That I must writhe in bonds unsought of accidental love and hate? Had chance but joinèd different dice, but once or twice, but once or twice, All lovely things that I desired I should have held before too late. Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued overmuch the prize, But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise. Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a sword Flaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise. THE OTHER No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay, No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way, Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men, That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may. Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum; Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come; Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied; Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb. O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue, All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung, Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all, Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a curtain flung. CREPUSCULAR No creature stirs in the wide fields. The rifted western heaven yields The dying sun's illumination. This is the hour of tribulation When, with clear sight of eve engendered, Day's homage to delusion rendered, Mute at her window sits the soul. Clouds and skies and lakes and seas, Valleys and hills and grass and trees, Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her Limbs of one lordless challenger, Who, without deigning taunt or frown, Throws a perennial gauntlet down: "Come conquer me and take thy toll."  No cowardice or fear she knows, But, as once more she girds, there grows An unresignèd hopelessness From memory of former stress. Head bent, she muses whilst he waits: How with such weapons dint his plates? How quell this vast and sleepless giant Calmly, immortally defiant, How fell him, bind him, and control With a silver cord and a golden bowl? AT NIGHT Dark firtops foot the moony sky, Blue moonlight bars the drive; Here at the open window I Sit smoking and alive. Wind in the branches swells and breaks Like ocean on a beach; Deep in the sky and my heart there wakes A thought I cannot reach. FOR MUSIC Death in the cold grey morning Came to the man where he lay; And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered And the dawn was grey. And the face of the man was grey in the dawn, And the watchers by the bed Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves, That the man was dead. THE ROOF I When the clouds hide the sun away The tall slate roof is dull 

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