We dwindle down beneath the skies,
    And from ourselves we pass away: 
    The paradise of memories
    Grows ever fainter day by day. 
    The shepherd stars have shrunk within,
    The world’s great night will soon begin.

    Will no one, ere it is too late,
    Ere fades the last memorial gleam,
    Recall for us our earlier state? 
    For nothing but so vast a dream
    That it would scale the steeps of air
    Could rouse us from so vast despair.

    The power is ours to make or mar
    Our fate as on the earliest morn,
    The Darkness and the Radiance are
    Creatures within the spirit born. 
    Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might
    Forget how we imagined light.

    Not yet are fixed the prison bars: 
    The hidden light the spirit owns
    If blown to flame would dim the stars
    And they who rule them from their thrones: 
    And the proud sceptred spirits thence
    Would bow to pay us reverence.

    Oh, while the glory sinks within
    Let us not wait on earth behind,
    But follow where it flies, and win
    The glow again, and we may find
    Beyond the Gateways of the Day
    Dominion and ancestral sway.

THE DREAM

    I did not deem it half so sweet
    To feel thy gentle hand,
    As in a dream thy soul to greet
    Across wide leagues of land,

    Untouched more near to draw to you
    Where, amid radiant skies,
    Glimmered thy plumes of iris hue,
    My Bird of Paradise.

    Let me dream only with my heart,
    Love first, and after see: 
    Know thy diviner counterpart
    Before I kneel to thee.

    So in thy motions all expressed
    Thy angel I may view: 
    I shall not on thy beauty rest,
    But Beauty’s ray in you.

THE PARTING OF WAYS

    The skies from black to pearly grey
    Had veered without a star or sun;
    Only a burning opal ray
    Fell on your brow when all was done.

    Aye, after victory, the crown;
    Yet through the fight no word of cheer;
    And what would win and what go down
    No word could help, no light make clear.

    A thousand ages onward led
    Their joys and sorrows to that hour;
    No wisdom weighed, no word was said,
    For only what we were had power.

    There was no tender leaning there
    Of brow to brow in loving mood;
    For we were rapt apart, and were
    In elemental solitude.

    We knew not in redeeming day
    Whether our spirits would be found
    Floating along the starry way,
    Or in the earthly vapours drowned.

    Brought by the sunrise-coloured flame
    To earth, uncertain yet, the while
    I looked at you, there slowly came,
    Noble and sisterly, your smile.