In pity for my load,
And--she's waiting there, she's listening,
At the turn of the road.

TO A PESSIMIST

Life like a cruel mistress woos
The passionate heart of man, you say,
Only in mockery to refuse
His love, at last, and turn away.

To me she seems a queen that knows
How great is love--but ah, how rare!--
And, pointing heavenward ere she goes,
Gives him the rose from out her hair.

MOUNT IDA

[This poem commemorates an event of some years ago, when a young
Englishman--still remembered by many of his contemporaries at
Oxford--went up into Mount Ida and was never seen again.]

I

Not cypress, but this warm pine-plumage now
Fragrant with sap, I pluck; nor bid you weep,
Ye Muses that still haunt the heavenly brow
Of Ida, though the ascent is hard and steep:
Weep not for him who left us wrapped in sleep
At dawn beneath the holy mountain's breast
And all alone from Ilion's gleaming shore
Clomb the high sea-ward glens, fain to drink deep
Of earth's old glory from your silent crest,
Take the cloud-conquering throne
Of gods, and gaze alone
Thro' heaven. Darkling we slept who saw his face no more.

II

Ah yet, in him hath Lycidas a brother,
And Adonais will not say him nay,
And Thyrsis to the breast of one sweet Mother
Welcomes him, climbing by the self-same way:
Quietly as a cloud at break of day
Up the long glens of golden dew he stole
(And surely Bion called to him afar!)
The tearful hyacinths and the greenwood spray
Clinging to keep him from the sapphire goal,
Kept of his path no trace!
Upward the yearning face
Clomb the ethereal height, calm as the morning star.

III

Ah yet, incline, dear Sisters, or my song
That with the light wings of the skimming swallow
Must range the reedy slopes, will work him wrong!
And with some golden shaft do thou, Apollo,
Show the pine-shadowed path that none may follow;
For, as the blue air shuts behind a bird,
Round him closed Ida's cloudy woods and rills!
Day-long, night-long, by echoing height and hollow,
We called him, but our tumult died unheard:
Down from the scornful sky
Our faint wing-broken cry
Fluttered and perished among the many-fol