Her Eyes

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.