O silent lover of a world day-worn,
Taking the weary light to thy dusk arms,
Stealing where pale forms lie, sun-hurt and torn,
Waiting the balm of thy oblivious charms,
Make me thy captive ere I guess pursuit,
And cast me deep within some dreamless close,
Where hopes stir not, and white, wronged lips are mute,
And Pain's hot wings fold down o'er hushed woes.
And if ere morn thou choosest me to free,
Let it not be, dear jailer, through the door
That timeward opes, but to eternity
Set thou the soul that needs thee nevermore;
So I from sleep to death may softly wend
As one would pass from gentle friend to friend.
"LE PENSEUR"
Warm in this marble, that is stone no more,
Life at wound-pause lifts ear to woundless mind;
Backward the ages their slow clew unwind,
And step by step, and star by star, lead o'er
The trail again, where eyeless passion tore
Its red way to a soul. Mist-bound and blind
No more, the thinker waits, and God grown kind
Flashes a foot-print where He goes before.
Not to be followed! Falls the cloud again;
Folds the stern form around the striving doubt,
And curve betrays to curve the silent birth
That shall be voice to later times and men;
While lone in unlit dark, within, without,
He sits immortal on a godless earth.