Death

    Beauty beloved, who hast my heart inspired,
    Seen from afar, or with thy face concealed,
    Save, when in visions of the night revealed,
    Or seen in daydreams bright,
    When all the fields are filled with light,
    And Nature's smile is sweet,
    Say, hast thou blessed
    Some golden age of innocence,
    And floatest, now, a shadow, o'er the earth?
    Or hath Fate's envious doom
    Reserved thee for some happier day to come?

    To see thee e'er alive,
    No hope remains to me;
    Unless perchance, when from this body free,
    My wandering spirit, lone,
    O'er some new path, to some new world hath flown.
    E'en here, at first, I, at the dawn
    Of this, my day, so dreary and forlorn,
    Sought thee, to guide me on my...

At twilight time when tolls the chime,
    And saddest notes are falling,
A lonely bird with plaintive word
    Across the dusk is calling.
Vain doth it wait for one dear mate,
    That ne'er shall know the morrow;
Then sinks to rest with drooping crest
    In one long dream of sorrow.

Dearest, when night is here,
    To thee I'm calling,
Sadly as tear on tear
    Is slowly falling,
Oh, fold me near, more near -
    In love enthralling!
Here on thy breast,
    While life shall last,
With thee I stay.
    Here will I rest
Till night is past,
    And comes the day!

When first Diana leaves her bed,
    Vapours and steams her looks disgrace,
A frowzy dirty-colour'd red
    Sits on her cloudy wrinkled face:

But by degrees, when mounted high,
    Her artificial face appears
Down from her window in the sky,
    Her spots are gone, her visage clears.

'Twixt earthly females and the moon,
    All parallels exactly run;
If Celia should appear too soon,
    Alas, the nymph would be undone!

To see her from her pillow rise,
    All reeking in a cloudy steam,
Crack'd lips, foul teeth, and gummy eyes,
    Poor Strephon! how would he blaspheme!

The soot or powder which was wont
    To make her hair look black as jet,
Falls from her tresses on her front,
    A mingled mass of dirt and sweat.
<...

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,
Leaping like leopards to the sky,
Then at the feet of the old horizon
Laying her spotted face, to die;

Stooping as low as the otter's window,
Touching the roof and tinting the barn,
Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, --
And the juggler of day is gone!

But yesterday the earth drank like a child
With eager thirst the autumn rain.
Or like a wistful bride who waits the hour
Of love's mysterious bliss and pain.
And now the Spring is here with yearning eyes;
Midst shimmering golden flower-beds,
On meadows carpeted with varied hues,
In richest raiment clad, she treads.
She weaves a tapestry of bloom o'er all,
And myriad eyed young plants upspring,
White, green, or red like lips that to the mouth
Of the beloved one sweetly cling.
Whence come these radiant tints, these blended beams?
Here's such a dazzle, such a blaze,
As though each stole the splendor of the stars,
Fain to eclipse them with her rays.
Come! go we to the garden with our wine,
Which scatters sparks of hot desire,
Within our hand 't is cold, ...

That which eludes this verse and any verse,
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform'd in clearest eye or cunningest mind,
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,
Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,
Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted,
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd,        
Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.

Indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude,
Behind the mountain and the wood,
Companion of the city's busiest streets, through the a...

If hap it must, that I must see thee lie
Absyrtus-like, all torn confusedly:
With solemn tears, and with much grief of heart,
I'll recollect thee, weeping, part by part;
And having wash'd thee, close thee in a chest
With spice; that done, I'll leave thee to thy rest.

Upon the summit of his Century
He reared a Palace of enduring Art,
From whose wild windows never more depart
Beauty's pale light and starry fantasy:
Within is music, sobbing ceaselessly;
And phantom terror, spectres of the heart
And ghosts of grief and love that ever start
From haunted places, fleeing what none may see.
Around its towers the bird, that never dies,
Circles; the tempest beats with black alarm
On one red window where, beyond the storm,
The Lord of that high Palace dreams and sighs,
His Soul, with its Despair, a kingly form,
And Death with infinite pity in his eyes.

There's a place in the North where the bonnie broom grows,
Where winding through green meadows the silver Maine flows,
Every lark as it soars and sings that sweet spot knows;
                For the mate for whom it sings,
                Till the clear blue heaven rings,
Is brooding on its nest mid the daisies in the grass;
                And that psalmist sweet, the thrush,
                And the linnet in the bush,
Tell the children all their secrets in song as they pass.

Oh brightly shines the sun there where wee birdies sing,
A glamour's o'er the buds in the green lap of spring,
In happy, happy laughter children's voices ring!
                Like some fair enchanted ground,
                In memory it is found,
Where my childhood's golden hours of happine...

I stood on the bridge at midnight,
    As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
    Behind the dark church-tower.

I saw her bright reflection
    In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
    And sinking into the sea.

And far in the hazy distance
    Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
    Gleamed redder than the moon.

Among the long, black rafters
    The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
    Seemed to lift and bear them away;

As, sweeping and eddying through them,
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
    The seaweed floated wide.

And like those waters rushing
    Among the wooden piers,

"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa where Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd embower."
- Paradise Lost.


"Vallombrosa, I longed in thy shadiest wood
To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!"
Fond wish that was granted at last, and the Flood,
That lulled me asleep bids me listen once more.
Its murmur how soft! as it falls down the steep,
Near that Cell, yon sequestered Retreat high in air
Where our Milton was wont lonely vigils to keep
For converse with God, sought through study and prayer.

The Monks still repeat the tradition with pride,
And its truth who shall doubt? for his Spirit is here;
In the cloud-piercing rocks doth her grandeur abide,
In the pines pointing heavenward her beauty austere;
In the flower-be...

Dear heart, good-night!
Nay, list awhile that sweet voice singing
When the world is all so bright,
And the sound of song sets the heart a-ringing,
Oh, love, it is not right--
Not then to say, "Good-night."

Dear heart, good-night!
The late winds in the lake weeds shiver,
And the spray flies cold and white.
And the voice that sings gives a telltale quiver--
"Ah, yes, the world is bright,
But, dearest heart, good-night!"

Dear heart, good-night!
And do not longer seek to hold me!
For my soul is in affright
As the fearful glooms in their pall enfold me.
See him who sang how white
And still; so, dear, good-night.

Dear heart, good-night!
Thy hand I 'll press no more forever,
And mine eyes shall lose the light;
For the great ...

'T was a long parting, but the time
For interview had come;
Before the judgment-seat of God,
The last and second time

These fleshless lovers met,
A heaven in a gaze,
A heaven of heavens, the privilege
Of one another's eyes.

No lifetime set on them,
Apparelled as the new
Unborn, except they had beheld,
Born everlasting now.

Was bridal e'er like this?
A paradise, the host,
And cherubim and seraphim
The most familiar guest.

The apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
O rising moon!    O Lady moon!
Be you my lover's sentinel,
You cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
You cannot choose but know my love,
For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,
And he is soft as any dove,
And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily's singing seneschal
Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all
The violet hills are lost in gloom.
O risen moon!    O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
And if my...

    'Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long,
        To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist,
    The distant memories which slowly throng,
        Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.

    Happy the sturdy, vigorous-throated bell
        Who, spite of age alert and confident,
    Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel
        Flinging the ready challenge from his tent.

    For me, my soul is cracked; when sick with care,
    She strives with songs to people the cold air
        It happens often that her feeble cries

        Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies
    Wounded, forgotten, 'neath a mound of slain
    And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in pain.

White from her chrysalis of cloud,
The moth-like moon swings upward through the night;
And all the bee-like stars that crowd
The hollow hive of heav'n wane in her light.

Along the distance, folds of mist
Hang frost-pale, ridging all the dark with gray;
Tinting the trees with amethyst,
Touching with pearl and purple every spray.

All night the stealthy frost and fog
Conspire to slay the rich-robed weeds and flowers;
To strip of wealth the woods, and clog
With piled-up gold of leaves the creek that cowers.

I seem to see their Spirits stand,
Molded of moonlight, faint of form and face,
Now reaching high a chilly hand
To pluck some walnut from its spicy place:

Now with fine fingers, phantom-cold,
Splitting the wahoo's pods of rose, and ...

The long winter wanes. On the wings
of the spring come the geese and the mallards;
On the bare oak the red-robin sings,
and the crocus peeps up on the prairies,
And the bobolink pipes, but he brings
of the blue-eyed, brave White Chief no tidings.
With the waning of winter, alas,
waned the life of the aged Ta-té-psin;
Ere the wild pansies peeped from the grass,
to the Land of the Spirits he journeyed;
Like a babe in its slumber he passed,
or the snow from the hill-tops of April;
And the dark-eyed Winona, at last,
stood alone by the graves of her kindred.
When their myriad mouths opened the trees
to the sweet dew of heaven and the raindrops,
And the April showers fell on the leas,
on his mound fell the tears of Winona.
Round her drooping form gathered ...