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After Love

Sweet it is to meet again,
Now that love is past,
We are free of joy and pain
At last.

Sweet it is to touch your hair,
Now we love no more,
All the longing and despair
Gone before.

Sweet it is to feel you near,
Now that love is dead,
All the anguish and the fear
Finally fled.

Sweet it is to know that we
Now have reached the land,
After years on Love's wide sea,
Hand in hand!

Shadow

I can love only you,
And since you can never be mine
Therefore I must love a shadow.

O Shadow, lovely as dawnrise,
Like a wind of summer are you to my soul,
Soft wind amid the skies.

Forever must I love only a shadow
Impalpable, exquisite thing,
Diaphanous as a rainbow wing.

(But when the long dark nights are here,
It is your lips I need, and I would rest
On the white violet of your breast.)

Nocturne

I lie alone under the boughs of the trees;
They drip clear water,
And the rain dances about me
In bright flashes like little stars.
The trees are thick and lowering;
The night is very black
And there is no wind;
Only the darkness that shuts out the wide, cool sky.

There is fear at my heart,
Fear that closes about me like the night,
Fear that comes in little quick flashes
Like the drops of rain.

Is it of the wide still night
That I am fearful. . . .
(O dark, starless and full of silence!)

Chant of Life

Only Love is real,
Life is a dream and I as a dream pass by.

My fellow-creatures
Are marionettes that swing thro' space;

Like gyrating figures
They pass in a pageant of myriad color;

Even as I, too, pass
Moved by the unseen strings that shift the scene.

And I know not why
There is all this weeping and laughter upon earth.

All things are but shadows,
Life is a dream and I as a dream pass by.

Only Love is real,
Only the face of Love as it lies on my heart.

When I Am Dead

When I am dead,
Bury me with the one I love,
With my head
On his bosom, and my heart
On his heart;
Let green grasses spring above.
(Nevermore, Beloved, to part!)

When I am dead,
Bury me with the one I love,
Spirit-wed
In sweet trust,
Bone with bone and dust with dust,
Let green grasses spring above.
(Nevermore, Beloved, to part!)

Choice

I sang, " O, Love, set me free —
As a bird on the air
My heart would be,
Sailing afar where the skies are fair,
Thro' the endless years. "

But when Love left,
And I walked alone,
I said bereft:
" Come back, my own,
Give me my tears! "

Mutability

Must
The gold of this hair
Become dust,
And this white breast,
Soft like the nest
Of a dove,
Fade on air?
Must
These sweet finger-tips,
Made
For love,
And these rose lips,
Fade
To dust?
How could such beauty be
To perish utterly. . . .

Song of Freedom

I will go out and forget love and be as a bird in the sky —
Free with the soaring breezes and the clouds that wander by;
(I will go out and forget love and be as a bird in the sky!)

I will go out in the wide lands, alone in endless space,
Where the earth is a-blaze with splendor, and I kneel in the sun's embrace;
(I will go out in the wide lands alone in endless space.)

I will go out and forget love as the wild wind in the sky,
And be as a bird without bourne or kin or aught to hold me by —
(I will go out and forget love as the wild wind in the sky!)