Looking at a Picture on an Anniversary

But don't you know it, my dear,

   Don't you know it,

That this day of the year

(What rainbow-rays embow it!)

We met, strangers confessed,

   But parted--blest?

Though at this query, my dear,

   There in your frame

Unmoved you still appear,

You must be thinking the same,

But keep that look demure

   Just to allure.

And now at length a trace

   I surely vision

Upon that wistful face

Of old-time recognition,

Smiling forth, "Yes, as you say,

   It is the day."

For this one phase of you

   Now left on earth

This great date must endue

With pulsings of rebirth? -

I see them vitalize

   Those two deep eyes!

But if this face I con

   Does not declare

Consciousness living on

Still in it, little I care

To live myself, my dear,

   Lone-labouring here!

Spring 1913.

Aberdeen (April:1905)

"And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times." - Isaiah xxxiii. 6.

I looked and thought, "All is too gray and cold

To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!"

Till a voice passed:  "Behind that granite mien

Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen."

I looked anew; and saw the radiant form

Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm,

On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime

Men count for the stability of the time.

Just the same

I sat.  It all was past;

Hope never would hail again;

Fair days had ceased at a blast,

The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,

And the halo in which I had hied

So gaily gallantly on

Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,

In a cloud too black for name:

- People frisked hither and thither;

The world was just the same.