She comes like the hush and beauty of the night,
And sees too deep for laughter;

Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.

A Meeting

Softly she came one twilight from the dead,
And in the passionate silence of her look
Was more than man has writ in any book:
And now my thoughts are restless, and a dread
Calls them to the Dim Land discomforted;

For down the leafy ways her white feet took,
Lightly the newly broken roses shook-
Was it the wind disturbed each rosy head?

God! was it joy or sorrow in her face—
That quiet face? Had it grown old or young?
Was it sweet memory or sad that stung
Her voiceless soul to wander from its place?
What do the dead find in the Silence— grace?
Or endless grief for which there is no tongue?

The little pool, in street or field apart,

Glasses the deep heavens and the rushing storm;

And into the silent depths of every heart,

The Eternal throws its awful shadow-form.

Beside the sewing-table chained and bent,

They stitch for the lady, tyrannous and proudFor her a wedding-gown, for them a shroud; They stitch and stitch, but never mend the rent Torn in life's golden curtains. Glad Youth went, And left them alone with Time; and now if bowed

With burdens they should sob and cry aloud,Wondering, the rich would look from their

content.

A Leaf from the Devil's Jest-Book

And so this glimmering life at last recedes

In unknown, endless depths beyond recall; And what's the worth of all our ancient creeds, If here at the end of ages this is all

A white face floating in the whirling ball, A dead face plashing in the river reeds?