still? What tho' you say
The current of your life toward mine is set,
As vagrant stars obey the planets' sway,
Or perfume clingeth to the violet?

What tho' I once loved you? See in yon West
Day's fires have burned to ashes cold and gray;
So in my quiet heart love's wild unrest
By its own flame consumed, is dead for aye.

When Fades the Light

When fades the light along the western sky,
When dies the last dim rose to subtlest gray,
When darkling mere and mead enshadowed lie,
And Night's wide arms enfold the wearied Day;
When tired lilies ring their vesper bells
And dusking leaves speak whispered orison,
When cassocked Twilight breathing benison
His rosary of flashing fireflies tells--
Then ends the day-long struggle. Strong no more
I drift far out on Fancy's phantom sea,
Setting full sail for that forbidden shore
Where waiteth Love for me.

* * * * *

When fades the light from out my dying eyes,
And soul and sense seem slipping soft away,
When Death's swift shallop launched on Lethe lies
Waiting to wing me to the unknown Gray;
When things of time and thought grow strangely dim,
And the pent spirit strains to loose its bands
Till from the fettered feet and helpless hands
Shall fall life's shackles pitiless and grim--
Then shall the conflict cease. Enchained no more
My soul shall sail the silent unknown sea
Until it touch the unforbidden shore
Where Love awaiteth me.

Butterflies

As if a bed of bloom had taken wing--
Bright marigolds, nasturtiums, zinnias gay--
They breast the breeze or, lightly poising, cling
To other flowers not animate as they.

In the Dark Forest

The long gray twilight falls and deeper glooms
Close round the graying wood that dimmer grows
As dies the Day's last yearning tint of rose,
And Dusk spins shadows on her eldritch looms.
The black bat flits, the eerie white moth flies--
Wan ghost of yesterday's bright butterfly--
The dusking forest pools uplooking lie
Like graveless dead men's staring, sightless eyes.

Ah, eerie, eerie is the lonely wood,
But lo! the faeries light their firefly lamps,
Elusive foxfire flames from marish damps;
Hastes to the morris-dance an elfin brood;
A far bell chimes, the cricket cheerly shrills,
The droning beetle sounds his hoarse bassoon
And hylas trill; eftsoon the rising moon
The ambient air to molten silver thrills.

Then all the ly