Such are her attributes and aims,
Yet meekly we obey,
While she to guide and order claims
All issues of the day.

You seek for honour, friendship, truth?
Let Middle-age be banned!
Go, for warm-hearted acts, to Youth;
To Age,--to understand!


The Jungle Flower


Ah, the cool silence of the shaded hours,
The scent and colour of the jungle flowers!

Thou art one of the jungle flowers, strange and fierce and fair,
Palest amber, perfect lines, and scented with champa flower.
Lie back and frame thy face in the gloom of thy loosened hair;
Sweet thou art and loved--ay, loved--for an hour.

But thought flies far, ah, far, to another breast,
Whose whiteness breaks to the rose of a twin pink flower,
Where wind the azure veins that my lips caressed
When Fate was gentle to me for a too-brief hour.

There is my spirit's home and my soul's abode,
The rest are only inns on the traveller's road.