'

I

Not from the whole wide world I chose thee,
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee--
For thou art the whole wide world to me.

II

Years have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst;
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.

"ROSE-DARK THE SOLEMN SUNSET"

Rose-dark the solemn sunset
That holds my thought of thee;
With one star in the heavens
And one star in the sea.

On high no lamp is lighted,
Nor where the long waves flow.
Save the one star of evening
And the shadow star below.

Light of my life, the darkness
Comes with the twilight dream;
Thou art the bright star shining,
And I but the shadowy gleam.

NON SINE DOLORE

What, then, is Life,--what Death?
Thus the Answerer saith;
O faithless mortal, bend thy head and listen:

Down o'er the vibrant strings,
That thrill, and moan, and mourn, and glisten,
The Master draws his bow.
A voiceless pause: then upward, see, it springs,
Free as a bird with unimprisoned wings!
In twain the chord was cloven,
While, shaken with woe,
With breaks of instant joy all interwoven,
Piercing the heart with lyric knife,
On, on the ceaseless music sings,
Restless, intense, serene;--
Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;
Death but the pause between.

Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss
That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death
Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!
If, having soared pure spirit at the last,
Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh--
Ah! who would care to die
From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;
These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?

Again the Answerer saith:--
O ye of little faith,
Shall then the spirit prove craven,
And Death's divine deliverance but give
A summer rest and haven?