ken hope,
From memories of your comrade-song
Until I curse your painted eyes
And do your flower-mouth too much wrong.

The Amaranth

Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here....
Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns
And the tremendous Amaranth descends
Sweet with the glory of ten thousand dawns?

Does it not mean my God would have me say:--
"Whether you will or no, O city young,
Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you,
Flash and loom greatly all your marts among?"

Friends, I will not cease hoping though you weep.
Such things I see, and some of them shall come
Though now our streets are harsh and ashen-gray,
Though our strong youths are strident now, or dumb.
Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town, shall rise.
Naught can delay it. Though it may not be
Just as I dream, it comes at last I know
With streets like channels of an incense-sea.

The Alchemist's Petition

Thou wilt not sentence to eternal life
My soul that prays that it may sleep and sleep
Like a white statue dropped into the deep,
Covered with sand, covered with chests of gold,
And slave-bones, tossed from many a pirate hold.

But for this prayer thou wilt not bind in Hell
My soul, that shook with love for Fame and Truth--
In such unquenched desires consumed his youth--
Let me turn dust, like dead leaves in the Fall,
Or wood that lights an hour your knightly hall--
Amen.

Two Easter Stanzas

I

The Hope of the Resurrection

Though I have watched so many mourners weep
O'er the real dead, in dull earth laid asleep--
Those dead seemed but the shadows of my days
That passed and left me in the sun's bright rays.
Now though you go on smiling in the sun
Our love is slain, and love and you were one.
You are the first, you I have known so long,
Whose death was deadly, a tremendous wrong.
Therefore I seek the faith that sets it right
Amid the lilies and the candle-light.
I think on Heaven, for in that air so clear
We two may meet, confused and parted here.
Ah, when man's dearest dies, 'tis then he goes
To that old balm that heals the centuries' woes.
Then Christ's wild cry in all the streets is rife:--
"I am the Resurrection and the Life."

II

We meet at the Judgment and I fear it Not