There is a sadness in the street, And sullenly the folk I meet Droop their heads as they walk along, Without a smile, without a song. A mist of cold and muffling grey Falls, fold by fold, on another day That dies unwept. But suddenly, Under a tunnelled arch I see On flank and haunch the chestnut gleam Of horses in a lamplit steam; And the dead world moves for me once more With beauty for its living core. THE MIRROR. Slow-moving moonlight once did pass Across the dreaming looking-glass, Where, sunk inviolably deep, Old secrets unforgotten sleep Of beauties unforgettable. But dusty cobwebs are woven now Across that mirror, which of old Saw fingers drawing back the gold From an untroubled brow; And the depths are blinded to the moon, And their secrets forgotten, for ever untold. VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LAFORGUE. Youth as it opens out discloses The sinister metempsychosis Of lilies dead and turned to roses Red as an angry dawn. But lilies, remember, are grave-side flowers, While slow bright rose-leaves sail Adrift on the music of happiest hours; And those lilies, cold and pale, Hide fiery roses beneath the lawn Of the young bride’s parting veil. PHILOSOPHY. “God needs no christening,” Pantheist mutters, “Love opens shutters On heaven’s glistening, Flesh, key-hole listening, Hear what God utters”.... Yes, but God stutters. PHILOCLEA IN THE FOREST. I. ’Twas I that leaned to Amoret With: “What if the briars have tangled Time, Till, lost in the wood-ways, he quite forget How plaintive in cities at midnight sounds the chime Of bells slow-dying from discord to the hush whence they rose and met? “And in the forest we shall live free, Free from the bondage that Time has made To hedge our soul from its liberty; We shall not fear what is mighty, and unafraid Shall look wide-eyed at beauty, nor shrink from its majesty.” But Amoret answered me again: “We are lost in the forest, you and I; Lost, lost, not free, though no bonds restrain; For no spire rises for comfort, no landmark in the sky, And the long glades as they curve from sight are dark with a nameless pain. And Time creates what he devours,-- Music that sweetly dreams itself away, Frail-swung leaves of autumn and the scent of flowers, And the beauty of that poised moment, when the day Hangs ’twixt the quiet of darkness and the mirth of the sunlit hours.” II. Mottled and grey and brown they pass, The wood-moths, wheeling, fluttering; And we chase and they vanish; and in the grass Are starry flowers, and the birds sing Faint broken songs of the dying spring. And on the beech-hole, smooth and grey, Some lover of an older day Has carved in time-blurred lettering One world only:--“Alas.” III.