ch hour--each wilding way,
And sweet the memory of each gathered spray.
Could you not wait, dear love? Or come once more?
Yea, 'till you come, vain doth great Nature pour
Her richest gifts.' He paused, and heard alone
Respondent fall, the wood-dove's plaintive moan,
And the spent winds among the scented glades.
Moss-couched beneath the glinting forest shades,
He gazed, when shadows o'er the hills crept light,
Quick vanishing, like phantom fingers white,
Until on mead, and mere, and sounding shore
Eden found voice, sad plaining, 'Never-more!'
Long time he pondered on blue peaks remote
When slow, as stranded ships that listless float,
Moved by the sunset clouds. Or the white rack
Swept o'er the garden walls.
"'Would I their track
Might take,' he said, 'Lilith, so long you stay.
Whom my soul follows sorrowing--alway.'
Thus ever mourned he, comfortless; that so
In after days the Master, in the glow
Of morning-tide, the mother of the race
Gave for his solacement.
"Oh, fair the face
Young Eve bent o'er his sleep. Ere down the glade
The startled fawn leaps swift, her glance dismayed
Questions the hunter, mute. Such eyes--so brown,
So soft, so winning, shy--that looked adown
When Adam waked. Like vagrant tendrils, tossed
Dark hair about her brows. And quaintly crossed
Her hands upon her breast. Less red the dart
That deepest cleaves the folded rose's heart,
Than her round cheeks. Not hers the regal air
Of Lilith lost, the white arms, lissom, bare,
The slender throat; the elbows dimpled deep, whereto
Might scarcely reach Eve's head.
"Yet soft, as through
Some pleasant dream, the summer's spicy air
Stirs odorous 'mong seaward gardens fair,
In southland hid; so, gently, Eve straightway
To Adam's life unbidden came, to stay
Forever there. Sure entrance then made she
Into that heart untenanted by thee.
"So, to some olden house, from whose shut doors
One went erewhile, another comes. Its floors
All empty sees. The lowly threshold worn,
The moss-grown roof, the casements left forlorn.
Amid the shadows round about him stands,
Missing the footsteps passed to other lands,
And whispers tenderly, 'Since here no more
The owner bides, what harm