The crimson sun has reached the ridge,
I linger on the oaken bridge
Fine-filigreed with yestern snow;
O'er distant wood and rolling park
Film upon film steals on the dark,
And dulls the borrowed eastern glow

No faintest sigh of northwind stirs
The canopy of arching firs,
The alder-branches half-revealed;
A rabbit moves the crispening brake,
The wildfowl flighting from the lake
Wheel high, and circle for the field.

Six months agone the fern was green,
The alders wore their summer sheen,

Low in the valley the wreathing mist
Tells its tale of the year grown old;
A slanting beam on the hill has kissed
The beeches' russet, the birches' gold:
As I stand and gaze from the faded grass
Up to the faint October blue,
Line above line the wildfowl pass,
Winging westward from me to you.

Lady mine, is it fault of mine,
Or deed of yours, that we stand asunder?
Fanciful Chance, or high Design? —
Do you ever spare me a thought, I wonder?
Pity, perhaps, for a life forlorn, —
Fortune of war as a queen bewails;

I met you all the Season long,
I loved you from its chill beginning;
Who else could show, throughout the throng,
A smile so soft, or eyes so winning?
Diana in the early Park, —
At every ball you reigned as Venus; —
And right and left was heard remark,
We soon should settle it between us.

An Ascot week, — a cloudless dream; —
An idle day at Burnham Beeches; —
An evening's dawdle down the stream
Along the shady Clieveden reaches; —
And often, spite your chaperon's qualms,
We found it far too hot for dancing,

Across the lawn, adown the walk,
We carried our familiar talk,
By paths yew-shaded;
The rain was past, but dewy yet
It left your hand, this violet
Which here lies faded.

We scanned the sleeping lily-beds,
The daffodils' unrestful heads,
The primrose border;
Below the din of nesting rooks,
You reckoned up your favourite books
In gracious order

We walked the fields with Lily Dale ,
We sighed that Hetty spurned her pail
In wayward fancy,
We traced The Moonstone's deadly clue,

Deep in his oaken elbow-chair,
In fur-trimmed gown, the old-world Student
Sits toiling with concentrate air,
And earnest underlip protrudent:
Around him, piled on floor and desk,
His open books in wealth unstinted, —
Black letter chronicles grotesque, —
The mellow pages Aldus printed

A winter sunbeam warms the pane
Where proudly ramps the lion argent;
Fleshless and grim, an Afric crane

Of all the Powers in Heaven or Hell,
Who stood in grace, or madly fell,
None wears a countenance like his,
Death's silent Angel, Azrael

Men shuddering mark him from afar,
High as the hills eternal are;
And far behind his locks of flame
Stream, like a dread portentous star:

From canopy of shrouding gloom
Dimly his pallid features loom, —
Lips locked as are the gates of Hell,
Enclosing words of nameless doom.

But most of all men seek to flee
His eyes' unfathomed mystery,
Deep sunk beneath his lowering brow,

Against the sunset glow they stand,
Two humblest toilers of the land,
Rugged of speech and rough of hand,
Bowed down by tillage;
No grace of garb or circumstance
Invests them with a high romance,
Ten thousand such through fruitful France,
In field and village.

The day's slow path from dawn to west
Has left them, soil-bestained, distrest,
No thought beyond the nightly rest, —
New toil to-morrow;

Till solemnly the " Ave " bell
Rings out the sun's departing knell,
Borne by the breezes' rhythmic swell

We readers of the older West
In wonder turn his Eastern page
Who preaches to a self-loved age
That self-forgetfulness is best;

Figures in grave procession shown,
No painted things of wire and wood,
But entities of flesh and blood,
With faiths and passions like our own,

And She, — that soul of grace and pride,
Gripped in the vice of circumstance,
We hear, as in a breathless trance,
Of how she loved, and erred, and died.

So strong a sister's load to share,
To eager Love's behest so frail,

Iltani, the bride, to her Lord the bridegroom, Belânu:
A little song of belief and unbelief on the day after
Marriage.
I believe in love,
I believe in my lord Belânu:
I believe in joy,
I believe in my lord Belânu:
I believe in light,
I do not believe in darkness:
I believe in Ishtar the loving,
I do not believe in Ereshkigal the implacable:
I believe in life,
I do not believe in Arala the place of death;
I believe in my lord Belânu
And in the new-found God of Belânu
The God beyond gods,
Whose name is Love-beyond-love:

Hear, O beloved, another song
Of how longing for worthiness
As bridegroom of Iltani, —
Longing to be in all things worthy
Of that honour the highest, the most delicious,
I, Belânu, upon my bridal eve
Repaired to E-Sagila, to the temple of Marduk
For purification at the shrine of Ishtar
From lesser loves of days gone by,
From loves that were as poisonous gnats
Stinging me in days gone forever,
Stinging my flesh but not my heart
Where now nestles that dove of silver flame
Iltani, the bird of Ishtar.

At the shrine of Ishtar