Nay, but they loved me not; and I Must needs a stranger be, Whose every exiled day gone by Aches with their memory. WHERE? Where is my love-- In silence and shadow she lies, Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies; And a bird above, In the darkness tender and clear, Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here! Not that she's dead; Only her soul is flown Out of its last pure earthly mansion; And cries instead In the darkness, tender and clear, Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love--love lies here. MUSIC UNHEARD Sweet sounds, begone-- Whose music on my ear Stirs foolish discontent Of lingering here; When, if I crossed The crystal verge of death, Him I should see Who these sounds murmureth. Sweet sounds, begone-- Ask not my heart to break Its bond of bravery for Sweet quiet's sake; Lure not my feet To leave the path they must Tread on, unfaltering, Till I sleep in dust. Sweet sounds, begone: Though silence brings apace Deadly disquiet Of this homeless place; And all I love In beauty cries to me, 'We but vain shadows And reflections be.' ALL THAT'S PAST Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are-- Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose. Very old are the brooks; And the rills that rise Where snow sleeps cold beneath The azure skies Sing such a history Of come and gone, Their every drop is as wise As Solomon. Very old are we men; Our dreams are tales Told in dim Eden By Eve's nightingales; We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie. WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED When the rose is faded, Memory may still dwell on Her beauty shadowed, And the sweet smell gone. That vanishing loveliness, That burdening breath No bond of life hath then Nor grief of death. 'Tis the immortal thought Whose passion still Makes of the changing The unchangeable. Oh, thus thy beauty, Loveliest on earth to me, Dark with no sorrow, shines And burns, with Thee. SLEEP Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts, When the dark of night is deep, From the moving wonder of their lives Commit themselves to sleep. Without a thought, or fear, they shut The narrow gates of sense; Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn Their strength to impotence. The transient strangeness of the earth Their spirits no more see: Within a silent gloom withdrawn, They slumber in secrecy. Two worlds they have--a globe forgot Wheeling from dark to light; And all the enchanted realm of dream That burgeons out of night. THE STRANGER Half-hidden in a graveyard, In the blackness of a yew, Where never living creature stirs, Nor sunbeam pierces through, Is a tombstone green and crooked, Its faded legend gone, And but one rain-worn cherub's head To sing of the unknown.