compassionate and holy, And, being human, strong and weak, And full of hope and melancholy. No more than we, able to shed Man's nature he inherited, Neither sin's garrison to kill, Yet at the last with constancy so great As the world's vanities to abnegate, Sternly to will the sacrifice of will Upon the altars of the Uncreate, So that he lived before he died As one who hourly to himself denied All joys save those that cannot pall, Who having nothing yet had all. FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND I When I was a boy there was a friend of mine, We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine, Stupid old animals who never understood And never had an impulse and said "you must be good."  We slank like stoats and fled like foxes, We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes, Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame— O the surprise when the postman came! We stole eggs and apples and made fine hay In people's houses when people were away, We broke street lamps and away we ran, Then I was a boy but now I am a man. Now I am a man and don't have any fun, I hardly ever shout and I never never run, And I don't care if he's dead that friend of mine, For then I was a boy and now I am a swine. II We met again the other night With people; you were quite polite, Shook my hand and spoke awhile Of common things with cautious smile; Paid the usual debt men owe To fellows whom they used to know. But, when our eyes met full, yours dropped, And sudden, resolute, you stopped, Moving with hurried syllables To make remarks to some one else. I caught them not, to me they said: "Let the dead past bury its dead, Things were very different then, Boys are fools and men are men." Several times the other night You did your best to be polite; When in the conversation's round You heard my tongue's familiar sound You bent in eager pose my way To hear what I had got to say; Trying, you thought with some success, To hide the chasm's nakedness. But on your eyes hard films there lay; No mock-interest, no pretence Could veil your blank indifference; And if thoughts came recalling things Far-off, far-off, from those old springs When underneath the moon and sun Our separate pulses beat as one, Vagrant tender thoughts that asked Admittance found the portal masked; You spurned them; when I'd said my say, With laugh and nod you turned away To toss your friends some easy jest That smote my brow and stabbed my breast. Foolish though it be and vain I am not master of my pain, And when I said good-night to you I hoped we should not meet again, And wondered how the soul I knew Could change so much; have I changed too? III There was a man whom I knew well Whose choice it was to live in hell; Reason there was why that was so But what it was I do not know. He had a room high in a tower, And sat there 

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