We both are wanderers through all time Who, risen from the primal slime When God blew life into the dust, Press to some distant goal sublime. And often through the thin soul-crust Rush memories of an alien clime, Of gorgeous revels more robust Than any dream of hate or lust In the gilt cage upon us thrust, And visions strange beyond all rhyme. The Life-Force with itself at war Moulds and remoulds us, blood and brain, Yet cannot quench us out again, And after every change we _are_. The soul-spark in all sentient things Illumes the night of death and brings, Remembered, immortality. Time cannot take thy soul from thee! All living things are one by kind, Heritors of the cosmic mind. Thus deemed the Prophet on whose knee The kitten slumbered peacefully, And surely good Saint Francis, he Who as his sister loved the hind. THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME Thy hands are like cool herbs that bring Balm to men’s hearts, upon them laid; Thy lovely-petalled lips are made As any blossom of the spring. But in thine eyes there is a thing, O Love, that makes me half afraid. For they are old, those eyes.... They gleam Between the waking and the dream With antique wisdom, like a bright Lamp strangled by the temple’s veil, That beckons to the acolyte Who prays with trembling lips and pale In the long watches of the night. They are as old as Life. They were When proud Gomorrah reared its head A new-born city. They were there When in the places of the dead Men swathed the body of the Lord. They visioned Pa-Wak raise the wall Of China. They saw Carthage fall And marked the grim Hun lead his horde. There is no secret anywhere Nor any joy or shame that lies Not writ somehow in those child-eyes Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise. Thou art the lad Endymion, And that great queen with spice and myrrh From Araby, whom Solomon Delighted, and the lust of her. The legions marching from the sea With Cæsar’s cohorts sang of thee, How thy fair head was more to him Than all the land of Italy. Yea, in the old days thou wert she Who lured Mark Antony from home To death and Egypt, seeing he Lost love when he lost Rome. Thou saw’st old Tubal strike the lyre, Yea, first for thee the poet hurled Defiance at God’s starry choir! Thou art the romance and the fire, Thou art the pageant and the strife, The clamour, mounting high and higher, From all the lovers in the world To all the lords of love and life. Through thy slow slumberous long lashes Across the languor of thy face The gleam of primal passion flashes That is as ancient as the race, But we that live a little space, Which when beholding feel in it The horror of the Infinite....