keep in tune The strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon The change came, and the music passed away. Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things, — No life, no love, no children, and no men; And over the forgotten place there clings The strange and unrememberable light That is in dreams. The music failed, and then God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.
Boston
My northern pines are good enough for me, But there's a town my memory uprears — A town that always like a friend appears, And always in the sunrise by the sea. And over it, somehow, there seems to be A downward flash of something new and fierce, That ever strives to clear, but never clears The dimness of a charmed antiquity.
Two Sonnets
I
Just as I wonder at the twofold screen Of twisted innocence that you would plait For eyes that uncourageously await The coming of a kingdom that has been, So do I wonder what God's love can mean To you that all so strangely estimate The purpose and the consequent estate Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen. No, I have not your backward faith to shrink Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home To find Him in the names of buried men; Nor your ingenious recreance to think We cherish, in the life that is to come, The scattered features of dead friends again.
II
Never until our souls are strong enough To plunge into the crater of the Scheme — Triumphant in the flash there to redeem Love's handsel and forevermore to slough, Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough And reptile skins of us whereon we set The stigma of scared years — are we to get Where atoms and the ages are one stuff. Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste Of life in the beneficence divine Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine That we have squandered in sin's frail distress, Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste, The mead of Thought's prophetic endlessness.
The Clerks
I did not think that
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