he sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

*****

But the girls picked up their skirts, as if they were sure they had good
ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The last to weary were
the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as they, too,
had had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and
kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this
was more of a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful thing more
gracefully. 'Come back again!' she cried; and all the others echoed
her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, 'Come back.' But the
river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the
green trees and running water.

Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous
stream of life.

'The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,
The plowman from the sun his season takes.'

And we must all set our pocket watches by the clock of fate. There is
a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like
straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full of curves like this,
your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant
pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For
though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it
will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams will
have fallen in; many exhalations risen toward the sun; and even although
it were the same acre, it will not be the same river Oise. And thus, oh
graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life should carry
me back again to where you await death's whistle by the river, that will
not be the old I who walks the streets; and those wives and mothers,
say, will those be you?

*****

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose Thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!

*****

Purge out of every heart the lurki