But I, who weep when fortune seems unkind
To prison me within a space of walls,
When far-off grottoes hold my loves enshrined
And every love is cruel when it calls;
Who sulk for hills and fern-fledged waterfalls,--
I blush to offer sorrow unto thee,
Master of fate, scorner of destiny!

Dawn

The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
Again, with waking life along its way,
The landscape marches westward mile on mile
And time throbs white into another day.

Though eager life must wait on livelihood,
And all our hopes be tethered to the mart,
Lacking the eagle's wild, high freedom, would
That ours might be this day the eagle's heart!

Harvest

Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold;
Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold;
A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere;
The twitter of killdees keen in the air;
The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloam
On the last load home.

There are lights in the windows; a blue spire of smoke
Climbs from the grange grove of elm and oak.
The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to her
Its dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh,
And an incense to Toil is the smell of the loam
On the last load home.

Two Pictures

One sits in soft light, where the hearth is warm,
A halo, like an angel's, on her hair.
She clasps a sleeping infant in her arm.
A holy presence hovers round her there,
And she, for all her mother-pains more fair,
Is happy, seeing that all sweet thoughts that stir
The hearts of men bear worship unto her.

Another wanders where the cold wind blows,
Wet-haired, with eyes that sting one like a knife.
Homeless forever, at her bosom close
She holds the purchase of her love and life,
Of motherhood, unglorified as wife;
And bitterer than the world's relentless scorn
The knowing her child were happier never born.

Whence are the halo and the fiery shame
That fashion thus a crown and curse of love?
Have roted words such power to bless and blame?
Ay, men have stained a raven from many a dove,
And all the grace and all the grief hereof
Are the two words which bore one's lips apart
And which the other hoarded in her heart.

He who stooped down and wrote upo