For when to the copse she comes, shy bird,
With Mary down the lane
I'll walk, in the dusk of the locust tops,
And be her lover again.

Ay, we will forget our hearts are old,
And that our hair is gray.
We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset
That summer's halcyon day.

That day, can it fade?... ah, bob, bob-white,
Still calling--calling still?
We're coming--a-coming, bent and weighed,
But glad with the old love's thrill!

THE DYING POET

Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun,
Drawing my heart with thee over the west!
Done is its day as thy day is done,
Fallen its quest!

Swoon into purple and rose, then die:
Tho' to arise again out of the dawn:
Die as I praise thee, ere thro' the Dark Lie
Of death I am drawn!

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life!
I like a child could cry for it again--
Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife,
Its women, its men!

For, how I drained it with love and delight!
Opened its heart with the magic of grief!
Reaped every season--its day and its night!
Loved every sheaf!

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod,
Never a flower swung sweet to my face,
Never a heart that was touched of God,
But taught me its grace.

Off from my lids then a moment yet,
Fingering Death, for again I must see
Lifted by memory all that I met
Under Time's lee.

There!... I'm a child again--fair, so fair!
Under the eyes does a marvel not burn?
Speak they not vision--and frenzy to dare,
That still in me yearn?...

Youth! my wild youth!--O, blood of my heart,
Still you can answer with swirling the thought!
Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart,
Joyous, distraught!...

Love, and her face again! there by the wood!--
Come, thou invisible Dark with thy mask!
Shall I not learn if she lives? and could
I more of thee ask?...

Turn me away from the ashen west,
Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk.
Something is stealing like light from my breast--
Soul from its husk ...

Soft!... Where the dead feel the buried dead,
Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls,
Bury me, near to the haunting tread
Of life that o'errolls.

THE OUTCAST

I did