ie,
But children's laughter, birds, and bits of sky.

NAPOLEON IN HADES

They stirred uneasily, drew close their capes,
And whispered each to each in awed surprise,
Seeing this figure brood along the shapes,
World tragedies thick-crowding through his eyes.
On either side the ghostly groups drew back
In huddled knots, yielding him way and room,
Their foolish mouths agape and fallen slack,
Their bloodless fingers pointing through the gloom.

Still lonely and magnificent in guilt,
Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream,
He paused at last upon the Stygian silt,
And raised calm eyes above the angry stream....
Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came,
While Hades hummed with gossip of his name.

SYMBOLS

Beautiful words, like butterflies, blow by,
With what swift colours on their fragile wings!--
Some that are less articulate than a sigh,
Some that were names of ancient, lovely things.
What delicate careerings of escape,
When they would pass beyond the baffled reach,
To leave a haunting shadow and a shape,--
Eluding still the careful traps of speech.

And I who watch and listen, lie in wait,
Seeing the cloudy cavalcades blow past,--
Happy if some bright vagrant, soon or late,
May venture near the snares of sound, at last--
Most fortunate captor if, from time to time,
One may be taken, trembling, in a rhyme.

EXILED

Sensing these sweet renewals through the earth,
Where seed and soil most happily conspire
To furnish forth gay rituals of mirth,
Of shaken leaves and pointed blooms of fire,--
I wonder then that thoughtful man, alone,
Walks darkly and all puzzled with a doubt,
Bewildered, and in truth, half-fearful grown
Of wild, wild earth and April's joyous rout.

When we are dust again with soil and seed,
With happy earth through many a happy Spring,
We yet may learn that joy was all our need,--
That man's long thought is but a broken wing,
Of less account, as things may come to pass,
Than Spring's first robin breasting through the grass.

MARY SETS THE TABLE

She brings such gay and shining things to pass,
With delicate, deft fingers that are learned
In ways of silverware and cup and glass,
Arrayed in ordered patterns, trimly turned;--
And never guesses how this subtle ease
I