None would believe, in very truth, A maiden was so fair, they said.

How could they know they gave to me The daily hope which made me fair, Sweet promises of things to be,

The happy things I was to share.

The flowers painted round my face,
The magic seas and skies above,
And many a fair enchanted place

Full of the summer time and love.

They set me in a fairy-land,

So much more real than they knew, And I was slow to understand

The pictures could not all come true.

But one by one, they died somehow, The waking dreams which kept me glad,

And as I sat, they told me now,

None would believe a maid so sad.

They paint me still, but now I sit
Just for my neck and shoulder lines,
And for the little lingering bit

Of color in my hair that shines.

And as a figure worn and strange

Into their groups I sometimes stray, To break the light, to mark their range Of sun and shade, of grave and gay.

And evermore they come and go,
With life and hope so sweet and high,
In all the world how should they know
There is no one so tired as I.

OCTOBER

FROM falling leaf to falling leaf,
How strange it was, through all the year,
In all its joy and all its grief,

You did not know I loved you dear; Through all the winter-time and spring, You smiled and watched me come and go, Through all the summer blossoming,

How strange it was you did not know.

Your face shone from my earth and sky,
Your voice was in my heart always,
Days were as dreams when you were by,
And nights of dreaming linked the days;
In my great joy I craved so much,

My life lay trembling at your hand,
I prayed you for one magic touch,
How strange you did not understand!

From leaf to leaf, the trees are bare,

The autumn wind is cold and stern, And outlined in the clear sharp air

Lies a new world for me to learn; Stranger than all, dear friend, to-day, You take my hand and do not know A thousand years have passed away, Since last year when I loved you so.

AN OLD SONG RESUNG

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet ;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna's children died.

We and the laboring world are passing by:

Amid men's souls that day by day gives place,

More fleeting than the sea's foam-fickle face,

Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode :
Before ye were or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one stood beside His
seat;

He made the world, to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

THE WHITE BIRDS

I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea:

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can pass by and flee ;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that never may die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose,

Ah, Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew: For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam-I and you.

dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,

Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more : Soon far from the rose and the lily, the fret of the flames, would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea.