William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Faces

FOUR faces in the dark,

Eight eyes aglow

With the pale lunar spark

Fireflies do show.

Four brows, specter-white,

Crowned with lambent hair;—

Only in the blackest night

Are these things there.

Eight lips that question me,

Moving to and fro;

Quiet as shadows be

On new-fallen snow.

Eight hands beckoning,

Spindrift of the wind;—

Past all mortal reckoning

Are phantoms of the mind.

Deep, return to deep again,

And old dreams fade.

Children, let me sleep again,

Calm and unafraid.

The Outlook