PERILS OF THE SMALL HOURS.

When life burns low as the fire in the grate

And all the evening's books are read,

I sit alone, save for the dead

And the lovers I have grown to hate.

But all at once the narrow gloom

Of hatred and despair expands

In tenderness: thought stretches hands

To welcome to the midnight room

Another presence:— a memory

Of how last year in the sunlit field,

Laughing, you suddenly revealed

Beauty in immortality.

For so it is; a gesture strips

Life bare of all its make-believe.

All unprepared we may receive

Our casual apocalypse.

Sheer beauty, then you seemed to stir

Unbodied soul; soul sleeps to-night,

And love comes, dimming spirit's sight,

When body plays interpreter.