ose
Had never a thorn,
Whom fortune guided when she chose
Her marriage morn,
And, smiling, looked her in the eye;
But, seeing the tears of sympathy,
Her smile died, and she passed on by
In quiet scorn.

They could not know how, when by night
The city slept,
A sleepless woman, still and white,
The watches kept;
How her wife-loyal heart had borne
The keen pain of a flowerless thorn,
How hot the tears that smiles and scorn
Had held unwept.

Vision

The wintry sun was pale
On hill and hedge;
The wind smote with its flail
The seeded sedge;
High up above the world,
New taught to fly,
The withered leaves were hurled
About the sky;
And there, through death and dearth,
It went and came,--
The Glory of the earth
That hath no name.

I know not what it is;
I only know
It quivers in the bliss
Where roses blow,
That on the winter's breath
It broods in space,
And o'er the face of death
I see its face,
And start and stand between
Delight and dole,
As though mine eyes had seen
A living Soul.

And I have followed it,
As thou hast done,
Where April shadows flit
Beneath the sun;
In dawn and dusk and star,
In joy and fear,
Have seen its glory far
And felt it near,
And dared recall his name
Who stood unshod
Before a fireless flame,
And called it God.

September

I have not been among the woods,
Nor seen the milk-weeds burst their hoods,

The downy thistle-seeds take wing,
Nor the squirrel at his garnering.

And yet I know that, up to God,
The mute month holds her goldenrod,

That clump and copse, o'errun with vines,
Twinkle with clustered muscadines,

And in deserted churchyard places
Dwarf apples smile with sunburnt faces.

I know how, ere her green is shed,
The dogwood pranks herself with red;

How the pale dawn, chilled through and through,
Comes drenched and draggled with her dew;

How all day long the sunlight seems
As if it lit a land of dreams,

Till evening, with her mist and cloud,
Begins to weave her royal shroud.

If yet, as in old Homer's land,
Gods walk with mortals, h