IN TIME OF TROUBLE

In memory of your desolate eyes I know

That words are words, with nothing to gainsay

The testimony of pain, the heavy day;

But searching in the ruins of overthrow

I gathered you this wreath that now I show;

Small and barbaric brightness on the gray,—

Glimmering irony, perhaps. I lay

It down before your eyes, and softly go.

You are a vista blundered on in Arden

Where the fool grasps his bells, that he may hark;

A sudden skyward path where cliffs are warden

Of waves that foam to reach a high tide-mark;

Whisper of blossoms in a midnight garden;

A fountain whitely flowering on the dark.