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...

Night or light is it now, wherein
Sleeps, shut out from the wild world's din,
Wakes, alive with a life more clear,
One who found not on earth his kin?
Sleep were sweet for awhile, were dear
Surely to souls that were heartless here,
Souls that faltered and flagged and fell,
Soft of spirit and faint of cheer.
A living soul that had strength to quell
Hope the spectre and fear the spell,
Clear-eyed, content with a scorn sublime
And a faith superb, can it fare not well?
Life, the shadow of wide-winged time,
Cast from the wings that change as they climb,
Life may vanish in death, and seem
Less than the promise of last year's prime.
But not for us is the past a dream
Wherefrom, as light from a clouded stream,
Faith fades and shivers and ebbs away,
Fain...

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.

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...

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.

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...

    He sits before you silent as Buddha,
    And then you say
    This man is Rabelais.
    And while you wonder what his stock is,
    English or Irish, you behold his eyes
    As big and brown as those desirable crockies
    With which as boys we used to play.
    And then you see the spherical light that lies
    Just under the iris coloring,
    Before which everything,
    Becomes as plain as day.

    If you have noticed the rolling jowls
    And the face that speaks its chief
    Delight in beer and roast beef
    Before you have seen his eyes, you see
    A man of fleshly jollity,
    Like the friars of old in gowns and cowls
    To make a show of scowls.
    And when he speaks from an orotund depth that growls
    In a humorous way...

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.

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...

        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.

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...

    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...

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 ...

    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...

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering
white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping
night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous
feet.

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...

                        Ah me!
                    Am I the swain
            That late from sorrow free
        Did all the cares on earth disdain?
    And still untouched, as at some safer games,
Played with the burning coals of love, and beauty's flames?
Was't I could dive, and sound each passion's secret depth at will?
And from those huge o'erwhelmings rise, by help of reason still?
    And am I now, O heavens! for trying this in vain,
        So sunk that I shall never rise again?
        Then let despair set sorrow's string,
            For strains that doleful be;
                    And I will sing,
                        Ah me!

                        But why,
                    O fatal time,
                Dost thou constrain that I
   ...

When first we met she seemed so white
    I feared her;
As one might near a spirit bright
    I neared her;
An angel pure from heaven above
    I dreamed her,
And far too good for human love
    I deemed her.
A spirit free from mortal taint
    I thought her,
And incense as unto a saint
    I brought her.

Well, incense burning did not seem
    To please her,
And insolence I feared she’d deem
    To squeeze her;
Nor did I dare for that same why
    To kiss her,
Lest, shocked, she’d cause my eager eye
    To miss her.
I sickened thinking of some way
    To win her,
When lo! she asked me, one fine day,
    To dinner!

Twas thus that made of common flesh
    I found her,
And in a mortal lover’s mesh