrained conditions are. THE ELOPEMENT “A WOMAN never agreed to it!” said my knowing friend to me. “That one thing she’d refuse to do for Solomon’s mines in fee: No woman ever will make herself look older than she is.” I did not answer; but I thought, “you err there, ancient Quiz.” It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare— As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair. And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate case, Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face. I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe, But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave, How blank we stood at our bright wits’ end, two frail barks in distress, How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness. I said: “The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind Is going it thorough!”—“Yes,” she calmly breathed. “Well, I don’t mind.” And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her brow; Ay—she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now. That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below. “A gent with an elderly wife, sir,” was returned from the bureau. And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again. How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me? But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last, And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past. “I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS” I ROSE up as my custom is On the eve of All-Souls’ day, And left my grave for an hour or so To call on those I used to know Before I passed away.