We wait for some decisive hour,
To rise and take our liberty.
Still we delay, content to be
Imprisoned in our own high tower.
What is it but a strong-built bower?
Ours are the warders, ours the key.
But we through indolence grow weak.
Our warders, fed with power so long,
Become at last our lords indeed.
We vainly threaten, vainly seek
To move their ruth. The bars are strong.
We dash against them till we bleed.
AN AFTERTHOUGHT
You found my life, a poor lame bird
That had no heart to sing,
You would not speak the magic word
To give it voice and wing.
Yet sometimes, dreaming of that hour,
I think, if you had known
How much my life was in your power,
It might have sung and flown.
TO J. R.
Last Sunday night I read the saddening story
Of the unanswered love of fair Elaine,
The `faith unfaithful' and the joyless glory
Of Lancelot, `groaning in remorseful pain.'
I thought of all those nights in wintry weather,
Those Sunday nights that seem not long ago,
When we two read our Poet's words together,
Till summer warmth within our hearts did glow.
Ah, when shall we renew that bygone pleasure,
Sit down together at our Merlin's feet,
Drink from one cup the overflowing measure,
And find, in sharing it, the draught more sweet?
That time perchance is far, beyond divining.
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