THE VEIL 92

THE YEAR IS OLD 93

MARINERS 94

AN ABANDONED INN 95

PRONE 96

REVIVAL 97

IMPOSTOR 98

SNOW DUSK 99

MOOD 100

SHIPS IN HARBOUR 101

SHIPS IN HARBOUR

WOODEN SHIPS

They are remembering forests where they grew,--
The midnight quiet, and the giant dance;
And all the murmuring summers that they knew
Are haunting still their altered circumstance.
Leaves they have lost, and robins in the nest,
Tug of the goodly earth denied to ships,
These, and the rooted certainties, and rest,--
To gain a watery girdle at the hips.

Only the wind that follows ever aft,
They greet not as a stranger on their ways;
But this old friend, with whom they drank and laughed,
Sits in the stern and talks of other days
When they had held high bacchanalias still,
Or dreamed among the stars on some tall hill.

OCTOBER DAY-MOON

Loosed from her secret moorings,
The thin and silver moon,
Floats wide above these oceans
Of yellow afternoon,--
Who slipped her fragile cables,
And blew to sea too soon.

She bears no bales--but wonder,
Not anything of note:
How should she, being merely
A slender petal-boat?...
But rated in the shipping:
The dearest tramp afloat.

A GARDEN WALL

The Roman wall was not more grave than this,
That has no league at all with great affairs,
That knows no ruder hands than clematis,
No louder blasts than blowing April airs.
Yet, with a grey solemnity it broods,
Above the walk where simple folk go past,
And in its crannies keeps their transient moods,
Holding their careless words unto the last.

The rains of summer, and the creeping vine
That season after season clings in trust,
And shivered poppies red as Roman wine,--
These things at last will haunt its crumbled dust--
Not dreams of empires shattered where they l