Once Youth and Innocence, side by side,
With flaming swords at a garden gate
Stood forth in silence, to watch and wait,
Lest lust and evil their might defied.

Love's rarest fruits in that garden grew,
And lo ! a Pilgrim of pain and sin
Grown tired, would gladly have entered in,
And washed his soul in the gleaming dew.

He looked at Youth, and the Angel said :
' Behold me young, and behold me weak :
If you but crush me, the joy you seek
Shall quench desire on a rose-strewn bed,

'Yet oh! I pray you another hour,
For should you enter this Holy place,
My soul is given again to space,
And I must die as a blighted flower.'

Then all the sorrow and all the shame,
That life had taught him to understand,
Rose up, and fettered the Pilgrim's hand,
And murmur'd: 'Youth is a sacred name.'

He looked at Innocence, nude and white,
And all unconscious she met his gaze;
Her eyes were soft as an evening haze,
Her red lips fashioned to give delight.

She sighed,'I know not the boon you ask,
But Nature sent me to guard the way
That leads to realms of Eternal day;
I may not shrink from the Mother's task.

'Yet these fair limbs that are pure as snow,
Should you but sully by thought or deed
Must droop and fade as a broken reed,
That every wind of the earth may blow.'

Then all the goodness that he had missed,
Each dream of sweetness that passed him by,
Rose up, and cried: 'Thou shalt still deny
Thyself'—and Innocence stood unkissed.