Page:The children of the night.djvu/32



from the street and the crowds that went, Morning and midnight, to and fro, Still was the room where his days he spent, And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

Year after year, with his dream shut fast, He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim, For the love that his brushes had earned at last,— And the whole world rang with the praise of him.

But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead, Till his cheeks were sere and his hairs were gray. "There are women enough, God knows," he said. . . . "There are stars enough—when the sun’s away."

Then he went back to the same still room That had held his dream in the long ago, When he buried his days in a nameless tomb, And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

And a passionate humor seized him there— Seized him and held him until there grew Like life on his canvas, glowing and fair, A perilous face—and an angel’s, too.