I

A BABY'S feet, like seashells pink,
— Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
— They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink
— Gleam half so heavenly sweet,
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.

II

A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled,
— Where yet no leaf expands,
Ope if you touch, though close upcurled, —

IV

No, no, 't is very much too late.
I thought it mockery that you said
You loved me; but a certain fate
Lowers your voice and bows your head.
I tell you, you desire to wake the dead.

'T is pitiful so to drag out
The sorry quarrel in our souls,
Till even the blood suspends in doubt
And each full impulse backward rolls.
Meantime the hour regardless passing tolls.

Yes! think how year on year is gone.
You went your way and hummed your dreams
Of passion and oblivion

III

There's just a bit of twilight yet,
A glossy gray that floats the sea
From yonder, where the daylight set,
To me.

All else is violet growing dark.
Southward, a sorrow breaks the sky.
The tide in languor of its mark
Is high.

And old night thickens on the strand.
There is no motion but the wave's,
Along the leagues of listening sand
That raves.

And nothing now. The lighthouse lit.
If ships there be, they're far from coast.
All's safe. But something infinite
Is lost.

II

I hear you singing in my breast,
I hear you chanting in my mind.
Is it the wind?

I feel your form upon my eyes,
I feel your fingers press my sight.
Is it the night?

I hear the little noise of feet
And footsteps come and come again.
Is it the rain?

And all alone with memory
My brain grows anxious for the day.
You're long away.

" Will you look down once more, just once?
Down to the ground and keep your veil
Drawn o'er your half-guessed countenance
And smile — so frail?

I

Love , I marvel what you are!
Heaven in a pearl of dew,
Lilies hearted with a star —
All are you.

Spring along your forehead shines
And the summer blooms your breast.
Graces of autumnal vines
Round you rest.

Birds about a limpid rose
Making song and light of wing
While the warm wind sunny blows, —
So you sing.

Darling, if the little dust,
That I know is merely I,
Have availed to win your trust,
Let me die.

Brown eyes I say, yet say I blue.

JOURNALISTS

On a Panel in the Hall of the Institute of Journalists

We have served our day.

ACTORS

On a Memorial Tablet in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon

We counterfeited once for your disport
Men's joy and sorrow: but our day has passed.
We pray you pardon all where we fell short —
Seeing we were your servants to this last.

V.A.D. (MEDITERRANEAN)

Ah, would swift ships had never been, for then we ne'er had found,
These harsh Ægean rocks between, this little virgin drowned,
Whom neither spouse nor child shall mourn, but men she nursed through pain
And — certain keels for whose return the heathen look in vain.

SALONIKAN GRAVE

I have watched a thousand days
Push out and crawl into night
Slowly as tortoises.
Now I, too, follow these.
It is fever, and not the fight —
Time, not battle, — that slays.

RAPED AND REVENGED

One used and butchered me: another spied
Me broken — for which thing an hundred died.
So it was learned among the heathen hosts
How much a freeborn woman's favour costs.