The sum of all that fascinating truth
That you have gleaned, hands tangled in brown hair,
Eyes straining into contemplative fires,--
This truth shall not seem truth when trees are bare.

The hunger of the soul, the watcher left
To brood the nearness of his own decay,
Dully remarking the slow shameless theft
Of the old holiness from day to day,
How youth grows tarnished, wisdom changes false,--
Till one bends near to steal your life away.

Yet who am I to turn aside the hand
Outstretched so friendly and so humbly proud,
Heaped up with beauty from the sunrise land
Of hearts adventurous and heads unbowed?
Only, look not at me with changing eyes
When we must separate amid the crowd.

TOURS, 1918


V - ESTHER DANCING

Speak not nor stir. Here music is alive,
Woven from those swift fingers, strong and light,
Marching across those singing hands, or shed
Slowly, like echoes down the muffled night,
Or beautifully translated, note by note,
Some fainter voice, rhapsodic and remote,