Oh, now begone sullen care—­this light is my seeing;
  I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls;
Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being
  Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls.

THE VACANT DAY

As I did walk in meadows green
  I heard the summer noon resound
With call of myriad things unseen
  That leapt and crept upon the ground.

High overhead the windless air
  Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry
Of swallows that did everywhere
  Wake echo in the sky.

Beside me, too, clear waters coursed
  Which willow branches, lapsing low,
Breaking their crystal gliding forced
  To sing as they did flow.

I listened; and my heart was dumb
  With praise no language could express;
Longing in vain for him to come
  Who had breathed such blessedness

On this fair world, wherein we pass
  So chequered and so brief a stay;
And yearned in spirit to learn, alas,
  What kept him still away.

THE FLIGHT

How do the days press on, and lay
  Their fallen locks at evening down,
Whileas the stars in darkness play
    And moonbeams weave a crown—­

A crown of flower-like light in heaven,
  Where in the hollow arch of space
Morn’s mistress dreams, and the Pleiads seven
    Stand watch about her place.

Stand watch—­O days no number keep
  Of hours when this dark clay is blind. 
When the world’s clocks are dumb in sleep
    ’Tis then I seek my kind.

FOR ALL THE GRIEF

For all the grief I have given with words
  May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
        Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me
  Be a dark, cool water calling—­calling
To the footsore, benighted, solitary,
        When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness,
  A moon in the air where the weary wend,
And dews burdened with loving-kindness
        In the dark of the end.

THE SCRIBE

What lovely things
  Thy hand hath made: 
The smooth-plumed bird
  In its emerald shade,
The seed of the grass,
  The speck of stone
Which the wayfaring ant
  Stirs—­and hastes on!

Though I should sit
  By some tarn in thy hills,
Using its ink
  As the spirit wills
To write of Earth’s wonders,
  Its live, willed things,
Flit would the ages
  On soundless wings. 
Ere unto Z
  My pen drew nigh;
Leviathan told,
  And the honey-fly: 
And still would remain
  My wit to try
My worn reeds broken,
  The dark tarn dry,
All words forgotten—­
  Thou, Lord, and I.