nd blind.
You have brought word of ships and where they go,
Their names like music, and the flags they fly:
Steamer ... and barque ... and churning tug and tow,
And a lone sail at sunset blowing by.

Shoreline and mist have still their ancient way:
Through all your speech the sea's long rise and fall
Sound their slow musics in the words you say:--
And I who sit and listen to it all,
Am like an absent lover who would hear
News of one loved, incalculably dear.

ATTENDANTS

The mild-eyed Oxen and the gentle Ass,
By manger or in pastures that they graze,
Lift their slow heads to watch us where we pass,
A reminiscent wonder in their gaze.
Their low humility is like a crown,
A grave distinction they have come to wear,--
Their look gone past us--to a little Town,
And a white miracle that happened there.

An old, old vision haunts those quiet eyes,
Where proud remembrance drifts to them again,
Of Something that has made them humbly wise,
--These burden-bearers for the race of men--
And lightens every load they lift or pull,
Something that chanced because the Inn was full.

RENDEZVOUS

... So she came back to you and me,
She who had been the lovely third ...
A little, blue ghost in time for tea;

Smiling and grave and with no word
Of how things fare with such as she,
But suddenly lonely when she heard,

In that still place, the fragile clink
Of tea cups, and her own dear name,
'Twas like her to be touched, I think,

With smiling pity for you and me;--
So, in a breathless haste, she came,
A little, blue ghost in time for tea.

SONNETS FROM A HOSPITAL

I

SPRING

Remembering sunlight on the steepled square,
Remembering April's way with little streets,
And pouter pigeons coasting down the air,
Spilling a beauty, like white-crested fleets,--
I have imagined, in these pain-racked days,
The look of grasses thrusting through the earth,
Of tender shoots along green-bordered ways,
Of hedges, and their first, frail blossoming mirth.

I have imagined, too, in some such wise
Death may allow, within her darkened room,
Some subtle intimation of wide skies,
Of startled grasses, and the hedge in bloom,--
And we may know when some far spring comes down,
Wearing her magic slippers through the town.