prayer
Shall draw down blessings on you from the air,
And all we learned of leaf and plant and tree
Shall serve you when you walk no more with me
In garden ways; and when with her you tread
The pleasant ways with blossoms overhead
And when she asks, “How did you come to know
The secrets of the ways these green things grow?”
Then you will answer—­and I, please God, hear,
“I had another garden once, my dear”.

Song.

I hear the waves to-night
Piteously calling, calling
Though the light
Of the kind moon is falling,
Like kisses, on the sea
That calls for sunshine, dear, as my soul calls for thee.

I see the sea lie gray
Wrinkling her brows in sorrow,
Hear her say:—­
“Bright love of yesterday, return to-morrow,
Sun, I am thine, am thine!”
Oh sea, thy love will come again, but what of mine?

Renunciation.

Rose of the desert of my heart,
Moon of the night that is my soul,
Thou can’st not know how sweet thou art,
Nor what wild tides thy beams control.

For all thy heart a garden is,
Thy soul is like a dawn of May. 
And garden and dawn might both be his,
Who from them both must turn away.

Oh, garden of the Spring’s delight! 
Oh, dewy dawn of perfect noon! 
I will not pluck thy roses white
Or warm thy May-time into June.

I can but bless thee, moon and rose,
And journey far and very far
To where the night no moonbeam shows,
To where no happy roses are!

III.

THE VEIL OF MAYA.

Sweet, I have loved before.  I know
This longing that invades my days;
This shape that haunts life’s busy ways
I know since long and long ago.

This starry mystery of delight
That floats across my eager eyes,
This pain that makes earth Paradise,
These magic songs of day and night—­

I know them for the things they are: 
A passing pain, a longing fleet,
A shape that soon I shall not meet,
A fading dream of veil and star.

Yet, even as my lips proclaim
The wisdom that the years have lent,
Your absence is joy’s banishment,
And life’s one music is your name.

I love you to my heart’s hid core: 
Those other loves? how should one learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn? 
Ah, no!  I never loved before!

Song.

The sunshine of your presence lies
On the glad garden of my heart
And bids the leaves of silence part
To show the flowers to your dear eyes,
And flower on flower blooms there and dies
And still new buds awakened spring,
For sunshine makes the garden wise,
To know the time for blossoming.

Night is no time for blossoming,
Your garden then dreams otherwise,
Of vanished Summer, vanished Spring,
And how the dearest flower first dies. 
Yet from your ministering eyes
Though night hath drawn me far apart
On the still garden of my heart
The moonlight of your memory lies.