ring bud
Brews barrenness thro all the verdancy
Of Spring. And in a tear--tho anguish shape it
On the warm lid of joy--earth's Tragedy,
Whose curtain falls not for it has no end,
Comes mirrored to me as infinite Ill.

How shall I 'scape it! How, O how escape
The trooping of prayers lost upon the void,
Of hopes misborn and fading not to rest!
How shall I burn not with all vain-lit loves
That alway billow thro me their slow fire
Fed by the agony of new-broke hearts!
How loose me from too long commisery
For those whom unrequiting Time has given
To the altar of the aching world's unrest!
A grief immitigable to the Hand
Whose mystery of returning sun can heal
Winter away, seems here; a grief but calm
Of immortality can make forgiven!

For even as all the gleaming girth of stars
That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously
Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys
Life strews along her passing to the grave
Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death.
And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp
Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall His skill
Flung thus forever o'er thy fragile rest
Build but these harmonies that seem sometimes
Unworth the misery of the trampled worm?
Would, would I were not vibrant with all strains
He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned!
World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.

THE SOUL'S RETURN

Let me lie here--
I care not for the distant hills today,
And the blue sphere
Of far infinity that draws away
All to its deep,
Would only sweep
Soothing the farther from me with its sway.

Let me lie here--
Gazing with vacant sadness on this weed.
The cricket near
Will utter all my heart can bear to heed.
Another voice
Would swell the noise
And surge, that ever sound in human need.

Let me lie here:
For now, so long my wasted soul has tossed
On the wide Mere
Of Mystery Hope's wing alone has crossed,
I ask no more
Than to restore
To simple things the wonder they have lost.

BIRTHRIGHT

(_To A. H. R._)

My own, among the unnumbered years
God casts from that full Garner which
Is His Eternity one shall
Be ours, beyond all fate or fears.

For, ranging lone amid its thorns.
Seeking the buds that grew between,
We met and made its morning seem
New in a world grown old to morns.

And so tho He may scatter still
Many a fad