II. The Children of the Night   
14. Dear Friends   
     
DEAR friends, reproach me not for what I do,      
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say      
That I am wearing half my life away      
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.      
   
And if my bubbles be too small for you,           5   
Blow bigger then your own: the games we play      
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,      
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.      
   
And whose reads may get him some shrewd skill;      
And some unprofitable scorn resign,          10   
To praise the very thing that he deplores;      
So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,      
The shame I win for singing is all mine,      
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

II. The Children of the Night   
15. The Story of the Ashes and the Flame   
     
NO matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,      
There was her place. No matter what men said,      
No matter what she was; living or dead,      
Faithful or not, he loved her all the same.      
The story was as old as human shame,           5   
But ever since that lonely night she fled,      
With books to blind him, he had only read      
The story of the ashes and the flame.      
   
There she was always coming pretty soon      
To fool him back, with penitent scared eyes          10   
That had in them the laughter of the moon      
For baffled lovers, and to make him think—      
Before she gave him time enough to wink—      
Her kisses were the keys to Paradise.

II. The Children of the Night   
16. Amaryllis   
     
ONCE, when I wandered in the woods alone,      
An old man tottered up to me and said,      
“Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made      
For Amaryllis.” There was in the tone      
Of his complaint such quaver and such moan           5   
That I took pity on him and obeyed,      
And long stood looking where his hands had laid      
An ancient woman, shrunk to skin and bone.      
   
Far out beyond the forest I could hear      
The calling of loud progress, and the bold          10   
Incessant scream of commerce ringing clear;      
But though the trumpets of the world were glad,      
It made me lonely and it made me sad      
To think that Amaryllis had grown old.

II. The Children of the Night   
17. Zola   
     
BECAUSE he puts the compromising chart      
Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid;      
Because he counts the price that you have paid      
For innocence, and counts it from the start,      
You loathe him. But he sees the human heart           5   
Of God meanwhile, and in His hand was weighed      
Your squeamish and emasculate crusade      
Against the grim dominion of his art.      
   
Never until we conquer the uncouth      
Connivings of our shamed indifference          10   
(We call it Christian faith) are we to scan      
The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth      
To find, in hate’s polluted self-defence      
Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.

II. The Children of the Night   
18. The Pity of the Leaves   
     
VENGEFUL across the cold November moors,      
Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak      
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,      
Reverberant through lonely corridors.      
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,           5   
Words out of lips that were no more to speak—      
Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek      
Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.      
   
And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!      
The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside          10   
Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then      
They stopped, and stayed there—just to let him know      
How dead they were; but if the old man cried,      
They fluttered off like withered souls of men.

II. The Children of the Night   
19. Aaron Stark   
     
WITHAL a meagre man was Aaron Stark,      
Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose.      
A miser was he, with a miser’s nose,      
And eyes like little dollars in the dark.      
His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark;           5   
And when he spoke there came like sullen blows      
Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,      
As if a cur were chary of its bark.      
   
Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,      
Year after year he shambled through the town,          10   
A loveless exile moving with a staff;      
And oftentimes there crept into his ears      
A sound of alien pity, touched with tears,—      
And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.

II. The Children of the Night   
20. The Garden   
     
THERE is a fenceless garden overgrown      
With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves;      
And once, among the roses and the sheaves,      
The Gardener and I were there alone.      
He led me to the plot where I had thrown           5   
The fennel of my days on wasted ground,      
And in that riot of sad weeds I found      
The fruitage of a life that was my own.      
   
My life! Ah, yes, there was my life, indeed!      
And there were all the lives of humankind;          10   
And they were like a book that I could read,      
Whose every leaf, miraculously signed,      
Outrolled itself from Thought’s eternal seed.      
Love-rooted in God’s garden of the mind.

   
II. The Children of the Night   
21. Cliff Klingenhagen   
     
CLIFF KLINGENHAGEN had me in to dine      
With him one day; and after soup and meat,      
And all the other things there were to eat,      
Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine      
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign           5   
For me to choose at all, he took the draught      
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed      
It off, and said the other one was mine.      
   
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant      
By doing that, he only looked at me          10   
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.      
And though I know the fellow, I have spent      
Long time a-wondering when I shall be      
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.

II. The Children of the Night   
22. Charles Carville’s Eyes   
     
A MELANCHOLY face Charles Carville had,      
But not so melancholy as it seemed,      
When once you knew him, for his mouth redeemed      
His insufficient eyes, forever sad:      
In them there was no life-glimpse, good or bad,           5   
Nor joy nor passion in them ever gleamed;      
His mouth was all of him that ever beamed,      
His eyes were sorry, but his mouth was glad.      
   
He never was a fellow that said much,      
And half of what he did say was not heard          10   
By many of us: we were out of touch      
With all his whims and all his theories      
Till he was dead, so those blank eyes of his      
Might speak them. Then we heard them, every word

II. The Children of the Night   
23. The Dead Village   
     
HERE there is death. But even here, they say,      
Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon      
As desolate as ever the dead moon      
Did glimmer on dead Sardis, men were gay;      
And there were little children here to play,           5   
With small soft hands that once did keep in tune      
The strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon      
The change came, and the music passed away.      
   
Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things,—      
No life, no love, no children, and no men;          10   
And over the forgotten place there clings      
The strange and unrememberable light      
That is in dreams. The music failed, and then      
God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.