DUST TO DUST

Heavenly Archer, bend thy bow;
Now the flame of life burns low,
Youth is gone; I, too, would go.

Even Fortune leads to this: 
Harsh or kind, at last she is
Murderess of all ecstasies.

Yet the spirit, dark, alone,
Bound in sense, still hearkens on
For tidings of a bliss foregone.

Sleep is well for dreamless head,
At no breath astonished,
From the Gardens of the Dead.

I the immortal harps hear ring,
By Babylon’s river languishing. 
Heavenly Archer, loose thy string.

THE THREE STRANGERS

Far are those tranquil hills,
  Dyed with fair evening’s rose;
On urgent, secret errand bent,
    A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three,
  Barefooted, cowled; their eyes
Scan the lone, hastening solitary
    With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech
  With them he doth confer: 
God-sped, he hasteneth on,
    That anxious traveller ...

I was that man—­in a dream: 
  And each world’s night in vain
I patient wait on sleep to unveil
    Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know
  How yet burns on in me
Love—­from one lost in Paradise—­
    For their grave courtesy.

ALEXANDER

It was the Great Alexander,
  Capped with a golden helm,
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship,
    In a dead calm.

Voices of sea-maids singing
  Wandered across the deep: 
The sailors labouring on their oars
    Rowed, as in sleep.

All the high pomp of Asia,
  Charmed by that siren lay,
Out of their weary and dreaming minds,
    Faded away.

Like a bold boy sate their Captain,
  His glamour withered and gone,
In the souls of his brooding mariners,
    While the song pined on.

Time, like a falling dew,
  Life, like the scene of a dream,
Laid between slumber and slumber,
    Only did seem....

O Alexander, then,
  In all us mortals too,
Wax thou not bold—­too bold
    On the wave dark-blue!

Come the calm, infinite night,
  Who then will hear
Aught save the singing
    Of the sea-maids clear?

THE REAWAKENING

Green in light are the hills, and a calm wind flowing
  Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of Spring;
Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going,
  Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.

Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying,
  Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove
Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying,
  Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.