shall be buried soon.

There is a sound that is no sound,
Yet fine it falls and clear,
The whisper of the spinning earth
To the tranced atmosphere.

An odour lives where once was air,
A strange, unearthly scent,
From the burning of the four great stars
Within the firmament.

The universe, deathless and old,
Breathes, yet is void of breath:
As still as death that seems to move
And yet is still as death.

THE APPARITION

Gentle angel with your mantle,
All of tender green,
I was yearning for a vision
Of the life unseen.

When you hovered in the sunset,
Just as rain was done;
Where the dropping from the poplars
Seemed like rain begun.

There you gathered forming slowly
Rounding into view:
All your vesture glowed like verdure
When the sap is new.

Then you mutely gave your warning
And I felt the stress
Of its passion and its presage
And its utterness.

There you swayed one tranquil moment,
Mystically fair,
Then you were not of the sunset,
Were not in the air.

AT SEA

Three are emerald pools in the sea,
And wing-like flashes of light;
The sea is bound with the heavens
In a large delight.

Night comes out of the east
And rushes down on the sun;
The emerald pools and the light pools
Are darkened and done.

Our boat dips and cleaves onward,
Careless of night or of light,
Following the line of her compass
By her engines' might.

Through the desert of air and of water;
Like the lonely soul of man,
Following her fate to the ending,
Unaware of the hidden plan.

Sure only of battle and longing,
Of the pain and the quest,
And beyond in the darkness somewhere
Sure of her rest.

MADONNA WITH TWO ANGELS

Under the sky without a stain
The long, ripe, rippling of the grain;
Light, broadcast from the golden oats
Over the blackberry fences floats.
Madonna sits in a cedar chair
Tranquillized by the warm, still air;
One of the angels asleep on her knee
Under the shade of an apple tree.
The other angel holds a doll,
Covered warm in a tiny shawl;
The toy is supposed to be fast asleep
As the sister angel: in dimples deep
The grave, sweet charm on the baby face
Repeats the look of maturer grace
That hovers about Madonna's eyes,
One of the heavenly mysteries
From far ethereal latitudes
Where neither doubt nor trouble intrudes.
Ponder here in the orchard nest
On the truth of life made manifest:
The struggle and effort