enice yet loved that joy's enthusiast
Be frail, fantastic as gilt iris-flowers.
O startling reveller from out the Past,
Long, long ago through lanes of chrysophrase
The Dark Eros compelled his exquisite
Evil apostle. This painter made your praise,
A piece of art, a curious delight.
But your ghost wanders. Yesterday your sweet
Accusing eyes challenged me in the street.

XVII

THE ENIGMA

Eternally grieving and arraigning eyes,
Why vex my heart? What is it I can do?
Can I call back the hounds of Time with sighs,
Or find inviolate peace to bring you to,
Pluck frenzy from the amazed soul of man,
Or curb the horses of raging poverty
That trample you until--escape who can,--
Or spill the honey from rich revelry
And strip the silken days?--Alas! alas!
I am so dream-locked that I cannot know
Why it is not much easier to pass
To death than let love's haughty cloister show
A common hostel for such taverners.--
Ye know, who are perhaps my ransomers.

XVIII

THE DOUBT

I am pure, because of great illuminations
Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old,
Because of delicate imaginations,
Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold.
Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange
As the red flames in opal drowse and speak:
In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange
Phantoms of personality I seek.
If better than the last embraces I
Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint
Appeal of merely courteous fingers,--why,
Though 'tis a quest of souls, and I acquaint
My heart with spiritual vanities,--
Is there indeed no bridge twixt me and these?

XIX

THE SEEKER

Curious and wistful through your soul I go.
With silver-tinkling feet I penetrate
Sealed chambers, and a puissant incense throw
Upon the smouldering braziers, love and hate:
And chaunt the grieved verses of a dirge
For dying gods, remembering flutes and shawms:
With perverse moods I trouble you, and urge
The sense to beauty. Give me some sweet alms,
Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword,
Some poignant moment yet unparalleled
In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord
Of mystery Love's music never knelled
Before;--but nought of the rough alchemy
That disillusions all felicity.

XX

THE HIDDEN REVERIE

The life of plants, rising through dim sweet states,
Cloisters the rich love-secret more and