Ere then the music of the dawn
    From me had long since surged away;
    And in the disillusioned day
    Of chill mid-life I plodded on.

    Anon a fuller music thrilled
    My world with meaning undertones,
    That elegized our vanished ones,
    And told how Lethe’s banks are filled

    With wordless calm, and wistful rest,
    And sweet large silence, solemn sleep,
    And brooding shadows cool and deep,
    And grand oblivions, undistressed.

    No more ’twas “Lethe rolling doom,”
    But Lethe calling, “Come to me,
    And wash away all memory
    And taint of what precedes the tomb;

    And know the changeless afterthought,
    Half guessed, half named from age to age,
    Wherein I quench the flame and rage
    And sorrow with which life is fraught.”

III.

    The Love that speaks in word and kiss,
    That dyes the cheek and fires the eye,
    Through surface signs of shallow bliss
    That, quickly born, may quickly die;
    Sweet, sweet are these to man and woman;
    Who thinks them poor is less than human.

    But I do know a quavering tone,
    And I do know lack-lustre eyes,
    Behind the which, dumb and alone,
    A stronger Love his labour plies: 
    He cannot sing or dance or toy—­
    He works and sighs for other’s joy.

    In gloom he tends the growth of food,
    While others joy in sun and flowers: 
    None knows the passion of his mood
    Save they who know what bitter hours
    Are his whose heart, alive to beauty,
    Yet dies to it and lives for duty.

IV.

    Revoke Not.

    Long is it since they ceased to look on light,
    To thrill with hope in our fond human way. 
    Why grudge them rest in their sweet ancient night,
          Ungrieved, if never gay,
          Eased from Life’s sorry day?

    Is it because at times when storms subside
    Through which thou oarest Life’s ill-fitted bark,
    Dreams rise, from sounds of lapping of the tide,
          To veil the daylight stark,
          Its anguish and its cark?

    What was their joy here?  Absence of great pain? 
    Some music in lamentings of the wind? 
    The mystic whispers of the dripping rain? 
          Sad yearnings toward their kind? 
          Ruth for old loves that pined?

    For these would’st thou revoke their flawless rest? 
    Restore hope unfulfilled which they knew here? 
    Oh! well they fare, safe sheltered in that nest
          Of silence, far from fear,
          Their memory not yet sere.

    Take thou no joy in any passing dream
    Of revocation from their stainless state! 
    Love them:  haste on, till thou to others seem
          As these to thee—­their mate,
          A waning name, a date!