The South Seas

Mutability

Clouds

Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence)

One Day

Waikiki

Hauntings

He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her

Doubts

There's Wisdom in Women

Fafaia

Heaven

The Great Lover

Retrospect

Tiare Tahiti

 

Mutability

They say there's a high windless world and strange,
   Out of the wash of days and temporal tide,
   Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide,
Aeterna corpora, subject to no change.
There the sure suns of these pale shadows move;
   There stand the immortal ensigns of our war;
   Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star,
And perishing hearts, imperishable Love. . . .

Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;
   Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;
   Love has no habitation but the heart.
Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,
   Cling, and are borne into the night apart.
   The laugh dies with the lips, `Love' with the lover.

South Kensington -- Makaweli, 1913.