I find no answer and sit silent, and they cry to me while dispersing, "We
seek a shepherdess!"

Whom should they seek?

That they do not know. And like derelict evening clouds they drift in the
trackless dark, and are lost and forgotten.



25


I feel that your brief days of love have not been left behind in those
scanty years of your life.

I seek to know in what place, away from the slow-thieving dust, you keep
them now. I find in my solitude some song of your evening that died, yet
left a deathless echo; and the sighs of your unsatisfied hours I find
nestled in the warm quiet of the autumn noon.

Your desires come from the hive of the past to haunt my heart, and I sit
still to listen to their wings.



26


You have taken a bath in the dark sea. You are once again veiled in a