Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy hands Or on the edges of the darkness peers, Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears: Imagination (lo! the sky expands) Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,-- Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres, The rush of light before the hurrying years, The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands. Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie light The dusky vales of Saturn--wood and stream; But who shall follow on the awful sweep Of Neptune through the dim and dreadful deep? Onward he wanders in the unknown night, And we are shadows moving in a dream. The Hidden Valley I stray with Ariel and Caliban: I know the hill of windy pines--I know Where the jay’s nest swings in the wild gorge below: Lightly I climb where fallen cedars span Bright rivers--climb to a valley under ban, Where west winds set a thousand bells ablow-- An eerie valley where in the morning glow I hear the music of the pipes of Pan. Mysterious horns blow by on the still air-- A satyr steps--a wood-god’s dewy notes Come faintly from a vale of tossing oats.-- But ho! what white thing in the canyon crossed? Gods! I shall come on Dian unaware, Look on her fearful beauty and be lost. The Poets Some cry of Sappho’s lyre, of Saadi’s flute, Comes back across the waste of mortal things: Men strive and die to reach the Dead Sea fruit-- Only the poets find immortal springs. Love’s Vigil Love will outwatch the stars, and light the skies When the last star falls, and the silent dark devours; God’s warrior, he will watch the allotted hours, And conquer with the look of his sad eyes: He shakes the kingdom of darkness with his sighs, His quiet sighs, while all the Infernal Powers Tremble and pale upon their central towers, Lest, haply, his bright universe arise. All will be well if he have strength to wait, Till his lost Pleiad, white and silver-shod, Regains her place to make the perfect Seven; Then all the worlds will know that Love is Fate-- That somehow he is greater even than Heaven-- That in the Cosmic Council he is God. Two at a Fireside I built a chimney for a comrade old, I did the service not for hope or hire-- And then I traveled on in winter’s cold, Yet all the day I glowed before the fire. The Butterfly O wingèd brother on the harebell, stay-- Was God’s hand very pitiful, the hand That wrought thy beauty at a dream’s demand? _Yea, knowing I love so well the flowery way,_ _He did not fling me to the world astray--_ _He did not drop me to the weary sand,_ _But bore me gently to a leafy land:_ _Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day._