A thousand gardens—­yet to-day there blows
In all their wintry walks no single rose,
  But here with Omar you shall find the Spring
  That fears no Autumn and eternal glows.

So on the song-soft petals of his rhyme
Pillow your head, as in some golden clime,
  And let the beauty of eternity
Smooth from your brow the little frets of time.

VII

A BALLAD OF TOO MUCH BEAUTY

There is too much beauty upon this earth
  For lonely men to bear,
Too many eyes, too enchanted skies,
  Too many things too fair;
And the man who would live the life of a man
Must turn his eyes away—­if he can.

He must not look at the dawning day,
  Or watch the rising moon;
From the little feet, so white, so fleet,
  He must turn his eyes away;
And the flowers and the faces he must pass by
With stern self-sacrificing eye.

For beauty and duty are strangers forever,
  Work and wonder ever apart,
And the laws of life eternally sever
  The ways of the brain from the ways of the heart;
Be it flower or pearl, or the face of a girl,
Or the ways of the waters as they swirl.

Lo! beauty is sorrow, and sorrowful men
  Have no heart to look on the face of the sky,
Or hear the remorseful voice of the sea,
Or the song of the wandering wind in the tree,
  Or even watch a butterfly.

SPRING IN THE PARIS CATACOMBS

I saw strange bones to-day in Paris town,
Deep in the quarried dark, while over-head
The roar of glad and busy things went by—­
Over our heads—­
So many heads—­
Deep down, deep down—­
Those strange old bones deep down in Paris town: 
Heads where no longer dwell—­
Yet who shall tell!—­
Such thoughts as those
That make a rose
Of a maid’s cheek,

Filling it with such bloom—­
All fearless of the unsuspected doom—­
As flood wild April with such hushing breath
That Death himself believes no more in Death.

Yea!  I went down
Out of the chestnuts and the girl-filled town,
Only a yard or two beneath the street,
Haunted a little while by little feet,
Going, did they but know, the self-same way
As all those bones as white as the white May
That roofs the orchards overhead with bloom.

Perhaps I only dreamed,
And yet to me it seemed
That those old bones talked strangely each to each,
Chattering together in forgotten speech—­

Speaking of Her
That was so very fair,
Telling of Him
So strong
He is a song
Up there in the far day, where even yet
Fools sing of fates and faces
Even fools cannot forget.

Faces went by, as haughty as of old,
Wearing upon their heads the unminted gold
That flowers in blackness only,
And sad lips smiled softly, softly,
Knowing well it was too late
Even for Fate.