"Beliefless may
Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide,
And live alway."
Then darkness rose
Within me, and drear bitterness.
Out of its throes
I moaned, at last,
"Let me go hence! Take off the dress,
The charms Thou hast
"Around me strown!
Beliefless too am I without
His love – and lone!"
Unto the Gate
They led me, tho' with pitying doubt.
I did not wait
But stepped across
Its portal, turned not once to heed
Or know my loss.
Then my dream broke,
And with it every loveless creed —
Beneath love's stroke.
APRIL
A laughter of wind and a leaping of cloud,
And April, oh, out under the blue!
The brook is awake and the blackbird loud
In the dew!
But how does the robin high in the beech,
Beside the wood with its shake and toss,
Know it – the frenzy of bluets to reach
Thro' the moss!
And where did the lark ever learn his speech?
Up, wildly sweet, he's over the mead!
Is more than the rapture of earth can teach
In its creed?
I never shall know – I never shall care!
'Tis, oh, enough to live and to love!
To laugh and warble and dream and dare
Are to prove!
AUGUST GUESTS
The wind slipt over the hill
And down the valley.
He dimpled the cheek of the rill
With a cooling kiss.
Then hid on the bank a-glee
And began to rally
The rushes – Oh,
I love the wind for this!
A cloud blew out of the west
And spilt his shower
Upon the lily-bud crest
And the clematis.
Then over the virgin corn
Besprinkled a dower
Of dew-gems – And,
I love the cloud for this!
TO A DOVE
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Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves,
That tremble dimly in the summer dusk,
Falls sad along the oatland's sallow sheaves
And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk
With plashy willow and bold-wading reed.
The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not,
But softer mourns unto me from the mead
Than airs that in the wood intoning start,
Or breath of silences in dells begot
To soothe some grief-wan soul with sin a-smart.
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A votaress art thou of Simplicity,
Who hath one fane – the heaven above thy nest;
One incense – love; one stealing litany
Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest.
Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze,
Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils,
Faith of the darkening distance, charities
Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb
Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils
That would earth of its heavenliness rob.
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