dle-me-ree!
How you were born of it?
Why was the thorn of it?
Where the new morn of it?
Yours is the Key!

Sleep deeper, brother!
Sleep and forget
Red lips that trembled
Eyes that were wet--
Though love be weeping,
Turn to your sleeping,
Life has no giving
That death need regret.
Here at the end of all
Hear the Beginning call,
Life's but death's seneschal--
Sleep and forget!

The Tyrant

ONE comes with foot insistent to my door,
Calling my name;
Nor voice nor footstep have I heard before,
Yet clear the calling sounds and o'er and o'er--
It seems the sunlight burns along the floor
With paler flame!

"'Tis vain to call with morning on the wing,
With noon so near,
With Life a dancer in the masque of Spring
And Youth new wedded with a golden ring--
When falls the night and birds have ceased to sing
My heart may hear!

"'Tis vain to pause. Pass, friend, upon your way!
I may not heed;
Too swift the hours; too sweet, too brief the day:
Only one life, one spring, one perfect May--
I crush each moment, with its sweets to stay
Life's joyous greed!

"Call not again! The wind is roaming by
Across the heath--
The Wind's a tell-tale and will bear your sigh
To dim the smiling gladness of the sky
Or kill the spring's first violets that lie
In purple sheath--

"If you must call, call low! My heart grows still,
Still as my breath,
Still as your smile, O Ancient One! A chill
Strikes through the sun upon the window-sill--
I know you now--I follow where you will,
O tyrant Death!"

The Gifts

I GIVE you Life, O child, a garden fair;
I give you Love, a rose that blossoms there--
I give a day to pluck it and to wear!

I give you Death, O child--a boon more great--
That, when your Rose has withered and 'tis late,
You may pass out and, smiling, close the gate!

The Town Between

A WALL impregnable surrounds
The Town wherein I dwell;
No man may scale it and it has
Two gates that guard it well.

One opened long ago, and I
A vagrant soul, slipped through,
Bewildered and forgetting all
The wider world I knew.

I love the Town, the narrow ways,
The common, yellow sun,
The handclasp and the jesting and
The work that must be done!

I shun the other gate that stands
Beyond the crowded mart--
I need but glance that way to feel
Cold fingers on my heart!

It stands alone and somberly
Within a shaded place,
And every man who turns tha