Before you there.

If it be so, her bloom
Trembles with bliss.
She waits across the gloom
Her shepherd's kiss.

Touch her. A bird will start
From those pure snows,--
The dark and fluttering heart
Endymion knows.

OLD LETTERS

Read them? Strangle that sick cry?
Christ God, no!
Shut the box. Lock the lid.
You'll be safer--so.
Could you read one crooked word
Scrawled so long ago,
Love would rise before your face
And blind you, like a blow.

_Close it! Quickly! For I caught,
In a childish hand,
Something that she never thought
I should understand._

So I crouch. And shall our God
Prove Him baser yet,
He who filled her eyes with light
Quite renounce His debt,

Give her worlds to love, and then--
Ere the sun be set,
Strike her down and coffin all?
Christ, shall _He_ forget?

_Close it! Quickly! For I caught,
In a childish hand,
Something that she never thought
I should understand._

LAMPS

Immense and silent night,
Over the lonely downs I go;
And the deep gloom is pricked with points of light
Above me and below.

I cannot break the bars
Of Time and Fate; and if I scan the sky,
There comes to me, questioning those cold stars,
No signal, no reply.

Yet are they less than these--
These village-lights, which I do scan
Below me, or far out on darkling seas
Those messages from man?

Round me the darkness rolls.
Out of the depth, each lance of light
Shoots from lost lanthorns, thrills from living souls,
And shall I doubt the height?

No signal? No reply?
As through the deepening night I roam,
Hope opens all her casements in the sky
And lights the lamps of home.

AT EDEN GATES

_To Eden Garden_--so the sign-post said;
I could not see the road;
But, where the Sussex clover blossomed red
Its runaway blisses flowed.

I traced them back for many a night and day,
--The way she, too, had gone!--
Till lo, the terrible Angel in the way
Inexorably shone.

Up to the Gates, a fearless fool I came;
Between the lily and rose
Fluttering these evil rags of sordid shame,
A thing to scare the crows.

"And hath the Master given thee, then, no word?"
The scornful Angel smiled:
Only two souls may pass my Flaming Sword,--
The Lover and the Child.

I r