Heartbreak

By the sad waters of separation
Where we have wandered by divers ways,
I have but the shadow and imitation
Of the old memorial days.

In music I have no consolation,
No roses are pale enough for me;
The sound of the waters of separation
Surpasseth roses and melody.

By the sad waters of separation
Dimly I hear from an hidden place
The sigh of mine ancient adoration:
Hardly can I remember your face.

If you be dead, no proclamation
Sprang to me over the waste, gray sea:
Living, the waters of separation
Sever for ever your soul from me.

No man knoweth our desolation;
Memory pales of the old delight;
While the sad waters of separation
Bear us on to the ultimate night.

    There shall be a song for both of us that day
    Though fools say you have long outlived your songs,
    And when, perhaps, because your hair is grey,
    You go unsung, to whom all praise belongs,
    And no men kiss your hands - your fragile hands
    Folded like empty shells on sea-spurned sands.
    And you that were dawn whereat men shouted once
    Are sunset now, with but one worshipper,
    Then to your twilight heart this song shall be
    Sweeter than those that did your youth announce
    For your brave beautiful spirit is lovelier
    Than once your lovely body was to me.
    Your folded hands and your shut eyelids stir
    A passion that Time has crowned with sanctity.
    Young fools shall wonder why, your youth being over,
    You are so sung st...

Still you stand, still you listen, still you smile!
Still melts your moonbeam through me, white awhile,
Softening, sweetening, till sweet. and soft
Increase so round this heart of mine, that oft
I could believe your moonbeam-smile has past
The pallid limit, lies, transformed at last
To sunlight and salvation, warms the soul
It sweets, softens! Would you pass that goal,
Gain love’s birth at the limit’s happier verge.
And, where an iridescence lurks, but urge
The hesitating pallor on to prime
Of dawn! true blood-streaked, sun-warmth, action-time,
By heart-pulse ripened to a ruddy glow
Of gold above my clay, I scarce should know
From gold’s self, thus suffused! For gold means love.
What means the sad slow silver smile above
My clay but pity, pardon? at the best,<...

The Child.

I hear you weeping, mother, dear,--
    I hear you wake and weep;
What brings the tears into your eyes
    When you should be asleep?
I hear my name upon your lips;
    What is it that you say
Of one who broke a trusting heart,
    But now is far away?


The Mother.

I weep for you, my pretty lass,
    Frail flower of love unblessed,
Because I can not always hold
    You close unto my breast;
I weep that you some day must go
    Alone your way to find,
For, oh, you have your mother's eyes,
    And men are seldom kind!

Dear Cloe, how blubber'd is that pretty Face?
Thy Cheek all on Fire, and Thy Hair all uncurl'd:
Pr'ythee quit this Caprice; and (as old Falstaf says)
Let Us e'en talk a little like Folks of This World.

How can'st Thou presume, Thou hast leave to destroy
The Beauties, which Venus but lent to Thy keeping?
Those Looks were design'd to inspire Love and Joy:
More ord'nary Eyes may serve People for weeping.

To be vext at a Trifle or two that I writ,
Your Judgment at once, and my Passion You wrong:
You take that for Fact, which will scarce be found Wit:
Odd's Life! must One swear to the Truth of a Song?

What I speak, my fair Cloe, and what I write, shews
The Diff'rence there is betwixt Nature and Art:
I court others in Verse; but I love Thee in Prose:
An...

Nor time nor all his minions
Of sorrow or of pain,
Shall dash with vulture pinions
The cup she fills again
Within the dream-dominions
Of life where she doth reign.

Clothed on with bright desire
And hope that makes her strong,
With limbs of frost and fire,
She sits above all wrong,
Her heart, a living lyre,
Her love, its only song.

And in the waking pauses
Of weariness and care,
And when the dark hour draws his
Black weapon of despair,
Above effects and causes
We hear its music there.

The longings life hath near it
Of love we yearn to see;
The dreams it doth inherit
Of immortality;
Are callings of her spirit
To something yet to be.

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch'd the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said:
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on th...

Ah, sweet young blood, that makes the heart
So full of joy, and light,
That dying children dance with it
From early morn till night.

My dreams were blossoms, hers the fruit,
She was my dearest care;
With gentle hand, and for it, I
Made playthings of her hair.

I made my fingers rings of gold,
And bangles for my wrist;
You should have felt the soft, warm thing
I made to glove my fist.

And she should have a crown, I swore,
With only gold enough
To keep together stones more rich
Than that fine metal stuff.

Her golden hair gave me more joy
Than Jason's heart could hold,
When all his men cried out, Ah, look!
He has the Fleece of Gold!

When, casting many a look behind,
    I leave the friends I cherish here--
Perchance some other friends to find,
    But surely finding none so dear--

Haply the little simple page,
    Which votive thus I've traced for thee,
May now and then a look engage,
    And steal one moment's thought for me.

But, oh! in pity let not those
    Whose hearts are not of gentle mould,
Let not the eye that seldom flows
    With feeling's tear, my song behold.

For, trust me, they who never melt
    With pity, never melt with love;
And such will frown at all I've felt,
    And all my loving lays reprove.

But if, perhaps, some gentler mind,
    Which rather loves to praise than blame,
Should in my page an interest find.
    And linger kindl...

'Tis not the beam of her bright blue eye,
Nor the smile of her lip of rosy dye,
Nor the dark brown wreaths of her glossy hair,
Nor her changing cheek, so rich and rare.
Oh! these are the sweets of a fairy dream,
The changing hues of an April sky.
They fade like dew in the morning beam,
Or the passing zephyr's odour'd sigh.

'Tis a dearer spell that bids me kneel,
'Tis the heart to love, and the soul to feel:
'Tis the mind of light, and the spirit free,
And the bosom that heaves alone for me.
Oh! these are the sweets that kindly stay
From youth's gay morning to age's night;
When beauty's rainbow tints decay,
Love's torch still burns with a holy light.

Soon will the bloom of the fairest fade,
And love will droop in the cheerless shade,
Or if...

i(Shepherd.) That cry's from the first cuckoo of the year.
I wished before it ceased.
i(Goatherd.) Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to Stone.
i(Shepherd.) I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my rrouble
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its Place
The sheep had gone from theirs.
i(Goatherd.) I know right well
What turned so good a shep...

Dost thou hear the tom-toms throbbing,
Like a lonely lover sobbing
For the beauty that is robbing him of all his life's delight?
Plaintive sounds, restrained, enthralling,
Seeking through the twilight falling
Something lost beyond recalling, in the darkness of the night.

Oh, my little, loved Firoza,
Come and nestle to me closer,
Where the golden-balled Mimosa makes a canopy above,
For the day, so hot and burning,
Dies away, and night, returning,
Sets thy lover's spirit yearning for thy beauty and thy love.

Soon will come the rosy warning
Of the bright relentless morning,
When, thy soft caresses scorning, I shall leave thee in the shade.
All the day my work must chain me,
And its weary bonds restrain me,
For I may not re-attain thee till the li...

Listen, Beloved, the Casurinas quiver,
Each tassel prays the wind to set it free,
Hark to the frantic sobbing of the river,
Wild to attain extinction in the sea.
All Nature blindly struggles to dissolve
In other forms and forces, thus to solve
The painful riddle of identity.
Ah, that my soul might lose itself in thee!

Yet, my Beloved One, wherefore seek I union,
Since there is no such thing in all the world, -
Are not our spirits linked in close communion, -
And on my lips thy clinging lips are curled?
Thy tender arms are round my shoulders thrown,
I hear thy heart more loudly than my own,
And yet, to my despair, I know thee far,
As in the stellar darkness, star from star.

Even in times when love with bounteous measure
A simultaneous joy on us...

Beside the brook the boy reclined
And wove his flowery wreath,
And to the waves the wreath consigned
The waves that danced beneath.
"So fleet mine hours," he sighed, "away
Like waves that restless flow:
And so my flowers of youth decay
Like those that float below."

"Ask not why I, alone on earth,
Am sad in life's young time;
To all the rest are hope and mirth
When spring renews its prime.
Alas! the music Nature makes,
In thousand songs of gladness
While charming all around me, wakes
My heavy heart to sadness."

"Ah! vain to me the joys that break
From spring, voluptuous are;
For only one 't is mine to seek
The near, yet ever far!
I stretch my arms, that shadow-shape
In fond embrace to hold;
Still doth the shade the clas...

Surprised by joy, impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport O! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recall’d thee to my mind
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.