There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.

Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts:

The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.

The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.

What are these lovely ones, yea, what are these?
Lo, these are they who for pure love of Christ
Stripped off the trammels of soft silken ease,
Beggaring themselves betimes, to be sufficed
Throughout heaven's one eternal day of peace:
By golden streets, thro' gates of pearl unpriced,
They entered on the joys that will not cease,
And found again all firstfruits sacrificed.
And wherefore have you harps, and wherefore palms,
And wherefore crowns, O ye who walk in white?
Because our happy hearts are chanting psalms,

The wishes on this child's mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.
The north has loved her; she will be
A grandmother feeding geese on frosty
Mornings; she will understand
Early snow on the cranberries
Better and better then.

I wage no warr, yet peace I none enjoy;
I hope, I feare, I fry in freesing colde;
I mount in mirth, still prostrate in annoye;
I all the worlde imbrace yet nothing holde.
All welth is want where chefest wishes fayle,
Yea life is loath'd where love may not prevayle.

For that I love I long, but that I lacke;
That others love I loath, and that I have;
All worldly fraightes to me are deadly wracke,
Men present happ, I future hopes do crave:
They, loving where they live, long life require,
To live where best I love, death I desire.

As flames that consume the mountains, as winds that coerce the sea,
Thy men of renown show forth Thy might in the clutch of death:
Down they go into silence, yet the Trump of the Jubilee
Swells not Thy praise as swells it the breathless pause of their breath.

What is the flame of their fire, if so I may catch the flame;
What the strength of their strength, if also I may wax strong?
The flaming fire of their strength is the love of Jesu's Name,
In Whom their death is life, their silence utters a song.

How many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses? — nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days:
Love me before I die ;
Love me — love me now .

Body of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a child's handful you are here,
The breadth of a man's finger,
And this ivory loin cloth
Speaks an interspersal in the day's work,
The carver's prayer and whim
And Christ-love.

One by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checkering cross work on the velvet gown of night.
I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a velvet gown,
And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under the dark feel of it all.

The masonry of steel looks to the night for somebody it loves,
He is a little dizzy and almost dances . . . waiting . . . dark . . .

In that world we weary to attain,
Love's furled banner floats at large unfurled:
There is no more doubt and no more pain
In that world.

There are gems and gold and inlets pearled;
There the verdure fadeth not again;
There no clinging tendrils droop uncurled.

Here incessant tides stir up the main,
Stormy miry depths aloft are hurled:
There is no more sea, or storm, or stain,
In that world.

Love, to be love, must walk Thy way
And work Thy Will;
Or if Thou say, " Lie still, "
Lie still and pray.

Love, Thine own Bride, with all her might
Will follow Thee,
And till the shadows flee
Keep Thee in sight.

Love will not mar her peaceful face
With cares undue,
Faithless and hopeless too
And out of place.

Love, knowing Thou much more art Love,
Will sun her grief,
And pluck her myrtle-leaf,
And be Thy dove.

Love here hath vast beatitude:
What shall be hers