Must
The gold of this hair
Become dust,
And this white breast,
Soft like the nest
Of a dove,
Fade on air?
Must
These sweet finger-tips,
Made
For love,
And these rose lips,
Fade
To dust?
How could such beauty be
To perish utterly. . . .

Love took the light,
And went away;
I walk in darkness
Day by day.

And yet I know,
Though it be far,
My path winds somewhere

I will go out and forget love and be as a bird in the sky —
Free with the soaring breezes and the clouds that wander by;
(I will go out and forget love and be as a bird in the sky!)

I will go out in the wide lands, alone in endless space,
Where the earth is a-blaze with splendor, and I kneel in the sun's embrace;
(I will go out in the wide lands alone in endless space.)

I will go out and forget love as the wild wind in the sky,
And be as a bird without bourne or kin or aught to hold me by —
(I will go out and forget love as the wild wind in the sky!)

Love never is too late; it sums,
Within itself, all that is lasting gain,
And, or at morn or midnight, comes
With blessings in its train.

We tarry, slow to give, alas!
But though delayed, love never is too late—
Love that has power beyond the grave to pass
And enter Heaven's gate!

Why does great beauty waken in the soul,
Together with the pleasure it inspires,
Sadness and inaccessible desires?—
Why, in our joy anticipating dole,
Ask we for lovely things a lasting goal,
Though knowing well their destiny requires
That, wasted and consumed by their own fires,
They pay on earth, full soon, Death's heavy toll?

Nay, love! The seed may fail within the sod,
But beauty fails not. Though it seem to die,
It lights a quenchless torch in Hades' portal:
A gift benignant as a smile of God.

Think not of love as of a debt —
Due or in May or in December!
Nay, rather, for a time, forget;
Life always helps us to remember!

A child whom harmless toys beguile
To loiter for a little while,
Put heart into your play, and then,
When you are tired — come home again!

Fair, yet how fragile, pleasure's rose! —
How vain the toil to make it stronger!
It blooms — it withers, — but love knows
A sweeter blossom that lives longer!

If I go down to death uncomforted
By love's great conquest and its great surrender,
Bearing my soul along, unwed, unwed;
(Your darling hands' caresses swift and tender
Lacking upon my head, upon my lips
Your lips) and in my heart love unfulfilled,
And in my eyes a blind apocalypse,
Bereft of all the glory I have willed;

I shall go proudly for your dear love's sake,
Triumphant for brief memories, but tragic
Because of those large hopes that fail and break
Beneath Fate's wizard-wand of cruel magic —

Ta la lal la, — ta la lal la,
Was the song of Fatima:
To the blue-eyed charmer oft
Ganem sued in language soft;
But while he vowed eternal truth,
How she loved to tease the youth!
He said, Marry,
She cried, Tarry;
Still he knelt, and still he sighed,
Still the frolic fair replied,
Ta la lal la.

Ganem now grew pale and slim;
Sport to her was death to him;
Seeing this and warmly pressed,
Love was in her eye confessed;
Gently sighing,
All complying,
Time, she cried, is on the wing,
Take me then when next I sing

A fair, sweet face in a bonnet,
An eye-glance that like a star gleams, —
And straight sing our fancies a sonnet
That builds up a palace of dreams.

In the heart of the forest arising,
Slim, ghostly, and fair,
Ethereal offspring of moisture,
Of earth and of air;
With slender stems anchored together
Where first they uncurl,
Each tipped with its exquisite lily
Of mother-of-pearl;
'Mid the pine-needles, closely enwoven
Its roots to embale, —
The Indian-pipe of the woodland,
Thrice lovely and frail!

Is this but an earth-springing fungus —
This darling of Fate
Which out of the mouldering darkness
Such light can create?
Or is it the spirit of Beauty,