re:

It was because a woful dread possessed.
My aching heart--the dread some evil star
Had crossed the warm affection in your breast,

Had bade me stand apart from where you are.
The world seemed breaking on my life; I heard
The crash of sorrows in that chiding word.

THE CLOSED DOOR

It is not so, and so for evermore,
That thou and I must live our lives apart;
I with a patient smother at my heart,
And thy hand resting on a closed door?

What couldst thou ever ask me that I should
Not bend me to achieve thy high behest?
What cannot men achieve with lance in rest
Who carry noble valour in their blood?

And some nobility of high emprise,
Lady, couldst thou make possible in me;
If living 'neath the pureness of thy eyes,

I found the key to inner majesty;
And reaching outward, heart-strong, from thy hand,
Set here and there a beacon in the land.

THE CHALICE

Not by my power alone, but thou and I
Together thinking, working, loving on
Achievement-wards, as all brave souls have gone,
Perchance should find new star-drifts in the sky

That curves above humanity, and set
Some new interpretation on life's page;
Should serve the strivings of a widening age,
And fashion wisdom from the social fret.

Deep did Time's lances go; thou pluck'st them forth,
And on my sullen woundings laid the balm
Of thy life's sweetness. Oh, let my love be worth

The keeping. My head beneath thy palm,
Once more I lift Love's chalice to thine eyes:
Not till thou blessest me will I arise.

MIO DESTINO

Here, making count, at every step I see
Something in her, like to a hidden thought
Within my life, that long time I had sought,
But never found till her soul spoke to me.

And if she said a thousand times, "I did
Not call thee, thou cam'st seeking; not my voice
Was it thou heard'st; thy love was not my choice!"
I should straightway reply, "That of thee hid,

Even from thyself, lest it should startle thee,
Hath called me, made me slave and king in one;
A