of your hair.

SOUVENIR.

HOW you haunt me with your eyes!
Still that questioning persistence,
Sad and sweet, across the distance
Of the days of love and laughter,
Those old days of love and lies.

Not reproaching, not reproving,
Only, always, questioning,
Those divinest eyes can bring
Memories of certain summers,
Nights of dreaming, days of loving,

When I loved you, when your kiss,
Shyer than a bird to capture,
Lit a sudden heaven of rapture;
When we neither dreamt that either
Could grow old in heart like this.

Do you still, in love's December,
Still remember, still regret
That sweet unavailing debt?
Ah, you haunt me, to remind me
You remember, I forget!

TO MARY.

IF, Mary, that imperious face,
And not in dreams alone,
Come to this shadow-haunted place
And claim dominion;

If, for your sake, I do unqueen
Some well-remembered ghost,
Forgetting much of what hath been
Best loved, remembered most;

It is your witchery, not my will,
Your beauty, not my choice:
My shadows knew me faithful, till
They heard your living voice.

TO A GREAT ACTRESS.

SHE has taken my heart, though she knows not, would care not.
It thrills at her voice like a reed in the wind;
I would taste all her agonies, have her to spare not,
Sin deep as she sinned,

To be tossed by the storm of her love, as the ocean
Rocks vessels to wreck; to be hers, though the cost
Were the loss of all else: for that moment's emotion
Content to be lost!

To be, for a moment, the man of all men to her,
All the world, for one measureless moment complete;
To possess, be possessed! To be mockery then to her,
Then to die at her feet!

LOVE IN DREAMS.

I LIE on my pallet bed,
And I hear the drip of the rain;
The rain on my garret roof is falling,
And I am cold and in pain.

I lie on my pallet bed,
And my heart is wild with delight;
I hear her voice through the midnight calling,
As I lie awake in the night.

I lie on my pallet bed,
And I see her bright eyes gleam;
She smiles, she speaks, and the world is ended,
And made again in a dream.

MUSIC AND MEMORY.

To K.W.

ACROSS the tides of music, in the night,
Her magical face,
A light upon it as the happy light
Of dreams in some delicious place
Under the moonlight in the night.

Music, soft throbbing music in the night,
Her memory swims
Into the brain,