“ Then swoops and hawks along night-hidden bowers,
To hang on murmuring plumes and drink the livid flowers.
Most fair, most foul, at Moira's stern decree
The radiant monster wanders wretchedly
Haunting each strand and isle of that lone shore
Where never human eye may see her more,
Or sentient soul delight and tremble and adore.
Yet deep in dreams I often faintly hear,
Like a sad wind that strokes my sleeping ear,
By fairy waters of that far lagoon,
The moon-moth wailing, wailing to the moon
Through many a silver night at hour of plenilune. ”

“ Before thine hour-glass grey hath run its measure out.
"Your yesterday, you immemorial things,
Whereon the ages yet no shadow cast,
For me the hurrying and sleepless wings
Of year on stormy year have swept into the past.
"Yet think not I have lost that faith and joy
Felt when my world was young and I a part.
Oh, sea and sand and wild, west wind, your boy
Lies hidden safe within my steadfast, changeless heart." ”

“ They answer not, but seek the shadowy crepuscule.
The Stone Man lifted them; his hairy hand
They felt and knew, when Night's eternal brow
Gleamed with another diadem than now
Ere Egypt's mountain graves pressed on the desert sand.
Bowed but enduring, Time hath failed to break
That emblem of eternity they trace
Upon the bosom of this desolate place;
And holy shall it be for their most ancient sake.
They have withdrawn upon the unseen light
Of immemorial time; the vanished past
Receives them once again to haunt her vast--
A sanctity beyond wild Chaos and old Night. ”

“ There lurked a tragedy in every sea-bird's wail.
And now the watchful sea doth bid me say;
The salt air whispers me to speak and tell
Where is that little boy from yesterday
Whom wind and wave and sand and sunshine knew so well?
"He was our playmate; us he understood
And ran to us with glory in his eyes;
We loved him and we wrought to work his good;
We made him strong and brave and with our wisdom wise.
"Will he not come again? The flowerets small
Have opened for his eager hands once more;
Among the yellow whins the linnets call,
The wrack and shells he sought still drift along the shore. ”

“ THE CIRCLE
When shepherd darkness folds the fading day
And faints the West beneath the world's wide brim,
There stands a brotherhood, remote and dim,
Of cowled and hooded wights rolled up in granite grey.
Spirits of dusk from out a far-off prime
Beyond the shadowy pale of bygone eld,
Immutable and constant and unquelled,
They hold their everlasting state and tryst with Time.
These stones have seen the red-eyed wolf pack throng
To slay the fleeting elk upon the waste,
And they have marked the cave bear's clumsy haste,
Shuffling great golden furse and ragged rocks among. ”

“ With faded serecloth grey--a winding-sheet for gown.
And while she hides within some tawny brake
Her shard but echoes the dead leaf and snake,
Where, tranced in slumber, through the long day's prime
Her motley coverings harmonious chime
With sad, crepuscular shades in dusky, twilight rhyme.
Invisible thus; but when returning night
Drowns with a purple torrent all the light,
She rises woman high and spreads her wing,
A rare, unparagoned, unearthly thing
Beyond the dream of joy or grief's imagining. ”

“ She sparkled through the smother and clamoured mournfully.
In gentle hands and steady, I lifted her delight,
Made sure that she was ready, then flung with all my might.
She sprang, like salmon leaping; she laughed in radiant
And gathered to safe keeping her rosy, golden boy.
I'd earned a mother's blessing--a good thing any day;
But now one fell to guessing what Science had to say:
For such authentic wonders, upon an ebbing tide,
Show zoologic blunders that cannot be denied. ”