Where the great voices call, and where
The eternal rhythms flow and flow. 
In that august companionship,
The subtle poisoned words that drip,
With guileless guile, from friendly lip,
The lie that flits from ear to ear,
Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear;
Nor shall you fear your heart to say,
Lest he who listens shall betray.

The man who hearkens all day long
To the sea’s cosmic-thoughted song
Comes with purged ears to lesser speech,
And something of the skyey reach
Greatens the gaze that feeds on space;
The starlight writes upon his face
That bathes in starlight, and the morn
Chrisms with dew, when day is born,
The eyes that drink the holy light
Welling from the deep springs of night.

And so—­how good to catch the train
Back to the country gods again.

III

TO ONE ON A JOURNEY

Why did you go away without one word,
  Wave of the hand, or token of good-bye,
Nor leave some message for me with flower or bird,
  Some sign to find you by;

Some stray of blossom on the winter road,
  To know your feet had gone that very way,
Told me the star that points to your abode,
  And tossed me one faint ray

To climb from out the night where now I
    dwell—­
  Or, seemed it best for you to go alone
To heaven, as alone I go to hell
  Upon the four winds blown.

HER PORTRAIT IMMORTAL

Must I believe this beauty wholly gone
  That in her picture here so deathless seems,
And must I henceforth speak of her as one
  Tells of some face of legend or of dreams,
Still here and there remembered—­scarce believed,
Or held the fancy of a heart bereaved.

So beautiful she—­was; ah! “was,” say I,
  Yet doubt her dead—­I did not see her die. 
Only by others borne across the sea
 Came the incredible wild blasphemy
They called her death—­as though it could be true
Of such an immortality as you!

True of these eyes that from her picture gaze,
  Serene, star-steadfast, as the heaven’s own eyes;
Of that deep bosom, white as hawthorn sprays,
  Where my world-weary head forever lies;
True of these quiet hands, so marble-cool,
Still on her lap as lilies on a pool.

Must I believe her dead—­that this sweet clay,
  That even from her picture breathes perfume,
Was carried on a fiery wind away,
  Or foully locked in the worm-whispering tomb;
This casket rifled, ribald fingers thrust
’Mid all her dainty treasure—­is this dust!

Once such a dewy marvel of a girl,
  Warm as the sun, and ivory as the moon;
All gone of her, all lost—­except this curl
  Saved from her head one summer afternoon,
Tied with a little ribbon from her breast—­
This only mine, and Death’s now all the rest.