Be quiet, restless heart! The long light lies
⁠In gleams of lingering sunshine on the hill;
The home-bound swallow, twittering as he flies,
⁠Makes silence seem more still.

The shadows deeper grow, and in the woods
⁠The air a latent sweetness holds in fee;
An odor faint of yet unblossomed buds —
⁠So like, dear heart, to thee!

Far distant in the soft, cerulean deep,
⁠Where the horizon bounds the nether world,
Great ships becalmed, like brooding birds asleep,
⁠Lie with white sails loose furled.

In peace the day is ended, and the night
⁠Falleth as doth a veil upon the sea;
Along its bosom come with swift-winged flight
⁠The gray mists silently.

O anxious heart, how Nature speaks! Her power
⁠How leisurely she uses! How intense
The infinite peace of her most fruitful hour!
⁠How soft her influence!

Time hath she for her Storms to sweep the main;
⁠To rock the treetops with her winds of wrath;
To bring forth fragrance in the summer rain;
⁠And time for snow she hath.

So, dear, for all thy eager soul desires,
⁠She keeps sweet times and seasons. In her mood
Is hid for thee all passion's subtle fires,
⁠To round thy womanhood.

Cease, then! and in this dewy twilight, move
⁠As one who asks not whither, cares not why;
This gift for all holds still the eternal love —
⁠God's endless by-and-by.

Seest thou, O maid! some star by us unseen,
⁠Buried from us in depths of starless space?
Know'st thou some joy of lesser joys the queen
⁠That lights so sweet a mystery in thy face?

That face is as the face of them that bask
⁠In some great tidings, or the face of one
Who late hath set his hand upon some task
⁠By God ordained, that shall for God be done.

That light is as the light of them who bent —
⁠That shepherd choir — above the babe new born:
Upward from Him thy day is ever sent,
⁠A lifelong kindling of the Bethlehem morn.

⁠When darkness hides me, dearest,
And when, this face, now daily in thy sight,
Becomes a dream to haunt the silent night,
And vanish when the busy noon is clearest;

⁠Then, dear, the love I gave thee,
Which ever for thy coming, lay in wait,
Exacting often and importunate,
Shall be a memory to bless and save thee.

⁠Some little foolish saying
Will wander back unto thee from the past,
Like a stray rose-branch o'er thy pathway cast,
With flowers and thorns thy careless steps waylaying.

⁠June roses in December! —
Dream roses, yet their phantom thorns give pain.
Somewhere, somehow, when we two meet again,
How much must we forget, how much remember!

O star on the breast of the river,
⁠0 marvel of bloom and grace,
Did you fall straight down from heaven
⁠Out of the sweetest place?
You are white as the thoughts of an angel;
⁠Your heart is steeped in the sun;
Did you grow in the golden city,
⁠My pure and radiant one?

Nay, nay, I fell not out of heaven;
⁠None gave me my saintly white;
It slowly grew from the blackness
⁠Down in the dreary night.
From the ooze of the silent river
⁠I won my glory and grace.
White souls fall not, O my poet;
⁠They rise to the sweetest place.

A child's a plaything for an hour;
⁠Its pretty tricks we try
For that or for a longer space;
⁠Then tire and lay it by.

But I knew one that to itself
⁠All seasons could control;
That would have mocked the sense of pain
⁠Out of a grievèd soul.

Thou straggler into loving arms,
⁠Young climber up of knees,
When I forget thy thousand ways,
⁠Then life and all shall cease.