Up from the street and the crowds that went,
       &nbsp Morning and midnight, to and fro,
Still was the room where his days he spent,
       &nbsp And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

Year after year, with his dream shut fast,
       &nbsp He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim,
For the love that his brushes had earned at last, —
       &nbsp And the whole world rang with the praise of him.

But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead,
       &nbsp Till his cheeks were sere and his hairs were gray.
"There are women enough, God knows," he said. . . .
       &nbsp "There are stars enough — when the sun's away."

Then he went back to the same still room
       &nbsp That had held his dream in the long ago,
When he buried his days in a nameless tomb,
       &nbsp And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

And a passionate humor seized him there —
       &nbsp Seized him and held him until there grew
Like life on his canvas, glowing and fair,
       &nbsp A perilous face — and an angel's, too.

Angel and maiden, and all in one, —
       &nbsp All but the eyes. — They were there, but yet
They seemed somehow like a soul half done.
       &nbsp What was the matter? Did God forget? . . .

But he wrought them at last with a skill so sure
       &nbsp That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman, —
With a gleam of heaven to make them pure,
       &nbsp And a glimmer of hell to make them human.

God never forgets. — And he worships her
       &nbsp There in that same still room of his,
For his wife, and his constant arbiter
       &nbsp Of the world that was and the world that is.

And he wonders yet what her love could be
       &nbsp To punish him after that strife so grim;
But the longer he lives with her eyes to see,
       &nbsp The plainer it all comes back to him.