Identity

        Let us begin, dear love, where we left off;
    Tie up the broken threads of that old dream,
    And go on happy as before, and seem
        Lovers again, though all the world may scoff.

        Let us forget the graves which lie between
    Our parting and our meeting, and the tears
    That rusted out the gold-work of the years,
        The frosts that fell upon our gardens green.

        Let us forget the cold, malicious Fate
    Who made our loving hearts her idle toys,
    And once more revel in the old sweet joys
        Of happy love. Nay, it is not too late!

        Forget the deep-ploughed furrows in my brow;
    Forget the silver gleaming in my hair;
    Look only in my eyes! Oh! darling, there
        The old love shone no warme...

The play is Life; and this round earth,
The narrow stage whereon
We act before an audience
Of actors dead and gone.

There is a figure in the wings
That never goes away,
And though I cannot see his face,
I shudder while I play.

His shadow looms behind me here,
Or capers at my side;
And when I mouth my lines in dread,
Those scornful lips deride.

Sometimes a hooting laugh breaks out,
And startles me alone;
While all my fellows, wondering
At my stage-fright, play on.

I fear that when my Exit comes,
I shall encounter there,
Stronger than fate, or time, or love,
And sterner than despair,

The Final Critic of the craft,
As stage tradition tells;
And yet--perhaps 'twill only be
The jester with his bells.

(For Christine and Tom)


Oases are charming 'mid the Afric sands,
Beautiful is summer after rain;
But the sweetest blossoms may be eyes and hands,
And two playful children on a train.

Aileen and her brother, home from holiday,
Left behind them Narragansett town;
Innocence like music followed all the way,
Summer glowed upon the cheeks of brown.

She that was their escort read a magazine:
They were young, and trains are dull at night;
All the passing signals, red and blue and green,
Counted up the miles for young delight.

I was there behind them, earnest in a book:
Lo, the journey turned to fairyland,
When, like magic mirrors, dusty windows took
Aileen's dancing eyes and waving hand!

That is how it happened on a creeping tr...

Last night, I dreamed of Nippon....
    I saw a cloud of white
Drifting before the sunset
    On seas of opal light.

Beyond the wide Pacific
    I saw its mounded snow
Miraculously changing
    In that deep evening glow,

To rosy rifts and hillocks,
    To orchards that I knew,
To snows of peach and cherry,
    And feathers of bamboo.

I saw, on twisted bridges,
    In blue and crimson gleams,
The lanterns of the fishers,
    Along the brook of dreams.

I saw the wreaths of incense
    Like little ghosts arise,
From temples under Fuji,
    From Fuji to the skies.

I saw that fairy mountain....
    I watched it form and fade.
No doubt the gods were singing,
    When Nippon isle was made.

1.
Honey from silkworms who can gather,
Or silk from the yellow bee?
The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me.

2.
Hate men who cant, and men who pray,
And men who rail like thee;
An equal passion to repay
They are not coy like me.

3.
Or seek some slave of power and gold
To be thy dear heart's mate;
Thy love will move that bigot cold
Sooner than me, thy hate.

4.
A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;
I hate thy want of truth and love -
How should I then hate thee?

1.

Your pardon my friend,
If my rhymes did offend,
Your pardon a thousand times o'er,
From friendship I strove,
Your pangs to remove,
But I swear I will do so no more.

2.

Since your beautiful maid
Your flame has repaid,
No more I your folly regret;
She's now most divine,
And I bow at the shrine,
Of this quickly reformed coquette.

3.

But still I must own,
I should never have known,
From your verses what else she deserv'd,
Your pain seem'd so great,
I pitied your fate,
As your fair was so dev'lish reserv'd.

4.

But since the chaste kiss,
Of this magical Miss,
Such wonderful transports produce,
Since the "world you forget,"
"When your lips once have met,"
My Counsel wi...

There are moments we can look to, we can cherish in the past,
As the fleeting days that numbered them are dwindling to their last,
Like the roses in the autumn that are severed from their stem,
Like the dew-bespangled petals when we sit and sigh for them.

There were sweetnesses unrivalled in those halcyon days of truth,
Yet fairy hopes are budding in the sunset glow of youth,
When like the cloudlets o'er the far horizon of the sea,
Each fringed with sheeny splendour, are the days of infancy.

Yet there are days and moments for enjoyment on before,
Tho' the golden skies of youth shall never smile upon us more,
When the brow of early womanhood looks forth to pleasures new,
And sweeter, lovelier visions are unfolding to the view.

O take the gift and when though look...

I.

O Life! O Death! O God!
Have we not striven?
Have we not known Thee, God
As Thy stars know Heaven?
Have we not held Thee true,
True as thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue
Heaven that feels Thy dew!
Have we not known Thee true,
O God who keepest.

II.

O God, our Father, God!
Who gav'st us fire,
To soar beyond the sod,
To rise, aspire
What though we strive and strive,
And all our soul says 'live'?
The empty scorn of men
Will sneer it down again.
And, O sun-centred high,
Who, too, art Poet,
Beneath Thy tender sky
Each day new Keatses die,
Calling all life a lie;
Can this be so and why?
And canst Thou know it?

III.

We know Thee beautiful,
We know Thee bitter!
H...

I found myself among the trees
What time the reapers ceased to reap;
And in the sunflower-blooms the bees
Huddled brown heads and went to sleep,
Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze.

I saw the red fox leave his lair,
A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;
And tunneling his thoroughfare
Beneath the soil, I watched the mole -
Stealth's own self could not take more care.

I heard the death-moth tick and stir,
Slow-honeycombing through the bark;
I heard the cricket's drowsy chirr,
And one lone beetle burr the dark -
The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.

And then the moon rose: and one white
Low bough of blossoms - grown almost
Where, ere you died, 'twas our delight
To meet, - dear heart! - I thought your ghost....
The wood is haunted since...

A rock, for ages, stern and high,
Stood frowning 'gainst the earth and sky,
And never bowed his haughty crest
When angry storms around him prest.
Morn, springing from the arms of night,
Had often bathed his brow with light.
And kissed the shadows from his face
With tender love and gentle grace.

Day, pausing at the gates of rest,
Smiled on him from the distant West,
And from her throne the dark-browed Night
Threw round his path her softest light.
And yet he stood unmoved and proud,
Nor love, nor wrath, his spirit bowed;
He bared his brow to every blast
And scorned the tempest as it passed.

One day a tiny, humble seed -
The keenest eye would hardly heed -
Fell trembling at that stern rock's base,
And found a lowly hiding-place.
A ...

Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed;
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th’ adulteries of art.
They strike mine eyes but not my heart.

(Clerk of Love, 1170.)

His Plaint To Venus Of The Coming Years.

"Plus ne suis ce que j'ay esté
Et ne le sçaurois jamais estre;
Mon beau printemps et mon esté
Ont fait le saut par la fenestre."


Queen Venus, round whose feet,
To tend thy sacred fire,
With service bitter-sweet
Nor youths nor maidens tire;--
Goddess, whose bounties be
Large as the un-oared sea;--

Mother, whose eldest born
First stirred his stammering tongue,
In the world's youngest morn,
When the first daisies sprung:--
Whose last, when Time shall die,
In the same grave shall lie:--

Hear thou one suppliant more!
Must I, thy Bard, grow old,
Bent, with the temples frore,
Not jocund be nor bold,
To tune for folk in May
Ballad and ...

Non veggio ove scampar mi possa omai.

AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS HER EYES ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN AT FIRST.


    No hope of respite, of escape no way,
Her bright eyes wage such constant havoc here;
Alas! excess of tyranny, I fear,
My doting heart, which ne'er has truce, will slay:
Fain would I flee, but ah! their amorous ray,
Which day and night on memory rises clear,
Shines with such power, in this the fifteenth year,
They dazzle more than in love's early day.
So wide and far their images are spread
That wheresoe'er I turn I alway see
Her, or some sister-light on hers that fed.
Springs such a wood from one fair laurel tree,
That my old foe, with admirable skill,
Amid its boughs misleads me at his will.

MACGREGOR.

Young Calidore is paddling o'er the lake;
His healthful spirit eager and awake
To feel the beauty of a silent eve,
Which seem'd full loath this happy world to leave;
The light dwelt o'er the scene so lingeringly.
He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky,
And smiles at the far clearness all around,
Until his heart is well nigh over wound,
And turns for calmness to the pleasant green
Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean
So elegantly o'er the waters' brim
And show their blossoms trim.
Scarce can his clear and nimble eye-sight follow
The freaks, and dartings of the black-wing'd swallow,
Delighting much, to see it half at rest,
Dip so refreshingly its wings, and breast
'Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon,
The widening circles into nothing gon...

"Martin, I wonder who makes all the songs."
"You do, sir?"
    "Yes, I wonder how they come."
"Well, boy, I wonder what you'll wonder next!"
"But somebody must make them?"
    "Sure enough."
"Does your wife know?"
    "She never said she did."
"You told me that she knew so many things."
"I said she was a London woman, sir,
And a fine scholar, but I never said
She knew about the songs."
    "I wish she did."
"And I wish no such thing; she knows enough,
She knows too much already. Look you now,
This vessel's off the stocks, a tidy craft."
"A schooner, Martin?"
    "No, boy, no; a brig,
Only she's schooner rigged, - a lovely craft."
"Is she for me? O, thank you, Martin, dear.
What shall I call her?"
    "Well, sir, what you please."
...

Aye! heartbreak of the tattered hills,
And mourning of the raining sky!
Heartbreak and mourning, since God wills,
    Are mine, and God knows why!

The brutal wind that herds the storm
In hail-big clouds that freeze along,
As this gray heart are doubly warm
    With thrice the joy of song.

I held one dearer than each day
Of life God sets in limpid gold
What thief hath stole that gem away
    To leave me poor and old!

The heartbreak of the hills be mine,
Of trampled twig and mired leaf,
Of rain that sobs through thorn and pine
    An unavailing grief!

The sorrow of the childless skies'
Good-nights, long said, yet never said,
As when I kissed my child's blue eyes
    And lips ice-dumb and dead.

Life is the body's light; which, once declining,
Those crimson clouds i' th' cheeks and lips leave shining:
Those counter-changed tabbies in the air,
The sun once set, all of one colour are:
So, when death comes, fresh tinctures lose their place,
And dismal darkness then doth smutch the face.

Wisp and meteor nightly falling,
But the Stars of God remain.