I
Penury
Above his misered embers, gaunt and gray,
With toil-gnarled limbs he stoops: around his hut,
Want, like a hobbling hag, goes, night and day,
Trying the windows and the doors tight-shut.
II
Strategy
Craft’s silent sister and the daughter deep
Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below
A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe,
With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.
III
Tempest
With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies,
On steeds of thunder, form on cloudy form,
Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes,
Sweep down the wild Valkyries of the storm.
IV
The Locust Blossom
The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met
The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour:
Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet,
Was born the fragrant beauty of this flower.
V
Melancholy
With shadowy immortelles of memory
About her brow, she sits with eyes that look
Upon the stream of Lethe wearily,
In hesitant hands Death’s partly-opened book.
VI
Content
Among the meadows of Life’s sad unease—
In labor still renewing her soul’s youth—
With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace,
Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.
VII
Life and Death
Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein
Two shades are imaged, passing like a breath:
And one is Life, whose other name is Sin;
And one is Love, whose other name is Death.
VIII
Sorrow
Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love’s tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life’s remembered joys.