y?

Is he quite sure--quite sure the sap
Of life's not hate, but love?
If I should tell him there's no gap
Between her and a ... nameless hap,
Would he still want his "dove"?

Or would he go as blind to buds
As I am, who watch here,
While he is pouring poet floods
From his thin lips, and while his blood's
Burning for her so near?

It would be swords--swords!... And his steel
Should rip death from my breast.
But would he ever know the feel
Of Spring again, of its ribald reel,
As once _I_ did, the best?

No! He would curse henceforward leaf
And flower and light--as I.
Spring?--It is fire, lust, ashes, grief--
All that a Hell can hold, in fief!...
He'll learn it ere he die.

QUEST AND REQUITAL

I

(_Before He Comes_)

Sweet under swooning blue and mellow mist
September waves of forest overflow
The hills with crimson, amaranth and gold.
Winds warm with the memory of scented hours
Dead Summer gathers in her leafy lap,
Rustle the distance with dim murmurings
That sink upon the air as soft as shades
Dropt from the overleaning clouds to earth;
While golden-rod and sedge and aster hushed
In sunny silence and the oblivion
Of life drawn from the insentient veins of Time,
Await the searing swoon of Autumn's reign.
It is a day when death must seem as birth,
And birth as death; and life--till love comes--pain.

II

(_He Has Come_)

These are the leafy hills and listless vales
Of iridescent Autumn--this the oak
Against whose lichened bole I leant and looked
Away the sunny hours of afternoon.
Here are the bitter-sweet and elder sprays
I fingered, dreaming to the muted flow
Of breezes overhead--and here the word
I wrote unwittingly upon the soil.
How long ago it was I cannot tell:
The loneliness of unrequited love
Lies like a blank eternity between
Those hours and these I hear slip thro my heart.
I only know all days I've ever seen
Must seem now of some other life apart!

III

(_He Loves_)

"Will you let any moment dip its wing
Into your heart and find no love of me
To tint with deathless Dream"--he said--"and Spring,
Its flight to the dim bourne of memory?
Will you have any grief that can forget
How grief should find forgetfulness in love?
And since your soul in my soul's zone is set
Will it sometimes ask other spheres to rove
Where touch and