ess, the ruined hand of death
Should never reach. No bud, no thing should fade;
All should be perfect, pure, and unafraid;
And life serener than an angel's breath.

The days should move to music; wildly tame
The nights should move to music and the stars;
And morn and evening in their opal cars,
Like heralds, banner God's eternal name.

O world! O life! desired and to be!
How shall we reach thee?--dark the way and dim.
--Give me your hand, love, let us follow him,
Love with the mystery and the melody.

14

_He, observing the various flowers around them:_

Violets and anemones
The surrendered hours
Pour, as handsels, round the knees
Of the Spring, who to the breeze
Flings her myriad flowers.

Like to coins the sumptuous day
Strews with blossoms golden
Every furlong of his way,--
Like a Sultan gone to pray
At a Kaaba olden.

And the night, with spark on spark,
Clad in dim attire,
Dots with Stars the haloed dark,--
As a priest around the Ark
Lights his lamps of fire.

These are but the cosmic strings
To the harp of Beauty,
To that instrument which sings
In our souls of love that brings
Peace and faith and duty.

15

_She, seriously:_

Duty?--Comfort of the sinner
And the saint!--when grief and trial
Weigh us, and within our inner
Selves,--responsive to love's viol,--
Hope's soft voice grows thin and thinner,
It is kin to self-denial.

Self-denial!--through whose feeling
We are gainer though we're loser;
All the finer force revealing
Of our natures. No accuser
Is the conscience then, but healing
Of the wound of which we're chooser.

Some one said no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth--
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.

16

_He, after a pause, lightly:_

An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings on the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who straddles, with cap cocked all awry,
The bottle-blue back o' the dragon-fly.

And this is the elf who sips and sips
From clover-horns whence the perfume drips;
And, drunk with dew, in the glimmering gloam
Awaits the wild-bee's coming