The wistful stars Shine like good memories. The young morning wind Blows full of unforgotten hours As over a region of roses. Life and Death Sound on--sound on. . . . And the night magical, Troubled yet comforting, thrills As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart Of the wood's dark wonderment Swung wide his valves and filled the dim sea-banks With exquisite visitants: Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires With living looks intolerable, regrets Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been-- Beautiful, miserable, distraught-- The Law no man may baffle denied and slew. The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O there where it fades, What grace, what glamour, what wild will, Transfigure the shadows? Whose, Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours? Ghosts--ghosts--the sapphirine air Teems with them even to the gleaming ends Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, Everywhere--everywhere--till I and you At last--dear love, at last!-- Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will. XI Gulls in an aery morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . The full sea, sleepily basking, Dreams under skies of dream. Gulls in an aery morrice Circle and swoop and close . . . Fuller and ever fuller The rose of the morning blows. Gulls in an aery morrice Frolicking float and fade . . . O the way of a bird in the sunshine, The way of a man with a maid! XII Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire? Behind, a past that scolds and jeers For ungirt loin and lamp unlit; In front the unmanageable years, The trap upon the pit; Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life: Arise! no more a living lie And with me quicken and control A memory that shall magnify The universal Soul. XIII (To James McNeill Whistler) Under a stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily--wretchedly--on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, transitory world.