How we alone of mortals are Hid under quiet boughs apart, While our love grows an Indian star, A meteor of the burning heart, One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart, The heavy boughs, the burnished dove That moans and sighs a hundred days: How when we die our shades will rove, When eve has hushed the feathered ways, Dropping a vapoury footsole on the tide’s drowsy blaze. THE FALLING OF THE LEAVES AUTUMN is over the long leaves that love us, And over the mice in the barley sheaves; Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. The hour of the waning of love has beset us, And weary and worn are our sad souls now; Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow. EPHEMERA ‘YOUR eyes that once were never weary of mine Are bowed in sorrow under their trembling lids, Because our love is waning.’ And then she: ‘Although our love is waning, let us stand By the lone border of the lake once more, Together in that hour of gentleness When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep: How far away the stars seem, and how far Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!’ Pensive they paced along the faded leaves, While slowly he whose hand held hers replied: ‘Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.’ The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once A rabbit old and lame limped down the path; Autumn was over him: and now they stood On the lone border of the lake once more: Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes, In bosom and hair. ‘Ah, do not mourn,’ he said, ‘That we are tired, for other loves await us: Hate on and love through unrepining hours; Before us lies eternity; our souls Are love, and a continual farewell.’ THE MADNESS OF KING GOLL I SAT on cushioned otter skin: My word was law from Ith to Emen, And shook at Invar Amargin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away From girl and boy and man and beast; The fields grew fatter day by day, The wild fowl of the air increased; And every ancient Ollave said, While he bent down his fading head, ‘He drives away the Northern cold.’ _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old._ I sat and mused and drank sweet wine; A herdsman came from inland valleys, Crying, the pirates drove his swine To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys. I called my battle-breaking men, And my loud brazen battle-cars From rolling vale and rivery glen; And under the blinking of the stars Fell on the pirates by the deep, And hurled them in the gulph of sleep: These hands won many a torque of gold. _They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old._