4 
ROSA COELI 
 
 
We radiate love, a velvet-soft complaint, 
Most like the echo of a chime at vesper 
Rung far across narcissus-haunted leas, 
Lilied lagoons, and moon-enchanted seas, 
By the high-bosomed boy, large-eyed, with fasting faint  
That shares an hermitage with some devoutest saint. 
 
III 
As, in our life, I passed the awful gate 
Where like a Cerberus sate 
The triform silence, Fate, 
And bade the red blood bloom 
Within that Palace of untasted gloom ;   
As, in our life, confronting the black forms— 
Colossal ghosts, like storms !— 
I did abide in the most holy hall 
And let the dread word fall, 
Nor bade the red axe falter 
There as I bowed mine head 
Upon the amber altar, 
And shed my life out there before ye all, 
Careless if I had summoned from the skies 
Some young true God, or spoiled the sacrifice, 
And were but dead as any man is dead !   
So I have given up my inmost life 
Even unto you, sweet wife, 
Careless—yet conscious of the babe-stirred womb 
Of some dread Mother older than the Tomb, 
Wiser than Life, more pitiful than Death.