A touch of your immortal hand
Laid on my brow in tenderness,
Though you could never understand.
And yet with hungered lips to touch
Your feet of pearl and in your face
To look a little was over-much--
In heaven is no such fair a place
As, broken-hearted, at your feet
To lie there and to kiss them, sweet.

AT HER FEET

My head is at your feet,
Two Cytherean doves,
The same, O cruel sweet,
As were the Queen of Love's;
They brush my dreaming brows
With silver fluttering beat,
Here in your golden house,
Beneath your feet.

No man that draweth breath
Is in such happy case:
My heart to itself saith--
Though kings gaze on her face,
I would not change my place;
To lie here is more sweet,
Here at her feet.

As one in a green land
Beneath a rose-bush lies,
Two petals in his hand,
With shut and dreaming eyes,
And hears the rustling stir,
As the young morning goes,
Shaking abroad the myrrh
Of each awakened rose;
So to me lying there
Comes the soft breath of her,--
O cruel sweet!--
There at her feet.

O little careless feet
That scornful tread
Upon my dreaming head,
As little as the rose
Of him who lies there knows
Nor of what dreams may be
Beneath your feet;
Know you of me,
Ah! dreams of your fair head,
Its golden treasure spread,
And all your moonlit snows,
Yea! all your beauty's rose
That blooms to-day so fair
And smells so sweet--
Shoulders of ivory,
And breasts of myrrh--
Under my feet.

RELIQUIAE

This is all that is left--this letter and this rose!
And do you, poor dreaming things, for a moment suppose
That your little fire shall burn for ever and ever on,
And this great fire be, all but these ashes, gone?

Flower! of course she is--but is she the only flower?
She must vanish like all the rest at the funeral hour,
And you that love her with brag of your all-conquering thew,
What, in the eyes of the gods, tall though you be, are you?

You and she are no more--yea! a little less than we;
And what is left of our loving is little enough to see;
Sweet the relics thereof--a rose, a letter, a glove--
That in the end is all that remains of the mightiest love.

Six-foot two! what of that? for Death is taller than he;
And, every moment, Death gathers flowers as fair as she;
And nothing you two can do, or plan or