Identity

Flower of the mountain! by the wanderer's hand
    Robbed of thy beauty's short-lived sunny day;
    Didst thou but blow to gem the stranger's way,
And bloom, to wither in the stranger's land?
        Hueless and scentless as thou art,
        How much that stirs the memory,
        How much, much more, that thrills the heart,
        Thou faded thing, yet lives in thee!

Where is thy beauty? in the grassy blade,
    There lives more fragrance, and more freshness now;
Yet oh! not all the flowers that bloom and fade,
    Are half so dear to memory's eye as thou.
        The dew that on the mountain lies,
        The breeze that o'er the mountain sighs,
        Thy parent stem will nurse and nourish;
        But thou - not e'en those sunny eyes
        As b...

    Dust of my dust,
    And dust with my dust,
    O, child who died as you entered the world,
    Dead with my death!
    Not knowing
    Breath, though you tried so hard,
    With a heart that beat when you lived with me,
    And stopped when you left me for Life.
    It is well, my child.
    For you never traveled
    The long, long way that begins with school days,
    When little fingers blur under the tears
    That fall on the crooked letters.
    And the earliest wound, when a little mate
    Leaves you alone for another;
    And sickness, and the face of
    Fear by the bed;
    The death of a father or mother;
    Or shame for them, or poverty;
    The maiden sorrow of school days ended;
    And eyeless Nature that makes you dri...

All sweet and various things do lend themselves
And blend and intermix in her rare soul,
As chorded notes, which were untuneful else,
Clasp each the other in a perfect whole.

Within her spirit, dawn, all dewy-pearled,
Seems held and folded in by golden noons,
While past the sunshine gleams a further world
Of deep star-spaces and mysterious moons.

Like widths of blowing ocean wet with spray,
Like breath of early blooms at morning caught,
Like cool airs on the cheek of heated day,
Come the fair emanations of her thought.

Her movement, like the curving of a vine,
Seems an unerring accident of grace,
And like a flower's the subtle change and shine
And meaning of her brightly tranquil face.

And like a tree, unconscious of her shade,
She...

I.

One do I see and twelve; but second there
Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one;
Not from thy nobler port, for there are none
More quiet-featured: some there are who bear
Their message on their brows, while others wear
A look of large commission, nor will shun
The fiery trial, so their work is done;
But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer--
Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips
Seem like the porches of the spirit land;
For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by
Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye
Burns with a vision and apocalypse
Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.

II.

A Boanerges too! Upon my heart
It lay a heavy hour: features like thine
Should glow with other message than the shine
Of the earth-burrowi...

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thiun ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nore share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its fl...

[Written to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World]


    My Sweetheart is the TRUTH BEYOND THE MOON,
    And never have I been in love with Woman,
    Always aspiring to be set in tune
    With one who is invisible, inhuman.

    O laughing girl, cold TRUTH has stepped between,
    Spoiling the fevers of your virgin face:
    Making your shining eyes but lead and clay,
    Mocking your brilliant brain and lady's grace.

    TRUTH haunted me the day I wooed and lost,
    The day I wooed and won, or wooed in play:
    Tho' you were Juliet or Rosalind,
    Thus shall it be, forever and a day.

    I doubt my vows, tho' sworn on my own blood,
    Tho' I draw toward you weeping, soul to soul,
    I have a lonely goal beyond the moon;
    Ay...

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him - last
When out of the woods He came.


Baltimore, November, 1880.

Once from the world of living men
I passed, by a strange fancy led,
To a still City of the Dead,
To call upon a citizen.

He had been famous in his day;
Much talked of, written of, and praised
For virtues my small soul amazed,
And yet I thought his heart was clay.

He was too full of grace for me:
His friends said, on a marble stone,
His soul sat somewhere near the Throne
I did not know; I called to see.

His name and fame were on the door,
A most superior tomb indeed,
Much railed, and gilt, and filigreed;
He occupied the lower floor.

I knocked - a worm crawled from its hole:
I looked - and knew it for his soul.

An antique mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.

A mystic mirror framed
In ebon, wildly carved;
And the prisoned air in the crevice there
Moans like a man that's starved.

A truthful mirror where,
In the broad, chaste light of day,
From the window's arches, like fairy torches,
Red roses swing and sway.

They blush and bow and gaze,
Proud beauties desolate,
In their tresses cold the sunlight's gold,
In their hearts a jealous hate.

A small green worm that gnaws,
For the nightingale that low
Each eve doth rave, the passionate slave
Of the wild white rose below.

The night-bird wails below;
The stars creep out above;
And the roses soon in ...

        Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
        We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove,
        Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
        The launching of the colored moths of Love.
        Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone
        We bound about our irreligious brows,
        And fettered him with garlands of our own,
        And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
        Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear
        Though we should break our bodies in his flame,
        And pour our blood upon his altar, here
        Henceforward is a grove without a name,
        A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,
        Whence flee forever a woman and a man.

    Throb, throb, throb,
Far away in the blue transparent Night,
On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
She hears the sound of her lover's nearing boat
    Afar, afloat
On the river's loneliness, where the Stars are the only light;
    Hear the sound of the straining wood
    Like a broken sob
    Of a heart's distress,
    Loving misunderstood.

She lies, with her loose hair spent in soft disorder,
On a silken sheet with a purple woven border,
Every cell of her brain is latent fire,
Every fibre tense with restrained desire.
    And the straining oars sound clearer, clearer,
    The boat is approaching nearer, nearer;
    "How to wait through the moments' space
    Till I see the light of my lover's face?"

    Throb, throb, thro...

Io canterei d' Amor sì novamente.

REPLY TO A Sonnet OF JACOPO DA LENTINO.


    Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find,
Forcing from her hard heart full many a sigh,
And re-enkindle in her frozen mind
Desires a thousand, passionate and high;
O'er her fair face would see each swift change pass,
See her fond eyes at length where pity reigns,
As one who sorrows when too late, alas!
For his own error and another's pains;
See the fresh roses edging that fair snow
Move with her breath, that ivory descried,
Which turns to marble him who sees it near;
See all, for which in this brief life below
Myself I weary not but rather pride
That Heaven for later times has kept me here.

MACGREGOR.

When the twilight shadows deepen and the far-off lands are dim,
And the vesper dirge is stealing like the chant of cherubim,
There's a prayer within my bosom that's responsive to the sound,
There's a thought that springs within me--but 'tis sad and silence-bound.

There's a sorrow in those shadows as they lengthen on the lawn,
For the joy of life has vanished and its sweetness--all is gone,
And the purple mists of even as they hover o'er the glade
Seem to hush in voiceless gloom the deep recesses of the shade.

Oh thou beyond those heathery hills, beyond those woodlands blue,
Which, as they meet the eastern sky, receive its azure hue,
Ah, must I lonely linger here, where nought but griefs await,
Where life is but one long, long sigh, and all disconsolate?

I'm weep...

Arm'd year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano;
But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands--with a knife in the belt at your side,
As I heard you shouting loud--your sonorous voice ringing across the continent;
Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan;
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, o...

My paramour was loneliness
And lying by the sea,
Soft songs of sorrow and distress
He did beget in me.

Later another lover came
More meet for my desire,
"Radiant Beauty" was his name;
His sons had wings of fire!

Ov' è la fronte che con picciol cenno.

HE ENUMERATES AND EULOGISES THE GRACES OF LAURA.


    Where is the brow whose gentlest beckonings led
My raptured heart at will, now here, now there?
Where the twin stars, lights of this lower sphere,
Which o'er my darkling path their radiance shed?
Where is true worth, and wit, and wisdom fled?
The courteous phrase, the melting accent, where?
Where, group'd in one rich form, the beauties rare,
Which long their magic influence o'er me shed?
Where is the shade, within whose sweet recess
My wearied spirit still forgot its sighs,
And all my thoughts their constant record found?
Where, where is she, my life's sole arbitress?--
Ah, wretched world! and wretched ye, mine eyes
(Of her pure light bereft) which a...

THE COBBLER OF HAGENAU

I trust that somewhere and somehow
You all have heard of Hagenau,
A quiet, quaint, and ancient town
Among the green Alsatian hills,
A place of valleys, streams, and mills,
Where Barbarossa's castle, brown
With rust of centuries, still looks down
On the broad, drowsy land below,--
On shadowy forests filled with game,
And the blue river winding slow
Through meadows, where the hedges grow
That give this little town its name.

It happened in the good old times,
While yet the Master-singers filled
The noisy workshop and the guild
With various melodies and rhymes,
That here in Hagenau there dwelt
A cobbler,--one who loved debate,
And, arguing from a postulate,
Would say what others only felt;
A man of foreca...

New paradise, and groom and bride;
The world was all their own;
Her heart swelled full of love and pride;
Yet were they quite alone?
'Now how is it, oh how is it, and why is it' (in fear
All silent to herself she spake) 'that something strange seems here?'

Along the garden paths they walked -
The moon was at its height -
And lover-wise they strolled and talked,
But something was not right.
And 'Who is that, now who is that, oh who is that,' quoth she,
(All silent in her heart she spake) 'that seems to follow me?'

He drew her closer to his side;
She felt his lingering kiss;
And yet a shadow seemed to glide
Between her heart and his.
And 'What is that, now what is that, oh what is that,' she said,
(All silent to herself she spake) 'that minds me...