Heartbreak

All day long there has haunted me
    A spectre out of my lost youth-land.
Because I happened last night to see
    A woman's beautiful snow-white hand.

Like part of a statue broken away,
    And carefully kept in a velvet case,
On the crimson rim of her box it lay;
    The folds of the curtain hid her face.

Years had drifted between us two,
    In another clime, in another land,
We had lived and parted, and yet I knew
    That cruelly beautiful perfect hand.

The ringless beauty of fingers fine,
    The sea-shell tint of their taper tips,
The sight of them stirred my blood like wine,
    Oh, to hold them again to my lips!

To feel their tender touch on my hair,
    Their mute caress, and their clinging hold;
Oh for the past tha...

    Ah! little lake, though fair thou art,
        A sapphire flashing to the sky,
        Thy charm is only for the eye,
    Thy beauty cannot hold my heart.

    Green hill-sides bending to thy shore
        Gleam clear in the autumnal light,
        While far above, Monadnock's height
    Keeps rugged guard thy waters o'er.

    And yet these very beauties cloy;
        As in a prison I am bound,
        Though fair the walls that gird me round,
    My housemate is no longer joy.

    Thy loveliness breeds discontent,
        For far my foolish heart would be,
        It longs for the unquiet sea,
    And with desire is sorely rent.

    Hateful the walls that me debar
        From happier things that haunt me so,
        Even ...

Brothers, look there!

What! see ye nothing yet?
Knit your eyebrows close, and stare;
Send your souls forth in the gaze,
As my finger-point is set,
Through the thick of the foggy air.
Beyond the air, you see the dark;
(For the darkness hedges still our ways;)
And beyond the dark, oh, lives away!
Dim and far down, surely you mark
A huge world-heap of withered years
Dropt from the boughs of eternity?
See ye not something lying there,
Shapeless as a dumb despair,
Yet a something that spirits can recognise
With the vision dwelling in their eyes?
It hath the form of a man!
As a huge moss-rock in a valley green,
When the light to freeze began,
Thickening with crystals of dark between,
Might look like a sleeping man.
What think ye it, br...

O many-toned rain!
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
How welcome is its delicate overture
At evening, when the moist and glowing west
Seals all things with cool promise of night's rest.

At first it would allure
The earth to kinder mood,
With dainty flattering
Of soft, sweet pattering:
Faintly now you hear the tramp
Of the fine drops, falling damp
On the dry, sun-seasoned ground
And the thirsty leaves, resound.
But anon, imbued
With a sudden, bounding access
Of passion, it relaxes
All timider persuasion.
And, with nor pretext nor occasion,
Its wooing redoubles;
And pounds the ground, and bubbles
In sputtering spray,
Flinging itself in a fury
Of flashing white away;
Till the dusty road,
Dank-perfumed, is o'erflowed;...

    Oft Music, as it were some moving mighty sea,
        Bears me towards my pale
    Star: in clear space, or 'neath a vaporous canopy
        On-floating, I set sail.

    With heaving chest which strains forward, and lungs outblown,
        I climb the ridgèd steeps
    Of those high-pilèd clouds which 'thwart the night are thrown,
        Veiling its starry deeps.

    I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form,
        Of a great ship in pain,
    Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm

        Upon the vasty main
    Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare
        Mirror of my despair.

Why should we sigh o'er a summer that's dead -
    Let us think of the summer to be.
It always better to look ahead,
For the rose will come again just as red
    And just as fair to see.

Why should we weep o'er a pleasure past -
        Let us look for the pleasure to be.
New shells on the shore by new waves are cast;
Let us prize each new joy more than the last,
    And laugh if the old joy flee.

What folly to die for a love that was -
    Let us live for the one to be.
For time is passing, and will not pause;
How foolish the shore were it sad because
    One wave ebbed out to sea.

Then let us not sing of a year that is fled -
    Though dear its memory be:
For though summer and pleasure and love seem dead,
Love will be sweet, and ...

In soft sad nights, when all the still lagoon
Lolls in a wealth of golden radiance,
I sit like one enchanted in a trance,
And see them 'twixt the haunted mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes 'neath snow-pale sensual brows,
Flashing hot, killing lust, and tresses light,
Lose, satin streaming, purple as the night,
Night when the storm sings and the forest bows.

And then, meseems, along the wild, fierce hills
A whisper and a rustle of fleet feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

And once I see large, lustrous limbs revealed,
Moth-white and lawny, 'twixt sonorous trees;
And then a song, faint as of fairy seas,
Lulls all my senses till my eyes are sealed.

What love is; how I love; how builders' clay
By love is lit into a golden spending;
How love calls beautiful ghosts back to the day;
How life because of love shall have no ending,
These with the dawn I have begun to sing,
These with the million-budded noon that's rising
Shall be a theme, with love's consent, to bring
My song to some imperishable devising.
And may the petals of this garland fall
On every quarrel, and in fragrance bless
Old friendship; and a little comfort all
The weary loves that walk the wilderness,
While still my song I consecrate alone
To her who taking it shall take her own.

Over the moonless land of Bathrolaire
Rises at night, when revelry begins,
A white unreal orb, a sun that spins,
A sun that watches with a sullen stare
That dance spasmodic they are dancing there,
Whilst drone and cry and drone of violins
Hint at the sweetness of forgotten sins,
Or call the devotees of shame to prayer.
And all the spaces of the midnight town
Ring with appeal and sorrowful abuse.
There some most lonely are: some try to crown
Mad lovers with sad boughs of formal yews,
And Titan women wandering up and down
Lead on the pale fanatics of the muse.

You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.

The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Are far too full of happiness
To even hold a song.

Oh, the empty dreams were dim
And the empty dreams were wide,
They were sweet and shadowy houses
Where my thoughts could hide.

But you took my dreams away
And you made them all come true,
My thoughts have no place now to play,
And nothing now to do.

1.

When I hear you express an affection so warm,
Ne'er think, my belov'd, that I do not believe;
For your lip would the soul of suspicion disarm,
And your eye beams a ray which can never deceive.


2.

Yet still, this fond bosom regrets, while adoring,
That love, like the leaf, must fall into the sear,
That Age will come on, when Remembrance, deploring,
Contemplates the scenes of her youth, with a tear;


3.

That the time must arrive, when, no longer retaining
Their auburn, those locks must wave thin to the breeze,
When a few silver hairs of those tresses remaining,
Prove nature a prey to decay and disease.


4.

Tis this, my belov'd, which spreads gloom o'er my features,
Though I ne'er shall presume to ...

Spirit girl to whom 'twas given
To revisit scenes of pain,
From the hell I thought was Heaven
You have lifted me again;
Through the world that I inherit,
Where I loved her ere she died,
I am walking with the spirit
Of a dead girl by my side.

Through my old possessions only
For a very little while,
And they say that I am lonely,
And they pity, but I smile:
For the brighter side has won me
By the calmness that it brings,
And the peace that is upon me
Does not come of earthly things.

Spirit girl, the good is in me,
But the flesh you know is weak,
And with no pure soul to win me
I might miss the path I seek;
Lead me by the love you bore me
When you trod the earth with me,
Till the light is clear before me
And my spiri...

All Things will Die

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shal...

The river hemmed with leaning trees
Wound through its meadows green;
A low, blue line of mountains showed
The open pines between.

One sharp, tall peak above them all
Clear into sunlight sprang
I saw the river of my dreams,
The mountains that I sang!

No clue of memory led me on,
But well the ways I knew;
A feeling of familiar things
With every footstep grew.

Not otherwise above its crag
Could lean the blasted pine;
Not otherwise the maple hold
Aloft its red ensign.

So up the long and shorn foot-hills
The mountain road should creep;
So, green and low, the meadow fold
Its red-haired kine asleep.

The river wound as it should wind;
Their place the mountains took;
The white torn fringes of their clouds

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify your self in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens, yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this, Time’s pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live your self in eyes of men.
To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

What large, dark hands are those at the window
Lifted, grasping in the yellow light
Which makes its way through the curtain web
        At my heart to-night?

Ah, only the leaves! So leave me at rest,
In the west I see a redness come
Over the evening's burning breast -
        For now the pain is numb.

The woodbine creeps abroad
Calling low to her lover:
    The sunlit flirt who all the day
    Has poised above her lips in play
    And stolen kisses, shallow and gay
    Of dalliance, now has gone away
    - She woos the moth with her sweet, low word,
And when above her his broad wings hover
Then her bright breast she will uncover
And yield her honey-drop to her lover.

Into the yellow, evening glow
Saunters a man from the farm be...

I

In paris all look’d hot and like to fade.
Brown in the garden of the Tuileries,
Brown with September, droop’d the chestnut-trees.
’Twas dawn; a brougham roll’d through the streets, and made

Halt at the white and silent colonnade
Of the French Theatre. Worn with disease,
Rachel, with eyes no gazing can appease,
Sate in the brougham, and those blank walls survey’d.

She follows the gay world, whose swarms have fled
To Switzerland, to Baden, to the Rhine;
Why stops she by this empty play-house drear?

Ah, where the spirit its highest life hath led,
All spots, match’d with that spot, are less divine;
And Rachel’s Switzerland, her Rhine, is here!

II

Unto a lonely villa in a dell
Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore
T...

Introduction To A Collection Of Poems By different Authors

An usher standing at the door
I show my white rosette;
A smile of welcome, nothing more,
Will pay my trifling debt;
Why should I bid you idly wait
Like lovers at the swinging gate?

Can I forget the wedding guest?
The veteran of the sea?
In vain the listener smites his breast, -
"There was a ship," cries he!
Poor fasting victim, stunned and pale,
He needs must listen to the tale.

He sees the gilded throng within,
The sparkling goblets gleam,
The music and the merry din
Through every window stream,
But there he shivers in the cold
Till all the crazy dream is told.

Not mine the graybeard's glittering eye
That held his captive still
To hold my silent prisone...