Heartbreak

My lady walks her morning round,
My lady’s page her fleet greyhound,
My lady’s hair the fond winds stir,
And all the birds make songs for her.

Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers,
And Rathburn side is gay with flowers;
But ne’er like hers, in flower or bird,
Was beauty seen or music heard.

The distance of the stars is hers;
The least of all her worshippers,
The dust beneath her dainty heel,
She knows not that I see or feel.

Oh, proud and calm! she cannot know
Where’er she goes with her I go;
Oh, cold and fair! she cannot guess
I kneel to share her hound’s caress!

Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk,
I rob their ears of her sweet talk;
Her suitors come from east and west,
I steal her smiles from every guest.

U...

In the tents of Akbar
Are dole and grief to-day,
For the flower of all the Indies
Has gone the silent way.

In the tents of Akbar
Are emptiness and gloom,
And where the dancers gather,
The silence of the tomb.

Across the yellow desert,
Across the burning sands,
Old Akbar wanders madly,
And wrings his fevered hands.

And ever makes his moaning
To the unanswering sky,
For Sutna, lovely Sutna,
Who was so fair to die.

For Sutna danced at morning,
And Sutna danced at eve;
Her dusky eyes half hidden
Behind her silken sleeve.

Her pearly teeth out-glancing
Between her coral lips,
The tremulous rhythm of passion
Marked by her quivering hips.

As lovely as a jewel
Of fire and dewdrop blent,

The sanctity that is about the dead
To make us love them more than late, when here,
Is not it well to find the living dear
With sanctity like this, ere they have fled?

The tender thoughts we nurture for a loss
Of mother, friend, or child, oh! it were wise
To spend this glory on the earnest eyes,
The longing heart, that feel life's present cross.

Give also mercy to the living here
Whose keen-strung souls will quiver at your touch;
The utmost reverence is not too much
For eyes that weep, although the lips may sneer.

To-night the clouds hang very low,
    They take the Hill-tops to their breast,
    And lay their arms about the fields.
The wind that fans me lying low,
    Restless with great desire for rest,
    No cooling touch of freshness yields.

I, sleepless through the stifling heat,
    Watch the pale Lightning's constant glow
    Between the wide set open doors.
I lie and long amidst the heat, -
    The fever that my senses know,
    For that cool slenderness of yours.

So delicate and cool you are!
    A roseleaf that has lain in snow,
    A snowflake tinged with sunset fire.
You do not know, so young you are,
    How Fever fans the senses' glow
    To uncontrollable desire!

And fills the spaces of the night
    With furious and fran...

The night was bright and beautiful,
    The dew was on the flower,
The stars were keeping watch, it was
    The lover's parting hour.

The night wind rippled o'er the wave,
    The moon shone on the two,
The boat was waiting, part they must,
    "Eliza, love, adieu!"

"You know how fondly I have loved,
    How long, how true, how dear,
And though fate sends me far away
    My heart will linger here.

"Bright hope, the lover's comfort, can
    Alone my heart console,
Or soothe the pain of parting with
    The empress of my soul.

"When other suitors vainly talk
    Of fondly loving you,
Remember him who truly loved
    As no one else can do.

"I'll think upon the place contains
    My dark-eyed source of bliss,<...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
    Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow
    This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
    Give one repose to pain I know not now,
    One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
    I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat
    I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
    And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

Oft as by chance, a little while apart
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,
Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:
Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe
Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus,
Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw
Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;
But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes,
The fair world glistens, and in after days
The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes
Lives in my step and lightens all my face, -
So they who found the Earthly Paradise
Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.

    In rich Virginian woods,
The scarlet creeper reddens over graves,
Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines;
Heroic spirits haunt the solitudes, -
The noble souls of half a million braves,
    Amid the murmurous pines.


    Ah! who is left behind,
Earnest and eloquent, sincere and strong,
To consecrate their memories with words
Not all unmeet? with fitting dirge and song
To chant a requiem purer than the wind,
    And sweeter than the birds?


    Here, though all seems at peace,
The placid, measureless sky serenely fair,
The laughter of the breeze among the leaves,
The bars of sunlight slanting through the trees,
The reckless wild-flowers blooming everywhere,
    The grasses' delicate sheaves, -


    Nathless eac...

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:

Behold him now his genuine colours wear,
    That specious False-One, by whose cruel wiles
    I lost thy amity; saw thy dear smiles
    Eclips'd; those smiles, that us'd my heart to cheer,
Wak'd by thy grateful sense of many a year
    When rose thy youth, by Friendship's pleasing toils
    Cultur'd; - but DYING! - O! for ever fade
    The angry fires. - Each thought, that might upbraid
Thy broken faith, which yet my soul deplores,
    Now as eternally is past and gone
    As are the interesting, the happy hours,
Days, years, we shar'd together. They are flown!
    Yet long must I lament thy hapless doom,
    Thy lavish'd life and early-hasten'd tomb.

I said, “I will take my life
And throw it away;
I who was fire and song
Will turn to clay.”

“I will lie no more in the night
With shaken breath,
I will toss my heart in the air
To be caught by Death.”

But out of the night I heard,
Like the inland sound of the sea,
The hushed and terrible sob
Of all humanity.

Then I said, “Oh who am I
To scorn God to his face?
I will bow my head and stay
And suffer with my race.”

Stuck in a bottle on the window-sill,
In the cold gaslight burning gaily red
Against the luminous blue of London night,
These flowers are mine: while somewhere out of sight
In some black-throated alley's stench and heat,
Oblivious of the racket of the street,
A poor old weary woman lies in bed.

Broken with lust and drink, blear-eyed and ill,
Her battered bonnet nodding on her head,
From a dark arch she clutched my sleeve and said:
'I've sold no bunch to-day, nor touched a bite ...
Son, buy six-pennorth; and 't will mean a bed.'

So blazing gaily red
Against the luminous deeps
Of starless London night,
They burn for my delight:
While somewhere, snug in bed,
A worn old woman sleeps.

And yet to-morrow will these blooms be dead
With...

Ceas'd is the rain; but heavy drops yet fall
    From the drench'd roof; - yet murmurs the sunk wind
    Round the dim hills; can yet a passage find
    Whistling thro' yon cleft rock, and ruin'd wall.
The swoln and angry torrents heard, appal,
    Tho' distant. - A few stars, emerging kind,
    Shed their green, trembling beams. - With lustre small,
    The moon, her swiftly-passing clouds behind,
Glides o'er that shaded hill. - Now blasts remove
    The shadowing clouds, and on the mountain's brow,
    Full-orb'd, she shines. - Half sunk within its cove
Heaves the lone boat, with gulphing sound; - and lo!
    Bright rolls the settling lake, and brimming rove
    The vale's blue rills, and glitter as they flow.

May is back, and You and I
Are at the stream again -
The leaves are out,
And all about
The building birds begin
To make a merry din:
May is back, and You and I
Are at the dream again.

May is back, and You and I
Lie in the grass again, -
The butterfly
Flits painted by,
The bee brings sudden fear,
Like people talking near;
May is back, and You and I
Are lad and lass again.

May is back, and You and I
Are heart to heart again, -
In God's green house
We make our vows
Of summer love that stays
Faithful through winter days;
May is back, and You and I
Shall never part again.

[Greek: Erotes hyper men agan, K.T.L.[1]]


1.

When fierce conflicting passions urge
The breast, where love is wont to glow,
What mind can stem the stormy surge
Which rolls the tide of human woe?
The hope of praise, the dread of shame,
Can rouse the tortur'd breast no more;
The wild desire, the guilty flame,
Absorbs each wish it felt before.


2.

But if affection gently thrills
The soul, by purer dreams possest,
The pleasing balm of mortal ills
In love can soothe the aching breast:
If thus thou comest in disguise,
Fair Venus! from thy native heaven,
What heart, unfeeling, would despise
The sweetest boon the Gods have given?


3.

But, never from thy golden bow,
May I beneath the...

The loveliest face! I turned to her
Shut in 'mid savage rocks and trees; -
'Twas in the May-time of the year,
And our two hearts were filled with ease -
And pointed where a wild-rose grew,
Suddenly fair in that grim place:
"We should know all, if we but knew
Whence came this flower, and whence - this face."

The loveliest face!    My thoughts went around:
"Strange sister of this little rose,
So softly 'scaped from underground;
O tell me if your beauty knows,
Being itself so fair a thing,
How came this lovely thing so fair,
How came it to such blossoming,
Leaning so strangely from the air?

"The wonder of its being born,
So lone and lovely - even as you -
Half maiden-moon, half maiden-morn,
And delicately sad with dew;
How came it ...

Wilt thou suddenly enshroud thee,

Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,

Thou art hidden from mine eye.

Yet my sadness thou well knowest,

Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,

Though my loved one may be far.

Upward mount then! clearer, milder,

Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,

Fraught with rapture is the night!

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl'st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow Cuccoo's bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate
Foretell my hopeles doom in som Grove ny:
As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late
For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.