For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait
Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.
The devil only knows what I have done,
But here I am, and here are six or eight
Good friends, who most ingenuously prate
About my songs to such and such a one.
But everything is all askew to-night,—
As if the time were come, or almost come,
For their untenanted mirage of me
To lose itself and crumble out of sight,
Like a tall ship that floats above the foam
A little while, and then breaks utterly.
Whereof there is not either day or night,And shared with us the glamour of the WordThat fell once upon Amos to recordFor men at ease in Zion, when the sightOf ills obscured aggrieved him and the mightOf Hamath was a warning of the Lord.Assured somehow that he would make us wise,Our pleasure was to wait;…
May we who shrank to find him weakRemember that he cannot speak.For envy that we may recall,And for our faith before the fall,May we who are alive be slowTo tell what we shall never know.For penance he would not confess,And for the fateful emptinessOf early triumph undermined,May we now venture to be kind.
Her doubts are when the daylight goes,Her fears are for the few she bothers.She tells them it is wholly wrongOf her to stay alive so long;And when she smiles her forehead showsA crinkle that had been her mother’s.Beneath her beauty, blanched with pain,And wistful yet for being cheated,A child would seem to ask againA question…
Wonder begets an envy of all thoseWho boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeastOf love that you will hear them at a feastWhere demons would appeal for some repose,Still clamoring where the chalice overflowsAnd crying wildest who have drunk the least.Passion is here a soilure of the wits,We’re told, and Love a cross for them…
And they, the Children of the Night,Seem lost in Fortune’s winnowing.But some are strong and some are weak, —And there’s the story. House and homeAre shut from countless hearts that seekWorld-refuge that will never come.And if there be no other life,And if there be no other chanceTo weigh their sorrow and their strifeThan in the…
Would his vision have yieldedWhen he found what will never againFrom his vision be shielded,—Though he paid with as much of his lifeAs a nun could have given,And to-night would have been as a knife,Devil-drawn, devil-driven.For to-night, with his flame-weary eyesOn the work he is doing,He considers the tinder that fliesAnd the quick flame pursuing.In…
