Why should our meeting borrow A sense of shame or sorrow That each must go his way? Love liketh no fetter Therefore our roads were better If you go yours to-morrow, And I go mine to-day. I hold you for a minute-- You'd catch the hour and pin it-- But if I held you longer Would you have more assurance In days of richer durance, Life with more rapture in it, Passion more wise and stronger? The Daughter of Illusion Hath made our love seem fusion Of two strange things in one-- But loving hath not taught her That strange as fire to water, Love becomes bleak intrusion When all the glamor's gone. You say I've brought you sorrow And pay not debts I borrow-- But mirth is what's to pay! So part our paths in laughter, And, since your heart is softer, You go your way to-morrow-- And I'll go mine to-day. GAS-LIGHT HEROICS With this night's carousal We will close the portal On our poor espousal-- Sacrament and housel For a love too mortal! With this gay delaying We'll delay yet longer-- Care not what the saying Of the World--that braying Evil tattle-monger! Pleasure has as thunder Scorched and jangled thru me; Now I'll sit and wonder At the day-star yonder And your face, grown gloomy. You are known as "Lily" And they mock your gender; Is it but a silly Fancy, you seem stilly Lily-souled and tender? Underneath the bitter Mockery of color, Underneath the titter Is there something fitter? Something finer, fuller? Something (can I hear it In your secret eyes?) When I come too near it Like a frightened spirit Running from the skies? Girl, you know that glow meant Dawn's thin lips of scarlet-- Bubble of life's foment Stay your soul a moment! * * * * * Bah! You're drunk, you harlot! MISTS I I am most weary of this fatuous me That doth obtrude a niddering death's head At a blithe feast of Springtide jollity, Of revelling buds and flowers unsurfeited. I am most weary of this chained thought That hath forgotten where its mansions are-- And lost the dew its seven-spher'd courses caught Wandering in plunged dark from star to star. I am most weary of my stagnant soul That neither thirsts, nor hungers, nor is stirred By the gigantic thunders that have rolled From the white, hurtling lightning of a word. I am most weary, love; so let thy face-- The sponge that sops my gaze, myself erase. II