“What I love best in all the world?”
WHEN the purple twilight is unbound,
To watch her slow, tall grace
and its wistful loveliness,
And to know her face
is in the shadow there,
Just by two stars beneath that cloud—
The soft, dim cloud of her hair,
And to think my voice
can reach to her
As but the rumour of some tree-bound stream,
Heard just beyond the forest’s edge,
Until she all forgets I am,
And knows of me
Naught but my dream’s felicity.
GREEK EPIGRAM
DAY and night are never weary,
Nor yet is God of creating
For day and night their torch-bearers,
The aube and the crepuscule.
So, when I weary of praising the dawn and the sunset,
Let me be no more counted among the immortals;
But number me amid the wearying ones,
Let me be a man as the herd,
And as the slave that is given in barter.