Where shall we land you, sweet?
On fields of strange men's feet,
Or fields near home?

Or where the fire-flowers blow,
Or where the flowers of snow
Or flowers of foam?

We are in love's hand to-day-

Land me, she says, where love
Shows but one shaft, one dove,
One heart, one hand.

-A shore like that, my dear,
Lies where no man will steer,
No maiden land.

HENDECASYLLABICS.

In the month of the long decline of roses
I, beholding the summer dead before me,
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
Moving tremulous under feet of angels
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
Heard between them a voice of exultation,
'Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
All the fruits of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.

All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,

All are taken away; the season wasted,
Like an ember among the fallen ashes.

Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,

Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets

When low light was upon the windy reaches
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows

And green fields of the sea that make no pasture :
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,

All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever.'

In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die.

But the Gods of your fashion

That take and that give,

In their pity and passion"

That scourge and forgive,

They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they Ishall die and not live.

My own blood is what stanches

The wounds in my bark;

Stars caught in my branches

Make day of the dark,

And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their

fires as a spark.

Where dead ages hide under

393

The live roots of the tree,

In my darkness the thunder
Makes utterance of me;

In the clash of my boughs with each other ye, hear the waves sound of the sea.

That noise is of Time,

As his feathers are spread

And his feet set to climb

Through the boughs overhead,

And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread.

The storm-winds of ages

Blow through me and cease,

The war-wind that rages,

The spring-wind of peace,

Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase.

All sounds of all changes,

All shadows and lights

On the world's mountain-ranges

And stream-riven heights,

Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights;

All forms of all faces,

All works of all hands

In unsearchable places

Of time-stricken lands,

All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.

Though sore be my burden

And more than ye know,

And my growth have no guerdon

But only to grow,

Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or death

worms below.

These too have their part in me,

As I too in these;

Such fire is at heart in me,

Such sap is this tree's,

Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and

of seas.

In the spring-coloured hours.

When my mind was as May's,
There brake forth of me flowers
By centuries of days,

Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.

And the sound of them springing

And the smell of their shoots
Were as warmth and sweet singing

And strength to my roots;

And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.

Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows.

In the darkening and whitening
Abysses adored,

With dayspring and lightning

For lamp and for sword,

God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath

of the Lord.

O my sons, O too dutiful
Toward Gods not of me,
Was not I enough beautiful?

Was it hard to be free?

For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see.

Lo, winged with world's wonders,

With miracles shod,

With the fires of his thunders

For raiment and rod,

God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God.

For his twilight is come on him,

His anguish is here;

And his spirits gaze dumb on him,

Grown grey from his fear;

And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite

year.

Even love, the lives.

Thought made him and breaks him,

Truth slays and forgives;

But to you, as time takes him,

This new thing it gives,

beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and

For truth only is living,

Truth only is whole,

And the love of his giving

Man's polestar and pole;

Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul.

One birth of my bosom;

One beam of mine eye;

One topmost blossom

That scales the sky;

Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that

is I.