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.