lear marble loveliness.

He, in curved lips and smiling eyes,
Hid the last secret's faint surprise
Of one who dies in fear and pain
And lives and knows herself again.
He, in his dreaming under the sun,
Saw change and the unchanging One,
And built in grottoes blue a shrine
To hold Reality Divine.

JOHN GURDON

SURRENDER

Like the diamond spark of the morning star
When night grows pale
Love gleams in the depths of thine eyes afar
Through the rifted veil
Of thy cloudy dreams.

I saw in the glint of thy wavy hair
His splendour shine
A moment, and now thy cheeks declare
The fire divine
In their rosy streams.

It leaps from thy face to mine, and flushes
From brow to chin.
The hot blood sings in my ears and gushes
With surge and spin
Through my tingling veins.

I lift up my heart for thy fervent lips
To kiss, my sweet.
I would lift up my soul, but she swooning slips
Down at thy feet,
And the rainbow stains.

Brighten and cloud on her wings that close
And open slow,
As a butterfly's move, on the breast of a rose
Rocked to and fro
By a crooning wind.

O star! O blossom! I faint for bliss.
I faint for thee;
For the kiss on my closed eyes, thy kiss
In ecstasy
That leaves me blind.

Me has love molten for thee to mould.
Ah, shape me fair
As the crown of thy life, as a crown of gold
In thy flame-like hair
Worn for a sign!

Nay, rather my life be a wind-flower
Slow kissed to death,
Petal by petal, on lips that stir
With love's own breath.
Dear life, take mine!

BEFORE THE FATES

I cannot sing,
So weary of life my heart is and so sore
Afraid. What harp-playing
Back from the land whose name is Never More
My lost desire will bring?

* * * * *

These words she said
Before the Pheidian Fates. "There comes an end
Of love, and mine is fled:
But, if you let me, I will be your friend,
A better friend, instead."

Was it her own,
The voice I heard, marmoreal, strange, remote,
As though from yonder throne
Clotho had spoken, and the headless throat
Had uttered words of stone?

I sought her face;
It was a mask inscrutable, a screen
Baffling all hope to trace
The woman whose passionate loveliness had been
Mine for a little space.

Thereat I rose,
Smiling, and said--"The dream is past and gone.
Surely Love comes and goes
Even as he will. And who shall thwart him? None.
Only, whi