But she, demure as ever, and as fair,

Almost, as they remembered her before

She found him, would have laughed had she been there; And all they said would have been heard no more

Than foam that washes on an island shore

Where there are none to listen or to care.

JOB THE REJECTED

THEY met, and overwhelming her distrust
With penitence, he praised away her fear;
They married, and Job gave him half a year
To wreck the temple, as we knew he must.
He fumbled hungrily to readjust

A fallen altar, but the road was clear

By which it was her will to disappear

That evening when Job found him in the dust.

Job would have deprecated such a way
Of heaving fuel on a sacred fire,

Yet even the while we saw it going out,
Hardly was Job to find his hour to shout;
And Job was not, so far as we could say,
The confirmation of her soul's desire.

LOST ANCHORS

LIKE a dry fish flung inland far from shore,
There lived a sailor, warped and ocean-browned,
Who told of an old vessel, harbor-drowned
And out of mind a century before,

She gazed away where shadows were covering
The whole cold ocean's healing indifference.

No ship was coming. When the darkness
Fell, she was there, and alone, still gazing.

AN EVANGELIST'S WIFE

"WHY am I not myself these many days,
You ask? And have you nothing more to ask?
I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise
To God for giving you me to share your task?

"Jealous of Her? Because her cheeks are pink,
And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven.
If you should only steal an hour to think,
Sometime, there might be less to be forgiven.

"No, you are never cruel. If once or twice
I found you so, I could applaud and sing.
Jealous of-What? You are not very wise.
Does not the good Book tell you anything?

"In David's time poor Michal had to go. Jealous of God? Well, if you like it so."

THE OLD KING'S NEW JESTER

You that in vain would front the coming order With eyes that meet forlornly what they must, And only with a furtive recognition

See dust where there is dust,—

Be sure you like it always in your faces,

Obscuring your best graces,

Blinding your speech and sight,

Before you seek again your dusty places
Where the old wrong seems right.

Longer ago than cave-men had their changes
Our fathers may have slain a son o" two,
Discouraging a further dialectic

Regarding what was new;

And after their unstudied admonition

Occasional contrition

For their old-fashioned ways

May have reduced their doubts, and in addition Softened their final days.

Farther away than feet shall ever travel

Are the vague towers of our unbuilded State;
But there are mightier things than we to lead us,
That will not let us wait.

And we go on with none to tell us whether

Or not we've each a tether

Determining how fast or how far we go;
And it is well, since we must go together,
That we are not to know.

If the old wrong and all its injured glamour Haunts you by day and gives your night no peace,

You may as well, agreeably and serenely,

Give the new wrong its lease;

For should you nourish a too fervid yearning

For what is not returning,

The vicious and unfused ingredient

May give you qualms-and one or two concerning The last of your content.

LAZARUS

"No, Mary, there was nothing-not a word.
Nothing, and always nothing. Go again
Yourself, and he may listen-or at least
Look up at you, and let you see his eyes.
I might as well have been the sound of rain,
A wind among the cedars, or a bird;

Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you;
And even if he should say that we are nothing,

To know that you have heard him will be something.

And yet he loved us, and it was for love

The Master gave him back. Why did he wait
So long before he came? Why did he weep?

I thought he would be glad-and Lazarus—
To see us all again as he had left us-
All as it was, all as it was before."

Mary, who felt her sister's frightened arms

Like those of someone drowning who had seized her,
Fearing at last they were to fail and sink
Together in this fog-stricken sea of strangeness,
Fought sadly, with bereaved indignant eyes,
To find again the fading shores of home
That she had seen but now could see no longer
Now she could only gaze into the twilight,
And in the dimness know that he was there,
Like someone that was not. He who had been
Their brother, and was dead, now seemed alive
Only in death again-or worse than death;
For tombs at least, always until today,

Though sad were certain. There was nothing certain
For man or God in such a day as this;

For there they were alone, and there was he

Alone; and somewhere out of Bethany,
The Master-who had come to them so late,
Only for love of them and then so slowly,
And was for their sake hunted now by men
Who feared Him as they feared no other prey-
For the world's sake was hidden. "Better the tomb

For Lazarus than life, if this be life,"

She thought; and then to Martha, "No, my dear,"

She said aloud; "not as it was before.

Nothing is ever as it was before,

Where Time has been. Here there is more than Time;

And we that are so lonely and so far

From home, since he is with us here again,

Are farther now from him and from ourselves
Than we are from the stars. He will not speak
Until the spirit that is in him speaks;
And we must wait for all we are to know,
Or even to learn that we are not to know.
Martha, we are too near to this for knowledge,
And that is why it is that we must wait.
Our friends are coming if we call for them,
And there are covers we'll put over him

To make him warmer. We are too young, perhaps,
To say that we know better what is best
Than he. We do not know how old he is.
If you remember what the Master said,
Try to believe that we need have no fear.
Let me, the selfish and the careless one,
Be housewife and a mother for tonight;
For I am not so fearful as you are,
And I was not so eager."

Martha sank

Down at her sister's feet and there sat watching

A flower that had a small familiar name