Page:The torrent and The night before.djvu/18

 SONNET we can all so excellently give The measure of love's wisdom with a blow,— Why can we not in turn receive it so, And end this murmur for the life we live? And when we do so frantically strive To win strange faith, why do we shun to know That in love's elemental over-glow God's wholeness gleams with light superlative?

O brother men, if you have eyes at all, Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose— Or anything God ever made that grows— Nor let the smallest vision of it slip Till you can read, as on Belshazzar's wall, The glory of eternal partnership!

HER EYES 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 sore 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