To Professor and Mrs. J. S. Blackie

If Time that feeds love dies to die no more,
Immortal hours, dear friends, were yours and mine;
For Mom that on the hills oped eyes divine,
And Eve that walked like Mary by the shore
Where that old Dreamer, as he built, of yore,
Saw her, and told his dream in such a shrine!
As was a kind of Mary, and the shine
Of Noon, and starry censers swinging o'er
With Night, all made ye dearer: thou whose soul,
Palimpsest of a dead and living world,
Taketh no dust from that nor stain from this,
And thou who with thyself hast so empearled
The writing — knowing well how rare it is —
That the scrolled jewels and the jewelled scroll
In total more than both complete a married whole.