cheer the dark?

That sepia-sketch--conceive it so--
A roguish head with jaunty eyes
Laughing beneath a rose-chapeau,
Silk-masked, unmasking--it denies
The full-faced flower surprise;

Hung o'er her davenport.... We read
The true beneath the false; perceive
The smile that hides the ache.--Indeed!
_Whose_ soul unmasks?... not mine!--I grieve
Here, here, but laugh and leave....

9.

Beyond the knotty apple-trees
That fade about the old brick-barn,
Its tattered arms and tattered knees
A scare-crow tosses to the breeze
Among the shocks of corn.

All things grow gray in earth and sky;
The cold wind sounding drearily
Makes all the rusty branches fly;
The rustling leaves a-rotting lie;
The year is waning wearily.

At night I hear the far wild geese
Honk in frost-bitten heavens, under
Arcturus. Though I seem to cease
Outside myself and sleep in peace,
I drowse awake and wonder.

I know torn thistles by the creek
Hang hairy with the frost; the tented
Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak
And ghostly in the moonlight, weak
In hollows bitter-scented.

Dream back the ways we strolled at morn
Through woods of summer ever singing;
Moon-trysts beneath the crooked thorn,
The tasselled meads of cane and corn
Their restless shadows swinging....

I stand and oar our boat among
The dripping lilies of the river;
I reach her hat the grape-vine long
Struck in the stream; we sing a song,
That song ... I wake and shiver.

And then my feverish mind reverts
To our sad words and sadder parting
In days long gone; and, oh! it hurts
Within here, for the soul asserts
Mine the fool fault from starting.

And I must lie awake and think
Of her with such regrets as gladly
No unrebuking conscience shrink;
And hear the wild-fowls' clangor sink
Through plaintive starlight sadly.

When all are overflown and deep
The stoic night is left forsaken,
For company I well would weep,
Since all my spirit fears to sleep,
Sleep of such visions shaken.

Grave visions of dead deeds that flaw
Our waking hours, ever haunting;
Else were we, lacking love and law,
Rude scare-crow things of sticks and straw
Undaunted and undaunting.

10.

The