But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of things,
    For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings: 
    For beauty called to beauty and there thronged at the enchanter’s will
    The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still. 
    And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout,
    And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out. 
    Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air? 
    The burning doves fly from my heart and melt within her bosom there. 
    I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen,
    And this adoring love has brought us back the beauty that has been. 
    As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies
    So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes: 
    One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me: 
    One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!

ILLUSION

    What is the love of shadowy lips
    That know not what they seek or press,
    From whom the lure for ever slips
    And fails their phantom tenderness?

    The mystery and light of eyes
    That near to mine grow dim and cold;
    They move afar in ancient skies
    Mid flame and mystic darkness rolled.

    O, beauty, as thy heart o’erflows
    In tender yielding unto me,
    A vast desire awakes and grows
    Unto forgetfulness of thee.

BABYLON

    The blue dusk ran between the streets; my love was winged within my mind;
    It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind. 
    To-day was past and dead for me for from to-day my feet had run
    Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon. 
    On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays
    Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days. 
    The tower of heaven turns darker blue; a starry sparkle now begins;
    The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins
    Come back to me.  I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers;
    Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers. 
    The waters lull me, and the scent of many gardens, and I hear
    Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear. 
    Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid: 
    The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,
    One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide,
    Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side. 
    Oh, light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,
    While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.