d with a later, sure defeat.

A bird, half-hid among the apple boughs,
Sings and sings on above the blossoming earth,
A high, clear music of eternal vows
To transient joy ... and joy's eternal worth ...
Above the certain wreck, this dauntless thing,
Caught up and hurled from ruined Spring to Spring.

BEFORE SPRING

Who knows what endless practices are held,
Before bright pencils mark the April earth----
Where grasses learn how gaiety is spelled,
And jonquils trace the golden writs of mirth;
Some slow, imperfect patterns must be wrought
Some, cast aside in dark, abandoned crypts,
Before the swift, impulsive hands are taught
To shape the Spring's illuminated scripts.

What gifted fingers are so quick to mould
And form aright the thin Aprilian line,
The frail, fair lettering in green and gold!--
What art has taught that intricate design,
From which those later scriveners compose
Such final, crowning rubrics as the rose!

MOONS KNOW NO TIME

Moonlight is memory ... though the sun forget,
And moonlight lingers by a crumbling wall,
And grass-grown walks where flagging-stones are set
For feet that pass that way no more at all.
Summers gone by, and laughter that is still,
And hair whose gold is hidden from the sun,--
Moonlight remembering on a lonesome hill
Might half return them, one by ghostly one.

Suns mark the days ... but moonlight knows no time,
Finding old springs in every lighted face,
Old musics in a whisper hushed like rhyme:
And Summers that have gone and left no trace,
Are one with each new Summer come to flower,
Moving in moonlight through a haunted hour.

MY NEIGHBOUR

He never could grow old, for gay Romance
Walks with him daily through our crowded ways,
Illumining each common circumstance,
And rearing splendid dreams about his days.
Whether he walks or rides, it is the same,
He is the grey-haired knight, his cane for lance,
On some adventure for a lady's name,
With fancied kings and queens for confidants.

Folk that he meets--woman or man or boy--
All play a role in some forgotten place:
His carriage is a chariot at Troy,
And somewhere, at the end, is Helen's face ...
I like to wonder, when he looks at me,
What glorious thing, that instant, I may be.

AT THE NEXT TABLE