"'So sweet it is to stand but just apart,
To know each other better, and to keep
The soft, delicious sense of two that touch . . .

O love, not yet! . . . Sweet, let us keep our love
Wrapped round with sacred mystery awhile,
Waiting the secret of the coming years,
That come not yet, not yet . . . sometime . . .
not yet . . .

Oh, yet a little while our love may grow!
When it has blossomed it will haply die.
Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep,
Bedded in dead denial yet some while . . .
Oh, yet a little while, a little while.'

"I folded the book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving for
a long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse had
imparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God's
lightning in the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the
forerunner of young life--young life that is imperative to be born!

"I conned the lines over in my mind--'Not yet, sometime'--'O Love, not
yet'--'Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep.' And I laughed aloud,
ha, ha! I saw with white vision their blameless souls. They were
children. They did not understand. They played with Nature's fire and
bedded with a naked sword. They laughed at the gods. They would stop the
cosmic sap. They had invented a system, and brought it to the gaming-table
of life, and expected to win out. 'Beware!' I cried. 'The gods are behind
the table. They make new rules for every system that is devised. You have