o our heart's desire!

_Second Traveller:_

The door is open,--Heigho!
This pair will claim neither crown nor groat,
The man has gripped his garden spade
As if he would dig his grave in the snow;
The boy has the face of a saint, I trow;
His brow says, "I was not afraid!"

_First Traveller:_

Ah well, these things must be, you know!
Gather your sables around your throat;
Give us that story about the monk,
His niece, and the wandering conjurer,
Just to keep our blood astir.

_The Angels:_

The heart of God,
The worlds and man,
Are fashioned and moulded,
In a subtle plan;
Passion outsurges,
Sweeps far but converges:
Nothing is lost,
Sod or stone,
But comes to its own;
Bear well thy joy,
'Tis mixed with alloy,
Bear well thy grief,
'Tis a rich full sheaf:
Gather the souls that have passed in the night,
Theirs is the peace and the light.

* * * * *

_The moon is gone, the dawning brings
A deeper dark with silver blent,
Above the wells where, myriad, springs
Light from the crimson orient;
The elms are born, the shadows creep,
Tremble and melt away--one sweep
The great soft color floods and flows,
Where under snow the roses sleep;
The morn has turned the snow to rose._

LINES IN MEMORY OF EDMUND MORRIS

Dear Morris--here is your letter--
Can my answer reach you now?
Fate has left me your debtor,
You will remember how;
For I went away to Nantucket,
And you to the Isle of Orleans,
And when I was dawdling and dreaming
Over the ways and means
Of answering, the power was denied me,
Fate frowned and took her stand;
I have your unanswered letter
Here in my hand.
This--in your famous scribble,
It was ever a cryptic fist,
Cuneiform or Chaldaic
Meanings held in a mist.

Dear Morris, (now I'm inditing
And poring over your script)
I gather from the writing,
The coin that you had flipt,
Turned tails; and so you compel me
To meet you at Touchwood Hills:
Or, mayhap, you are trying to tell me
The sum of a painter's ills:
Is that Phimister Proctor
Or something about a doctor?
Well, nobody knows, but Eddie,
Whatever it is I'm ready.

For our friendship was always fortunate
In its greetings and adieux,
Nothing flat or importunate,
Nothing of the misuse
That comes of the constant grinding
Of one mind on another.
So memory has nothing to smother,
But only a few things captured
On the wing, as it were, and enraptured.
Yes, Morris, I am inditing--
Answer