Heartbreak

Not into these dark cities,
These sordid marts and streets,
That the sun in his rising pities,
And the moon with sorrow greets,
Does she, with her dreams and flowers,
For whom our hearts are dumb,
Does she of the golden hours,
Earth's heaven-born Beauty, come.

Afar 'mid the hills she tarries,
Beyond the farthest streams,
In a world where music marries
With color that blooms and beams;
Where shadow and light are wedded,
Whose children people the Earth,
The fair, the fragrant-headed,
The pure, the wild of birth.

Where Morn with rosy kisses
Wakes ever the eyes of Day;
And, winds in her radiant tresses,
Haunts every wildwood way:
Where Eve, with her mouth's twin roses,
Her kisses sweet with balm,
The eyes of the glad Day c...

1.
How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3.
To thy fair feet a win...

    Dreary and dismal and dark
        Is the night of life to me,
    With nothing but clouds in the heaven above,
    Cruelly hiding the star that I love,
        Whose radiance was rapture to see.

    While the blasts from the cold frozen North
        Are biting right in to my soul -
    While the pitiless blasts from the bleak, barren shore
    Of the crystalline ocean incessantly roar,
        And the tempests that sweep from the pole.

    Oh! the gloom of the dark, dreary night,
        Concealing the star that I love!
    Oh! how bitter the anguish, bereft of its beam!
    While the beings around me are such that I seem
        In a dungeon of demons to move.

    Oh! when will the clouds clear away?
        And brighten the heaven abo...

Toward even when the day leans down
    To kiss the upturned face of night,
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town
    I know a spot of calm delight.
Like crimson arrows from a quiver
    The red rays pierce the waters flowing
While we go dreaming, singing, rowing
    To Leudemann's-on-the-River.

The hills, like some glad mocking-bird,
    Send back our laughter and our singing,
While faint - and yet more faint is heard
    The steeple bells all sweetly ringing.
Some message did the winds deliver
    To each glad heart that August night,
All heard, but all heard not aright;
    By Leudemann's-on-the-River.

Night falls as in some foreign clime,
    Between the hills that slope and rise.
So dusk the shades at landing time,
    We could n...

The skies they were ashen and sober,
The streets they were dirty and drear;
It was night in the month of October,
Of my most immemorial year.
Like the skies, I was perfectly sober,
As I stopped at the mansion of Shear,
At the Nightingale, perfectly sober,
And the willowy woodland down here.

Here, once in an alley Titanic
Of Ten-pins, I roamed with my soul,
Of Ten-pins, with Mary, my soul;
They were days when my heart was volcanic,
And impelled me to frequently roll,
And made me resistlessly roll,
Till my ten-strikes created a panic
In the realms of the Boreal pole,
Till my ten-strikes created a panic
With the monkey atop of his pole.

I repeat, I was perfectly sober,
But my thoughts they were palsied and sear,
My thoughts were de...

(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

I

    In a solitude of the sea
    Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

    Steel chambers, late the pyres
    Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

    Over the mirrors meant
    To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

    Jewels in joy designed
    To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

    Dim moon-eyed fishes near
    Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" . . .

VI

    Well: while was fash...

How happy, once, tho' winged with sighs,
    My moments flew along,
While looking on those smiling eyes,
    And listening to thy magic song!
But vanished now, like summer dreams,
    Those moments smile no more;
For me that eye no longer beams,
    That song for me is o'er.
Mine the cold brow,
    That speaks thy altered vow,
While others feel thy sunshine now.

Oh, could I change my love like thee,
    One hope might yet be mine--
Some other eyes as bright to see,
    And hear a voice as sweet as thine:
But never, never can this heart
    Be waked to life again;
With thee it lost its vital part,
    And withered then!
Cold its pulse lies,
And mute are even its sighs,
All other grief it now defies.

1.
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, -
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

2.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

3.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,

Mother of Roman games and Greek delights,
Lesbos, where kisses languorous or glad,
As hot as suns, or watermelon-fresh,
Make festivals of days and glorious nights;
Mother of Roman games and Greek delights,

Lesbos, where love is like the wild cascades
That throw themselves into the deepest gulfs,
And twist and run with gurglings and with sobs,
Stormy and secret, swarming underground;
Lesbos, where love is like the wild cascades!

Lesbos, where Phrynes seek each other out,
Where no sigh ever went without response,
Lovely as Paphos· in the sight of stars,
Where Venus envies Sappho, with good cause!
Lesbos, where Phrynes seek each other out.

Lesbos, land of the warm and languid nights
That draw in mirrors sterile fantasies,
So girls with holl...

I gaze upon my son once more,
With eyes and heart that tire,
As solemnly he stands before
The screen drawn round the fire;
With hands behind clasped hand in hand,
Now loosely and now fast,
Just as his fathers used to stand
For generations past.

A fair and slight and childish form,
And big brown thoughtful eyes,
God help him! for a life of storm
And stress before him lies:
A wanderer and a gipsy wild,
I’ve learnt the world and know,
For I was such another child,
Ah, many years ago!

But in those dreamy eyes of him
There is no hint of doubt,
I wish that you could tell me, Jim,
The things you dream about.
Dream on, my son, that all is true
And things not what they seem,
’Twill be a bitter day for you
When wakened from...

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!

'Twas a balmy day in Autumn,
In the drowsy, dreamy Autumn,
When from out the quiet woodland
Sounds of rustling leaves came only -
Leaves that floated softly earthward -
And the streamlets had a murmur
Such as wanders through our visions
In the hushed and starry midnight -
Low, soft murmur, full of music.

With the small hand of her darling
Clasped in her's, there came a mother
To an Artist - fondly asking
For the picture of her pet-lamb -
Winsome pet-lamb full of child-life,
Full of merry, ringing laughter -
Laughter that went up unceasing
Like the happy chime of streamlets
Singing thro' some mountain valley, -
Like the bird-song in the forest
In the time of early roses, -
Like the tinkle of sweet waters
Dripping o'er a marble fou...

I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
Of manhood who deal gently with me here;
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,

My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
And nothing left for Love to look upon.

1866.

The hills look down on wood and stream,
On orchard-land and farm;
And o'er the hills the azure-gray
Of heaven bends the livelong day
With thoughts of calm and storm.

On wood and stream the hills look down,
On farm and orchard-land;
And o'er the hills she came to me
Through wildrose-brake and blackberry,
The hill wind hand in hand.

The hills look down on home and field,
On wood and winding stream;
And o'er the hills she came along,
Upon her lips a woodland song,
And in her eyes, a dream.

On home and field the hills look down,
On stream and vistaed wood;
And breast-deep, with disordered hair,
Fair in the wildrose tangle there,
A sudden space she stood.

O hills, that look on rock and road,
On grove and harvest-fiel...

Oh Loves there are that enter in,
And Loves there are that wait,
And Loves that sit a-weeping
Whose joy will come too late.
For some there be that ope their doors,
And some there be that close,
And Love must go a-begging,
But whither, no one knows.
His feet are on the thorny ways,
And on the dew-cold grass,
No ears have ever heard him sing,
No eyes have seen him pass.
And yet he wanders thro' the world
And makes the meadows sweet,
For all his tears and weariness
Have flowered beneath his feet.
The little purple violet
Has marked his wanderings,
And in the wind among the trees,
You hear the song he sings.

Ah, Koelue!
Had you embalmed your beauty, so
It could not backward go,
Or change in any way,
What were the use, if on my eyes
The embalming spices were not laid
To keep us fixed,
Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly?
What were the use, if my sight grew,
And its far branches were cloud-hung,
You small at the roots, like grass,
While the new lips my spirit would kiss
Were not red lips of flesh,
But the huge kiss of power?
Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
A shaggy mane would entwine,
And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
But human Life's inarticulate mass
Throb the pulse of a thing
Whose mountain flanks awry
Beg my mastery - mine!
Ah! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world
My road - my way!

Though your eyebrows surprise,
and give you an air of strangeness,
which isn’t that of the angels,
witch with seductive eyes,

I adore my frivolous girl,
my terrible passion,
with the devotion
of a priest for his idol!

The forest and the desert
perfume your wild hair:
your head has an air
of the enigma, the secret.

Round your flesh, perfume sweet
swirls like a censer’s cloud:
you bewitch like the twilight’s shroud,
nymph of shadows and heat.

Ah! The strongest potions made
can’t match your idleness,
and you know the caress
that resurrects the dead.

Your hips are enamoured
of your back and your breasts,
and the cushions are ravished
with your poses, so languid.

Sometimes to appease
y...

Cloudy argosies are drifting down into the purple dark,
And the long low amber reaches, lying on the horizon's mark,
Shape themselves into the gateways, dim and wonderful unfurled,
Gateways leading through' the sunset, out into the underworld.

How my spirit vainly flutters, like a bird that beats the bars,
To be launched upon that ocean, with its tides of throbbing stars,
To be gone beyond the sunset, and the day's revolving zone,
Out into the primal darkness, and the world of the unknown!

Hints and guesses of its grandeur, broken shadows, sudden gleams,
Like a falling star shoot past me, quenched within a sea of dreams,--
But the unimagined glory lying in the dark beyond,
Is to these as morn to midnight, or as silence is to sound.

Sweeter than the trees of Eden...