these reverent fingers wrong your hair?)
So calmly careless of the rush and riot
That rages round is seething everywhere.

You do not understand. You think your beauty
Does but inflame my senses to desire,
Till all you hold as loyalty and duty,
Is shrunk and shrivelled in the ardent fire.

You wrong me, wearied out with thought and grieving
As though the whole world's sorrow eat my heart,
I come to gaze upon your face believing
Its beauty is as ointment to the smart.

Lie still and let me in my desolation
Caress the soft loose hair a moment's span.
Since Loveliness is Life's one Consolation,
And love the only Lethe left to man.

Ah, give me here beneath the trees in flower,
Beside the river where the fireflies pass,
One little dusky, all consoling hour
Lost in the shadow of the long grown grass

Give me, oh you whose arms are soft and slender,
Whose eyes are nothing but one long caress,
Against your heart, so innocent and tender,
A little Love and some Forgetfulness.

Fate Knows no Tears

Just as the dawn of Love was breaking
Across the weary world of grey,
Just as my life once more was waking
As roses waken late in May,
Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making,
Stepped in and carried you away.

Memories have I none in keeping
Of times I held you near my heart,
Of dreams when we were near to weeping
That dawn should bid us rise and part;
Never, alas, I saw you sleeping
With soft closed eyes and lips apart,

Breathing my name still through your dreaming.--
Ah! had you stayed, such things had been!
But Fate, unheeding human scheming,
Serenely reckless came between--
Fate with her cold eyes hard and gleaming
Unseared by all the sorrow seen.

Ah! well-beloved, I never told you,
I did not show in speech or song,
How at the end I longed to fold you
Close in my arms; so fierce and strong
The longing grew to have and hold you,
You, and you only, all life long.

They who know nothing call me fickle,
Keen to pursue and loth to keep.
Ah, could they see these tears that trickle
From eyes erstwhile too proud to weep.
Could see me, prone, beneath the sickle,
While pain and sorrow stand and reap!

Unopened scarce, yet o