Along the lamp-lit streets they glide and go:
See, thinly trickling from the age-old wound,The steady stream of squandered womanhood!
Arthur Henry Adams
[ According to Maori mythology, the god Tiki created Man by taking a piece of clay and moistening it with his own blood. Woman was the offspring of a sunbeam and a sylvan echo .]
Taking the common clay, God moistened itWith His red blood; and so for ever litThat sombre grossness with divinity.So Man for ever finds him in the meshOf clogging earth; and though divine hopes thrillAnd flush his leaping heart, it faints, for stillHis dreams are pinioned in the gyves of flesh.Yet ever God’s blood in him…
Far in the Eastern passage-way a sudden light;
And down into the fœtid, stifling vault of NightThe naked corpse of Dawn is lowered, grey and cold.
BENEATH this narrow jostling street,
Like a slow organ-note I hearThe pulses of the great world beat.Unseen beneath the city’s showThrough this aorta ever flowThe currents of the universe—A thousand pulses throbbing low!Unheard beneath the pavement’s dinUnknown magicians sit withinDim caves, and weave life into wordsOn patient looms that spin and spin.There, uninspired, yet with the dowerOf mightier mechanic power,Some…
Love Motives
To You.SO you have come at last!And we nestle, each in each,As leans the pliant sea in the clean-curved limbs of her lover the beach;Merged in each other quite,Clinging, as in the tresses of trees dallies the troubadour night;Faint as a perfume, soft as wine,Yielding as moonlight—mine, all mine—So I have found you at last!I…
O’er the Eastern hills of light
Dawn the sculptor stepped,And the shapeless block of NightChiselled into formMorning-lit and warm.
From The North Shore.
But now the Night beseeches,A white reproach of wistful armsOver the bay she reaches.Upon her gleaming bosom, wetWith tears and quivering,In ropes of golden beauty setHer vivid jewels swing.Upon the pathway of the nightShe, pausing often, paces;About her body waves gleam whiteLike froth of filmy laces;And to her pleasure hurrying,Their torches holding high,On molten waters…
A LONE rose in a garden burned—a quivering flame,
And now an envious wind with itching fingers leantAnd touched its lingering beauty, and the petals wentUpon the twilight tossing swift,Like little dusky boats adrift.Then in the birth and doom of that brief rose I sawThe long unrolling of creation’s one vast law.All things were blossom, and God thrilled at that flower’s birthAs when from…
LAST night I saw the Pleiades again,
From some tall chimney-stack;And I remembered you as you were then:Awoke dead worlds of dream,And Time turned slowly back.I saw the Pleiades through branches bare,And close to mine your faceSoft glowing in the dark;For Youth and Hope and Love and You were thereAt our dear trysting-placeIn that bleak London park.And as we kissed the Pleiades…
PEACE, your little child is dead:
I have no more tears to shed;I have mourned my baby too—I, that ne’er was wooed or wed.Love has looked within your eyes,Love has filled your hungry heart;You have borne the babe, your prize;You have blossomed, done your part,Though the flower faded lies.But to me was love denied—God had said it might not be;Still my…