The Star-Treader and Other Poems

The cherry-snows are falling now;
Down from the blossom-clouded sky
Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough,
In widely settling whirls they fly.
The orchard earth, unclothed and brown,
Is wintry-hued with petals bright;
E'en as the snow they glimmer down;
Brief as the snow's their stainless white.

FAIRY LANTERNS

'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light
The elves upon their midnight way;
That fairy toil and elfin play
Receive their beams of magic white.
I marvel not if it be true;
I know this flower has lighted me
Nearer to Beauty's mystery,
And past the veils of secrets new.

NIRVANA

Poised as a god whose lone, detachèd post,
An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks
Of finite years, and those unvaried darks
That veil Eternity, I saw the host
Of worlds and suns, swept from the furthermost
Of night—confusion as of dust with sparks—
Whirl tow'rd the opposing brink; as one who harks
Some warning trumpet, Time, a withered ghost,
Fled with them; disunited orbs that late
Were atoms of the universal frame,
They passed to some eternal fragment-heap.
And, lo, the gods, from space discorporate,
Who were its life and vital spirit, came,
Drawn outward by the vampire-lips of Sleep!

THE NEMESIS OF SUNS

Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world,
Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun—
Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun
Beneath the roof of Night, and torn or furled
By Night at will? All opposite powers upwhirled
Are less than chaff to this imperious one—
As wind-tossed chaff, until its sport be done,
Scattered, and lifted up, and downward hurled.
All gyres are held within the path unspanned
Of Night's aeonian compass—loosely pent
As with the embrace of lethal-tightening weight;
All suns are grasped within the hollow hand
Of Night, the godhead sole, omnipotent,
Whose other names are Nemesis and Fate.

WHITE DEATH

Methought the world was bound with final frost;
The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe,
Illumined yet the lands it could not thaw.
Then on my road, with instant evening crost,
Death stood, and in its shadowy films enwound,
Mine eyes forgot the light, until I came
Where poured the inseparate, unshadowed flame
Of phantom suns in self-irradiance drowned.
Death lay revealed in all its haggardness—
Immitigable wastes horizonless;
Profundities that held nor bar nor veil;
All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed
In light invariable nullified;
All darkness rendered shelterless and pale.

RETROSPECT AND FORECAST