Heartbreak

My spirit holds you, Dear,
Though worlds away," -
This to their absent ones
Many can say.

"Thoughts, fancies, hopes, desires,
All must be yours;
Sweetest my memories still
Of our past hours."

I can say more than this
Now, lover mine, -
Here can I feel your kiss
Warmer than wine,

Feel your arms folding me,
Know that quick breath
That aye my soul would stir
Even in death.

'Tis not a memory, Love,
Thoughts of the past,
Fleeting remembrances
Which may not last, -

But, as I shut my eyes
Know I the sign
That you are here, yourself,
Bodily, mine. -

So, Love, I cannot say
"My spirit flies
Over the widening space,
Under dull skies,

To where your spirit is...

Why in my neighbour’s garden
Are the flowers more sweet than mine?
I had never such bloom of roses,
Such yellow and pink woodbine.

Why in my neighbour’s garden
Are the fruits all red and gold,
While here the grapes are bitter
That hang for my fingers’ hold?

Why in my neighbour’s garden
Do the birds all fly to sing?
Over the fence between us
One would think ’twas always spring.

I thought my own wide garden
Once more sweet and fair than all,
Till I saw the gold and crimson
Just over my neighbour’s wall.

But now I want his thrushes,
And now I want his vine,
If I cannot have his cherries
That grow more red than mine.

The serpent ’neath his apples
Will tempt me to my fall,
And then-I’ll steal my neighbour’...

Swarthy wastelands, wide and woodless, glittering miles and miles away,
Where the south wind seldom wanders and the winters will not stay;
Lurid wastelands, pent in silence, thick with hot and thirsty sighs,
Where the scanty thorn-leaves twinkle with their haggard, hopeless eyes;
Furnaced wastelands, hunched with hillocks, like to stony billows rolled,
Where the naked flats lie swirling, like a sea of darkened gold;
Burning wastelands, glancing upward with a weird and vacant stare,
Where the languid heavens quiver o’er red depths of stirless air!

“Oh, my brother, I am weary of this wildering waste of sand;
In the noontide we can never travel to the promised land!
Lo! the desert broadens round us, glaring wildly in my face,
With long leagues of sunflame on it, oh! the barren, bar...

Ye fates! who sternly point on sorrow's chart
The line of pain a wretch must still pursue,
To end the struggles of a bleeding heart,
And grace the triumph misery owes to you
How poor your pow'r! where fortitude, serene,
But smiling views the glimmering taper shine;
Time soon shall dim, and close the wearied scene,
Bestowing solace e'en on woes like mine.
Ah! stop your course too long I've felt your chain,
Too long the feeble influence of its pow'r;
The heir of grief may fall in love with pain,
And worst-misfortune feel the tranquil hour.
Hail, fortitude! blest friend life's ills to brave,
All misery boasts, shall wither in the grave!

O cameretta che già fosti un porto.

HE NO LONGER FINDS RELIEF IN SOLITUDE.


    Thou little chamber'd haven to the woes
Whose daily tempest overwhelms my soul!
From shame, I in Heaven's light my grief control;
Thou art its fountain, which each night o'erflows.
My couch! that oft hath woo'd me to repose,
'Mid sorrows vast--Love's iv'ried hand hath stole
Griefs turgid stream, which o'er thee it doth roll,
That hand which good on all but me bestows.
Not only quiet and sweet rest I fly,
But from myself and thought, whose vain pursuit
On pinion'd fancy doth my soul transport:
The multitude I did so long defy,
Now as my hope and refuge I salute,
So much I tremble solitude to court.

WOLLASTON.


    Room! which to me hast ...

Those silver clouds collected round the sun
His mid-day warmth abate not, seeming less
To overshade than multiply his beams
By soft reflection, grateful to the sky,
To rocks, fields, woods. Nor doth our human sense
Ask, for its pleasure, screen or canopy
More ample than the time-dismantled Oak
Spreads o'er this tuft of heath, which now, attired
In the whole fulness of its bloom, affords
Couch beautiful as e'er for earthly use
Was fashioned; whether, by the hand of Art,
That eastern Sultan, amid flowers enwrought
On silken tissue, might diffuse his limbs
In languor; or, by Nature, for repose
Of panting Wood-nymph, wearied with the chase.
O Lady! fairer in thy Poet's sight
Than fairest spiritual creature of the groves,
Approach; and, thus invited, crown wit...

Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.

Stately shine his purple plumes, exceeding
Pride of princes:    nor shall maid or lover
Find on earth a fairer sign worth heeding.

Yet may love, sore wounded scarce recover
Strength and spirit again, with life receding:
Hope and joy, wind-winged, about him hover:
Love lies bleeding.

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say

    Life's a jail where men have common lot.
    Gaunt the one who has, and who has not.
    All our treasures neither less nor more,
    Bread alone comes thro' the guarded door.
    Cards are foolish in this jail, I think,
    Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink.
    She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid
    Will not scorn with me this jail-bird trade,
    Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick,
    Tho' he win a button or a stick,
    Pencil, garter, ribbon, corset-lace -
    HIS the glory, MINE is the disgrace.

    Sweet, I'd rather lose than win despite
    Love of hearty words and maids polite.
    "Love's a gamble," say you.    I deny.
    Love's a gift.    I love you till I die.
    Gamblers fight like rats.    I will not play.

Oh! Arranmore, loved Arranmore,
    How oft I dream of thee,
And of those days when, by thy shore,
    I wandered young and free.
Full many a path I've tried, since then,
    Thro' pleasure's flowery maze,
But ne'er could find the bliss again
    I felt in those sweet days.

How blithe upon thy breezy cliffs,
    At sunny morn I've stood,
With heart as bounding as the skiffs
    That danced along thy flood;
Or, when the western wave grew bright
    With daylight's parting wing,
Have sought that Eden in its light,
    Which dreaming poets sing;[1]--

That Eden where the immortal brave
    Dwell in a land serene,--
Whose bowers beyond the shining wave,
    At sunset, oft are seen.
Ah dream too full of saddening truth!

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
    My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
    Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
    No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
    O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
    My harvest dwindled to a husk;
Truly my life is void and brief
    And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
    No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall - the sap of Spring;
    O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
    A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
    Or cordial in the searching cold
Cast in the fire the perished thing,
    Melt and remo...

I

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held, as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit,
And yet that spirit knew, not in the hour
Of its own fervor, what had o’er it power.


II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told, or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?


III
<...

One asked of regret,
And I made reply:
To have held the bird,
And let it fly;
To have seen the star
For a moment nigh,
And lost it
Through a slothful eye;
To have plucked the flower
And cast it by;
To have one only hope -
To die.

I.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.

III.
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.

IV.
What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her thr...

Midways of a wallèd garden,
    In the happy poplar land,
    Did an ancient castle stand,
With an old knight for a warden.

Many scarlet bricks there were
    In its walls, and old grey stone;
    Over which red apples shone
At the right time of the year.

On the bricks the green moss grew.
    Yellow lichen on the stone,
    Over which red apples shone;
Little war that castle knew.

Deep green water fill'd the moat,
    Each side had a red-brick lip,
    Green and mossy with the drip
Of dew and rain; there was a boat

Of carven wood, with hangings green
    About the stern; it was great bliss
    For lovers to sit there and kiss
In the hot summer noons, not seen.

Across the moat the fresh west wind
    In ve...

Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped
The crystal silence into sound;
And where the branches dreamed and dripped
A grasshopper its dagger stripped
And on the humming darkness ground.

A bat, against the gibbous moon,
Danced, implike, with its lone delight;
The glowworm scrawled a golden rune
Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn,
The firefly hung with lamps the night.

The flowers said their beads in prayer,
Dew-syllables of sighed perfume;
Or talked of two, soft-standing there,
One like a gladiole, straight and fair,
And one like some rich poppy-bloom.

The mignonette and feverfew
Laid their pale brows together: - "See!"
One whispered: "Did their step thrill through
Your roots?" - "Like rain." - "I touched the two
And a new bud was bo...

As when the old moon lighted by the tender
    And radiant crescent of the new is seen,
And for a moment's space suggests the splendor
    Of what in its full prime it once has been,
So on my waning years you cast the glory
    Of youth and pleasure, for a little hour;
And life again seems like an unread story,
    And joy and hope both stir me with their power.

Can blooming June be fond of bleak December?
    I dare not wait to hear my heart reply.
I will forget the question -and remember
    Alone the priceless feast spread for mine eye,
That radiant hair that flows across the pillows,
    Like shimmering sunbeams over drifts of snow;
Those heaving breasts, like undulating billows,
    Whose dangers or delights but Love can know.

That crimson mou...

"He ought to be home," said the old man, "without there's something amiss.
He only went to the Two-mile, he ought to be back by this.
He would ride the Reckless filly, he would have his willful way;
And, here, he's not back at sundown, and what will his mother say?

"He was always his mother's idol, since ever his father died;
And there isn't a horse on the station that he isn't game to ride.
But that Reckless mare is vicious, and if once she gets away
He hasn't got strength to hold her, and what will his mother say?"

The old man walked to the sliprail, and peered up the dark'ning track,
And looked and longed for the rider that would never more come back;
And the mother came and clutched him, with sudden, spasmodic fright:
"What has become of my Willie? Why isn't he home to...