MOMENTS OF VISION
 
      That mirror
   Which makes of men a transparency,
      Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
      Of you and me?
 
      That mirror
   Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
      Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
      Until we start?
 
      That mirror
   Works well in these night hours of ache;
      Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
      When the world is awake?
 
      That mirror
   Can test each mortal when unaware;
      Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
      Glassing it--where?
 
FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER

A day is drawing to its fall

   I had not dreamed to see;

The first of many to enthrall

   My spirit, will it be?

Or is this eve the end of all

   Such new delight for me?

I journey home:  the pattern grows

   Of moonshades on the way:

"Soon the first quarter, I suppose,"

   Sky-glancing travellers say;

I realize that it, for those,

   Has been a common day.

THE RIVAL

   I determined to find out whose it was -

   The portrait he looked at so, and sighed;

Bitterly have I rued my meanness

      And wept for it since he died!

   I searched his desk when he was away,

   And there was the likeness--yes, my own!

Taken when I was the season's fairest,

      And time-lines all unknown.

   I smiled at my image, and put it back,

   And he went on cherishing it, until

I was chafed that he loved not the me then living,

      But that past woman still.

   Well, such was my jealousy at last,

   I destroyed that face of the former me;

Could you ever have dreamed the heart of woman

      Would work so foolishly!

 HEREDITY

I am the family face;

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Projecting trait and trace

Through time to times anon,

And leaping from place to place

Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can

In curve and voice and eye

Despise the human span

Of durance--that is I;

The eternal thing in man,

That heeds no call to die.

 "YOU WERE THE SORT THAT MEN FORGET"

   You were the sort that men forget;

      Though I--not yet! -

Perhaps not ever.  Your slighted weakness

   Adds to the strength of my regret!

   You'd not the art--you never had

      For good or bad -

To make men see how sweet your meaning,

   Which, visible, had charmed them glad.

   You would, by words inept let fall,

      Offend them all,

Even if they saw your warm devotion

   Would hold your life's blood at their call.

   You lacked the eye to understand

      Those friends offhand

Whose mode was crude, though whose dim purport

   Outpriced the courtesies of the bland.

   I am now the only being who

      Remembers you

It may be.  What a waste that Nature

   Grudged soul so dear the art its due!

THE COMING OF THE END
 
  
   How it came to an end!
The meeting afar from the crowd,
And the love-looks and laughters unpenned,
The parting when much was avowed,
   How it came to an end!
 
   It came to an end;
Yes, the outgazing over the stream,
With the sun on each serpentine bend,
Or, later, the luring moon-gleam;
   It came to an end.
 
   It came to an end,
The housebuilding, furnishing, planting,
As if there were ages to spend
In welcoming, feasting, and jaunting;
   It came to an end.
 
   It came to an end,
That journey of one day a week:
("It always goes on," said a friend,
"Just the same in bright weathers or bleak;")
   But it came to an end.
 
   "HOW will come to an end
This orbit so smoothly begun,
Unless some convulsion attend?"
I often said.  "What will be done
   When it comes to an end?"
 
   Well, it came to an end
Quite silently--stopped without jerk;
Better close no prevision could lend;
Working out as One planned it should work
   Ere it came to an end.