O DESERT OF THE HEART.
O Desert of the heart, in these long eves,
When Autumn brings our flowerless Winter on.
What a bleak wind across thy wild waste grieves
With hollow murmurs for the dead and gone!
O Desert of the heart!
In our fresh youth, when all things are new-born,
Before we love, in our impatience, old,
We mourn our fates as though we were forlorn:
Then also how thou seemest vast and cold!
O Desert of the heart!
We long for love, we think the heavens are rude,
The future looks all cloud and storm and rain,
And fierce against the barriers that exclude
Our bliss we strike, but seem to strike in vain,
O Desert of the heart!
Illusions! Run, O frank and bounding youth!
There, at two paces, is the bush in flower,
No more the desert. But for age, in sooth,
Is there a white-rose bush or jasmine bower,
O Desert of the heart?
