That these so dewy lips should be the same
As those I stooped to kiss
And heard my harrowing half-spoken name,
A little ere the one who bowed above her,
Our father and her very constant lover,
Rose stoical, and we knew that she was dead.
Then I, who could not understand or share
His antique nobleness,
Being unapt to bear
The insults which time flings us for our

proof,
Fled from the horrible roof
Into the alien sunshine merciless,
The shrill satiric fields ghastly with day
Raging to front God in his pride of sway
And hurl across the lifted swords of fate
That ringed Him where He sat
My puny gage of scorn and desolate hate
Which somehow should undo Him, after

all! That this girl face, expectant, virginal, Which gazes out at me Boon as a sweetheart, as if nothing loth (Save for the eyes, with other presage (

stored) To pledge me troth, And in the kingdom where the heart is lord Take sail on the terrible gladness of the

deep Whose winds the gray Norns keep,

That this should be indeed
The flesh which caught my soul, a flying

seed, Out of the to and fro Of scattering hands where the seedsman

Mage, Stooping from star to star and age to age Sings as he sows! That underneath this breast Nine moons I fed Deep of divine unrest, While over and over in the dark she said, “Blessed! but not as happier children

blessed” That this should be Even she God, how with time and change Thou makest thy footsteps strange ! Ah, now I know They play upon me, and it is not so Why, 't is a girl I never saw before, A little thing to flatter and make weep, To tease until her heart is sore, Then kiss and clear the score; A gypsy run-the-fields, A little liberal daughter of the earth, Good for what hour of truancy and mirth The careless season yields Hither-side the flood of the year and yonder Then thank you, thanks again, and twenty

light good-byes, O shrined above the skies, Frown not, clear brow, Darken not, holy eyes!! Thou knowest well I know that it is thou Only to save from such memories As would unman me quite, Here in this web of strangeness caught And prey to troubled thought Do I devise These foolish shifts and slight; Only to shield me from the afflicting sense Of some waste influence Which from this morning face and lustrous

hair Breathes on me sudden ruin and despair. In any

other guise, With any but this girlish depth of gaze, Your coming had not so unsealed and

poured The dusty amphoras where I had stored The drippings of the winepress of my days. I think these eyes foresee, Now in their unawakened virgin time, Their mother's pride in me, And dream even now, unconsciously, Upon each soaring peak and sky-hung lea You pictured I should climb. Broken premonitions come,

Shapes, gestures visionary,
Not as once to maiden Mary
The manifest angel with fresh lilies came
Intelligibly calling her by name;
But vanishingly, dumb,
Thwarted and bright and wild,
As heralding a sin-defiled,
Earth-encumbered, blood-begotten, passion-

ate man-child,
Who yet should be a trump of mighty call
Blown in the gates of evil kings
To make them fall;
Who yet should be a sword of flame before
The soul's in violate door
To beat away the clang of hellish wings;
Who yet should be a lyre
Of high unquenchable desire
In the day of little things, —
Look where the amphoras,
The yield of many days,
Trod by my hot soul from the pulp of

self, And set upon the shelf In sullen pride The Vineyard-master's tasting to abide O mother mine! Are these the bringings-in, the doings fine Of him who used to praise ? Emptied and overthrown The jars lie strown.

These, for their flavor duly nursed,
Drip from the stopples vinegar accursed;
These, I thought honied to the very seal,
Dry, dry, - a little acid meal,
A pinch of mouldy dust,
Sole leavings of the amber-mantling must;
These rude to look upon,
But flasking up the liquor dearest won,
Through sacred hours and hard,
With watchings and with wrestlings and

with grief, Even of these, of these in chief, The stale breath sickens reeking from the

shard. Nothing is left. Aye, how much less than

naught! What shall be said or thought Of the slack hours and waste imaginings, The cynic rending of the wings, Known to the froward, that unreckoning

heart Whereof this brewage was the precious part, Treasured and set away with furtive boast ? O dear and cruel ghost, Be merciful, be just ! See, I was yours and I am in the dust. Then look not so, as if all things were well! Take your eyes from me, leave me to my

shame, Or else, if gaze they must,