an,
Of silent cryptic trees,
There is a shrine the worldliest
Would near with bended knees.

Green, thro a torii, the way
Leads to it, worn, across
A rivulet whose voice intones
With mystery of moss.

A mystery that is everywhere:
The god beneath his shrine
Seems but a mossy shape--yet so
Ensheathed is more divine.

For tho Nature has muffled him
And sealed him there away,
The meaning of all faith remains--
That men will ever pray.

Aye will, as long as soul has need,
As long as earth is sod
With tombs, bow down the knee to all
That wakens in them God.

THE QUESTION

I shall lie so one day,
With lips of Silence set;
Eyes that no tear can wet
Again: a thing of Clay.

I shall lie so, and Earth
Will seize again her dust--
Though she must gnaw and rust
The coffin's iron girth.

I shall lie so--and they
Who still the Day bestride,
Will stand so by my side
And with sad yearning say:

"What is he now, this man,
Shut in a pallor there,
His spirit that could dare,
What--what now is its span?

"A withered atom's space
Within a withered brain?
Or can it from the Wain
To far Orion race?"

And, like all that have died,
I shall but answer--naught.
Yet Time this truth has taught:
The Question--will abide.

I'LL LOOK NO MORE

I'll look no more! thro timeless hours my eyes
Without intent have watched the slowing flight
Of ebon crows across quiescent skies
Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird,
Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd
That flow far eastward to the coming night.
And as I turn again to foiling thought
My spirit leaves me--as faint zephyrs leave
The trees at evening; tho all day they've sought
A place to hide them in and fondly grieve.
And silently the slow oil sinks beneath
The noiseless burning wick of yellow flame.
It is as if God back to him would breathe
All the world's given life, and end its Aim.

NIGHT'S OCCULTISM

Northward the twilight thro dark drifts
Of cloud-wreck lingers cold.
Southward the sated lightning sinks
Beneath the wooded wold.

Eastward immovable deep shade
Is sealed with mystery.
Westward a memory of dead gold
Wakes on a sunset sea.

Under, is earth's still orbiting;
Over, a clearing star:
In all, the spirit litany
Of life's strange avatar.