.

FROM ABOVE

What do I care if the trees are bare
And the hills are dark
And the skies are gray.

What do I care for chill in the air
For crows that cark
At the rough wind's way.

What do I care for the dead leaves there--
Or the sullen road
By the sullen wood.

There's heart in my heart
To bear my load!
So enough, the day is good!

BY THE INDUS

Thou art late, O Moon,
Late,
I have waited thee long.
The nightingale's flown to her nest,
Sated with song.
The champak hath no odour more
To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er--
But my heart it will not rest.

Thou art late, O Love,
Late,
For the moon is a-wane.
The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs,
Burns with my pain.
The lotus leans her head on the stream--
Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream,
Dream ere the night-cool dies?

Thou art late, O Death,
Late,
For he did not come!
A pariah is my heart,
Cast from him--dumb!
I cannot cry in the jungle's deep--
Is it not time for the Tomb--and Sleep?
O Death, strike with thy dart!

EVOCATION

(NIKKO, JAPAN, 1905)

Dim thro' the mist and cryptomeria
Booms the temple bell,
Down from the tomb of Ieyasue
Yearning, as a knell.

Down from the tomb where many an aeon
Silently has knelt;
Many a pilgrimage of millions--
Still about it felt.

Still, for I see them gather ghostly
Now, as the numb sound
Floats, an unearthly necromancy,
From the past's dead ground.

See the invisible vast millions,
Hear their soundless feet
Climbing the shrine-ways to the gilded
Carven temple's seat.

And, one among them--pale among them--
Passes waning by.
What is it tells me mystically
That strange one was I?...

Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria
Dies the bell--'tis dumb.
After how many lives returning
Shall I hither come?

Hither again! and climb the votive
Ever mossy ways?
Who shall the gods be then, the millions
Meek, entreat or praise?

THE CHILD GOD GAVE

"Give me a little child
To draw this dreary want out of my breast,"
I cried to God.
"Give, for my days beat wild
With loneliness that will not