Too much is incomplete. Let’s make an end Of all the fond impossible dreams we’ve dreamed, And when we part, We were not meant to be Too closely here companioned where the thorn Of our red love transfixes joy’s brief crown. The roses wither, time itself decays, And log-lit embers fall to ashes when The memory of the flame no longer glows. We rode to Echo Canyon and your smile Ran naked through the chambers of my heart. Now lonely cellos must out parting sing As when some cool green afternoon lets fall From one high branch a few wind-weary leaves. We grow too old too suddenly. Farewell! _APOCALYPSE_ These are the seeds of the future, The weary, the wretched, the slain. These are the ghosts we shall harvest In wars that shall come again. These are the fields we have furrowed, The dreams that have fallen apart, And this is the plow of our madness, The fear that has entered the heart. Oh, how shall we welcome the reaper When autumn shall fill the air, When all the hope of the springtime Is cut with the edge of despair? _THE OLD SEA WALL_ Oh, you who go hurrying, worrying by With never a cry or a call, Saw you a lad who was standing here On the crest of the old sea wall? I saw him last night in the twilight As the long low breakers rolled, And across the bay in the chapel An evening bell was tolled. And we looked at each other a moment And then from each other we turned, But I read in his eyes of a longing That a merciless world had spurned. Oh, have you no answer to make me, All you who go hastening past, And though I am late will none tell me Where he was standing last? Like a whisper I hear from the sea wall, Where the waters are troubled below, A murmur of wavelets complaining, And the fate of the lad I know. Spin onward, old world, to your ending. The hearts that you break and condemn Will someday rise madly against you, Reversing your judgment of them. _THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN_ Ten thousand trees in the forest stood And watched me as I passed, Ten thousand trees that did not breathe The wind that rode as fast, Ten thousand leaves on every tree Immovably aghast! The road in the light of the moon was white, The sky overhead was gray, With a kind of a washed, half-tone effect That took the night away, Yet to right and left like the cloak of death The deepest darkness lay. The steed’s quick breath his hooves beat out And silvered all the air, On, on we sped like a thing of dread; We were a ghostly pair. We passed the somber stricken wood; We found no shelter there.