Death

    Bill, look here! Here's the Times. You see this picture,
    Read if you like a little later. You never
    Heard how I came to Fairbanks, chanced to stay.
    It's eight years now. You see in nineteen eleven
    I lived in Hammond, Indiana, thought
    I'd like a trip, see mountains, see Alaska,
    Perhaps find fortune or a woman - well
    You know from your experience how it is.
    It was July and from the train I saw
    The Canadian Rockies, stopped at Banff a day,
    At Lake Louise, and so forth. At Vancouver
    Found travelers feasting, Englishmen in drink,
    Flirtations budding, coming into flower;
    And eager spirits waiting for the boat.
    Up to this time I hadn't made a friend,
    Stalked silently about along the streets,
    D...

Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.
His mercy fills the Khyber hills, his grace is manifold;
He has taken toll of the North and the South, his glory reacheth far,
And they tell the tale of his charity from Balkh to Kandahar.

Before the old Peshawur Gate, where Kurd and Kaffir meet,
The Governor of Kabul dealt the Justice of the Street,
And that was strait as running noose and swift as plunging knife,
Tho' he who held the longer purse might hold the longer life.

There was a hound of Hindustan had struck a Yusufzai,
Wherefore they spat upon his face and led him out to die.
It chanced the King went forth that hour when throat was bared to knife;
The Kafir grovelled under-hoof and clamoured for his life.

Then said the King: "Have hope, O frien...

My sweetheart was naked, knowing my desire,
she wore only her tinkling jewellery,
whose splendour yields her the rich conquering fire
of Moorish slave-girls in the days of their beauty.

When, dancing, it gives out its sharp sound of mockery,
that glistening world of metal and stone,
I am ravished by ecstasy, love like fury
those things where light mingles with sound.

So she lay there, let herself be loved,
and, from the tall bed, she smiled with delight
on my love deep and sweet as the sea is moved,
rising to her as toward a cliff’s height.

Like a tamed tigress, her eyes fixed on me
with a vague dreamy air, she tried out her poses,
so wantonly and so innocently,
it gave a new charm to her metamorphoses:

and her arm and her leg, and her ...

(To J.S. and A.W.S.)


In entering the town, where the bright river
Shrinks in its white stone bed, old thoughts return
Of how a quiet queen was nurtured here
In the pale, shadowed ruin on the height;
Of how, when the hoar town was new and clean
And had not grown a part of the gaunt fells
That peered down into it, the burghers wove
On their small, fireside looms green, famous webs
To cling on lissome, tower-dwelling ladies
Who rode the hills swaying like green saplings,
Or mask tall, hardy outlaws from pursuit
Down beechen caverns and green under-lights,
(The rude, vain looms are gone, their beams are broken;
Their webs are now not seen, but memory
Still tangles in their mesh the dews they swept
Like ruby sparks, the lights they took, the scents

(MAY 20, 1910)

Full in the splendour of this morning hour,
    With tramp of men and roll of muffled drums,
In what a pomp and pageantry of power,
    Borne to his grave, our lord, King EDWARD, comes!

In flashing gold and high magnificence,
    Lo, the proud cavalcade of comrade Kings,
Met here to do the dead KING reverence,
    Its solemn tribute of affection brings.

Heralds and Pursuivants and Men-at-arms,
    Sultan and Paladin and Potentate,
Scarred Captains who have baffled war's alarms
    And Courtiers glittering in their robes of state,

All in their blazoned ranks, with eyes cast down,
    Slow pacing in their sorrow pass along
Where that which bore the sceptre and the crown
    Cleaves at their head the silence of the throng.

(To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect.)



Here upon the prairie
Is our ancestral hall.
Agate is the dome,
Cornelian the wall.
Ghouls are in the cellar,
But fays upon the stairs.
And here lived old King Silver Dreams,
Always at his prayers.

Here lived grey Queen Silver Dreams,
Always singing psalms,
And haughty Grandma Silver Dreams,
Throned with folded palms.
Here played cousin Alice.
Her soul was best of all.
And every fairy loved her,
In our ancestral hall.

Alice has a prairie grave.
The King and Queen lie low,
And aged Grandma Silver Dreams,
Four tombstones in a row.
But still in snow and sunshine
Stands our ancestral hall.
Agate is the dome,
Cornelian the wall.
And legends walk ab...

The passion you forbade my lips to utter
    Will not be silenced.    You must hear it in
The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter:
    And when the tempest nears, with wail and din,
I know your calm forgetfulness is broken,
And to your heart you whisper, "He has spoken."

All nature understands and sympathises
    With human passion.    When the restless sea
Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises
    To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me.
And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting.
Your heart must tell you, "He is not forgetting."

When unseen hands in lightning strokes are writing
    Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll,
Know that my pent-up passion is inditing
    A cypher message for your woman's soul;
And when the law...

And dwells there in a female heart,
By bounteous Heaven design’d,
The choicest raptures to impart,
To feel the most refined—


Dwells there a wish in such a breast
Its nature to forego,
To smother in ignoble rest
At once both bliss and woe!


Far be the thought, and far the strain,
Which breathes the low desire,
How sweet soe’er the verse complain,
Though Phœbus string the lyre.


Come, then, fair maid (in nature wise),
Who, knowing them, can tell
From generous sympathy what joys
The glowing bosom swell:


In justice to the various powers
Of pleasing, which you share,
Join me, amid your silent hours,
To form the better prayer.


With lenient balm may Oberon hence
To fairy-land be driven...

I loved a child as we should love
Each other everywhere;
I cared more for his happiness
Than I dreaded my own despair.

An angel asked me to give him
My whole life's dearest cost;
And in adding mine to his treasures
I knew they could never be lost.

To his heart I gave the gold,
Though little my own had known;
To his eyes what tenderness
From youth in mine had grown!

I gave him all my buoyant
Hope for my future years;
I gave him whatever melody
My voice had steeped in tears.

Upon the shore of darkness
His drifted body lies.
He is dead, and I stand beside him,
With his beauty in my eyes.

I am like those withered petals
We see on a winter day,
That gladly gave their color
In the happy summer away.

La guancia che fu già piangendo stanca.

TO HIS FRIEND AGAPITO, WITH A PRESENT.


    Thy weary cheek that channell'd sorrow shows,
My much loved lord, upon the one repose;
More careful of thyself against Love be,
Tyrant who smiles his votaries wan to see;
And with the other close the left-hand path
Too easy entrance where his message hath;
In sun and storm thyself the same display,
Because time faileth for the lengthen'd way.
And, with the third, drink of the precious herb
Which purges every thought that would disturb,
Sweet in the end though sour at first in taste:
But me enshrine where your best joys are placed,
So that I fear not the grim bark of Styx,
If with such prayer of mine pride do not mix.

MACGREGOR.

Underneath an apple-tree
Sat a dame of comely seeming,
With her work upon her knee,
And her great eyes idly dreaming.
O'er the harvest-acres bright,
Came her husband's din of reaping;
Near to her, an infant wight
Through the tangled grass was creeping.

On the branches long and high,
And the great green apples growing,
Rested she her wandering eye,
With a retrospective knowing.
"This," she said, "the shelter is,
Where, when gay and raven-headed,
I consented to be his,
And our willing hearts were wedded.

"Laughing words and peals of mirth,
Long are changed to grave endeavor;
Sorrow's winds have swept to earth
Many a blossomed hope forever.
Thunder-heads have hovered o'er--
Storms my path have chilled and shaded;
Of the b...

Calm on the breast of Loch Maree
A little isle reposes;
A shadow woven of the oak
And willow o'er it closes.

Within, a Druid's mound is seen,
Set round with stony warders;
A fountain, gushing through the turf,
Flows o'er its grassy borders.

And whoso bathes therein his brow,
With care or madness burning,
Feels once again his healthful thought
And sense of peace returning.

O restless heart and fevered brain,
Unquiet and unstable,
That holy well of Loch Maree
Is more than idle fable!

Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
Its glaring sunshine blindeth,
And blest is he who on his way
That fount of healing findeth!

The shadows of a humbled will
And contrite heart are o'er it;
Go read its legend, "Trust In...

My lady seems of ivory
Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be
Hollow'd a little mournfully.
            Beata mea Domina!

Her forehead, overshadow'd much
By bows of hair, has a wave such
As God was good to make for me.
            Beata mea Domina!

Not greatly long my lady's hair,
Nor yet with yellow colour fair,
But thick and crispèd wonderfully:
            Beata mea Domina!

Heavy to make the pale face sad,
And dark, but dead as though it had
Been forged by God most wonderfully
            Beata mea Domina!

Of some strange metal, thread by thread,
To stand out from my lady's head,
Not moving much to tangle me.
            Beata mea Domina!

Beneath her brows the lids fal...

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
    Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
    And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.

It is not so.    That which we most desire,
    With understanding, we at last obtain,
    In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.

Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
    The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
    And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.

We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
    With products of the soul we load the hold;
    Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?

T...

The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-grey, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.

Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintery white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor grey,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.

        I.

Came a spicy smell of showers
On the purple wings of night,
And a pearl-encrusted crescent
On the lake looked still and white,
While a sound of distant singing
From the vales rose sad and light.


        II.

Dripped the musk of sodden roses
From their million heavy sprays,
And the nightingales were sobbing
Of the roses amorous praise
Where the raven down of even
Caught the moonlight's bleaching rays.


        III.

And the turrets of the palace,
From its belt of ancient trees,
On the mountain rose romantic
White as foam from troubled seas;
And the murmur of an ocean
Smote the chords of ev'ry breeze.


        IV.

Where the moon shone on the terrace
And its foun...

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime,
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev'n with lute.
At rest on ocean's brilliant dyes
An image of Elysium lies:
Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven,
Form in the deep another seven:
Endymion nodding from above
Sees in the sea a second love.
Within the valleys dim and brown,
And on the spectral mountain's crown,
The wearied light is dying down,
And earth, and stars, and sea, and sky
Are redolent of sleep, as I
Am redolent of thee and thine
Enthralling love, my Adeline.
But list, O list, so soft and low
Thy lover's voice tonight shall flow,
That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem
My words the music of a dream.
Thus, while no single sound too rude

Deare Friend.

I heare this Towne does soe abound,
With sawcy Censurers, that faults are found,
With what of late wee (in Poetique Rage)
Bestowing, threw away on the dull Age;
But (howsoe're Envy, their Spleen may raise,
To Robb my Brow, of the deserved Bays)
Their thanks at least I merit since through me,
They are Partakers of your Poetry;
And this is all, I'll say in my defence,
T'obtaine one Line, of your well worded Sense

I'd be content t'have writ the Brittish Prince.
I'm none of those who thinke themselves inspir'd,
Nor write with the vaine hopes to be admir'd;
But from a Rule (I have upon long tryall)
T'avoyd with care, all sort of self denyall.
Which way soe're desire and fancy leade
(Contemning Fame) that Path I boldly tread;
And ...