O FOR the blithesomeness of birds
Whose soul floods ever to their tongue!
But to be impotent of words
With blinding tears and heart unstrung!

Each breeze that blows from homeward brings
To me who am so far away
The memory of tender things
I might have said and did not say.

Like spirit children, wraiths unborn
To luckless lovers long ago,
Shades of emotion, mute, forlorn,
Within my brain stalk to and fro.

When to my lips they rush, and call,
A nameless something rears its head,
Forbidding, like the spectral wall
Between the living and the dead.

O guardian of the nether mind
Where atavistic terrors reel
In dark cerebral chambers, bind
Old nightmares with thy mystic seal!

But bar not from the sonant gate
Of being with thy fiery sword
The sweetest thing we wring from fate:
Love's one imperishable word!