Loneliness

The old gate clicks, and down the walk,
Between clove-pink and hollyhock,
Still young of face though gray of lock,
Among her garden's flowers she goes
At evening's close,
Deep in her hair a yellow rose.

The old house shows one gable-peak
Above its trees; and sage and leek
Blend with the rose their scents: the creek,
Leaf-hidden, past the garden flows,
That on it snows
Pale petals of the yellow rose.

The crickets pipe in dewy damps;
And everywhere the fireflies' lamps
Flame like the lights of Faery camps;
While, overhead, the soft sky shows
One star that glows,
As, in gray hair, a yellow rose.

There is one spot she seeks for, where
The roses make a fragrant lair,
A spot where once he kissed her hair,
And told his love,...

Inside this northern summer’s fold
The fields are full of naked gold,
Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;
The green veiled air is full of doves;
Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let
Light on the small warm grasses wet
Fall in short broken kisses sweet,
And break again like waves that beat
Round the sun’s feet.

But I, for all this English mirth
Of golden-shod and dancing days,
And the old green-girt sweet-hearted earth,
Desire what here no spells can raise.
Far hence, with holier heavens above,
The lovely city of my love
Bathes deep in the sun-satiate air
That flows round no fair thing more fair
Her beauty bare.

There the utter sky is holier, there
More pure the intense white height of air,
More clear men’s eyes that mine ...

You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken parade,

You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;
Abhorrence, to whom 1 am bound
As the convict is to the chain,

As the drunkard is to the jug,
As the gambler to the game,
As to the vermin the corpse,
I damn you, out of my shame!

And I prayed to the eager sword
To win my deliverance,
And have asked the perfidious vial
To redeem my cowardice.

Alas! the vial and the sword
Disdainfully said to me;
'You are not worthy to lift
From your wretched slavery,

You fool! if from her command
Our efforts delivered you forth,
Your kisses would waken again
Your vampire lover's corpse!'

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.

    He frowned and shook his snowy head.
    "Those clanging bells! they deafen quite
    With their unmeaning song," he said.
    "I'm weary of it all to-night -
    The gladness, sadness. I'm so old
    I have no sympathy to spare,
    My heart has grown so hard and cold,
    So full of self, I do not care
    How many laugh, or long, or grieve
    In all the world this Christmas eve.

    "There was a time long, long ago -
    They take our best, the passing years -
    For the old life, and faith, and glow.
    I'd give - what's on my cheek? Not tears!
    I have a whim. To-night I'll spend
    Till eyes turn on me gratefully -
    An old man's whim, just to pretend
    That he is what he used to be;
    For this one night, not want nor pain...

There is a stream to northward, thinly spread
Over a shelving, many-fissured shale,
That brawls and blusters in its shallow bed,
And ends its course inglorious in a swale.
Its babble stirs the laughter of the hills;
The rooted mountains mock its fume and fret;
And all the summer long the idle mills
Wait wearily with water-wheel unwet.

Let us not waste our lives in froth and foam
And unavailing vanity of noise;
"Still waters deepest run" - the ancient gnome
Pricks well our sham, conceited bubble-toys;
Who serve best here in God's great halidome
Have volume, depth, serenity and poise.

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
    I shun the thought that lurks in all delight-
    The thought of thee-and in the blue Heaven's height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.

Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
    This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;
    But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
    When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
    And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Must doff my will as raiment laid away,-
    With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
    I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
Somewhere back of the sun;

All the heart broke to forego
Shall be ours without pain,
We shall take them as lightly as girls
Pluck flowers after rain.

And when they are ours in the end
Perhaps after all
The skies will not open for us
Nor heaven be there at our call.

        I.

I see them still, when poring o'er
Old volumes of romantic lore,
Ride forth to hawk in days of yore,
By woods and promontories;
Knights in gold lace, plumes and gems,
Maidens crowned with anadems, -
Whose falcons on round wrists of milk
Sit in jesses green of silk, -
From bannered Miraflores.


        II.

The laughing earth is young with dew;
The deeps above are violet blue;
And in the East a cloud or two
Empearled with airy glories:
And with laughter, jest and singing,
Silver bells of falcons ringing,
Hawkers, rosy with the dawn,
Gayly ride o'er hill and lawn
From courtly Miraflores.


        III.

The torrents silver down the crags;
Down dim-green vistas browse the stags;
An...

All the long day the vapours played
    At blindfold in the city streets,
Their elfin fingers caught and stayed
    The sunbeams, as they wound their sheets
Into a filmy barricade
    'Twixt earth and where the sunlight beats.

A vagrant band of mischiefs these,
    With wings of grey and cobweb gown;
They live along the edge of seas,
    And creeping out on foot of down,
They chase and frolic, frisk and tease
    At blind-man's buff with all the town.

And when at eventide the sun
    Breaks with a glory through their grey,
The vapour-fairies, one by one,
Outspread their wings and float away
In clouds of colouring, that run
    Wine-like along the rim of day.

Athwart the beauty and the breast
    Of purpling airs they twirl and ...

Let others from the Town retire,
And in the fields seek new delight;
My Phillis does such joys inspire,
No other objects please my sight.

In her alone I find whate'er
Beauties a country landscape grace;
No shade so lovely as her hair,
Nor plain so sweet as is her face.

Lilies and roses there combine,
More beauteous than in flowery field;
Transparent is her skin so fine,
To this each crystal stream must yield.

Her voice more sweet than warbling sound,
Though sung by nightingale or lark;
Her eyes such lustre dart around,
Compared to them the sun is dark.

Both light and vital heat they give,
Cherish'd by them my love takes root;
From her kind looks does life receive,
Grows a fair plant, bears flowers and fruit.

Su...

Hadst thou a genius on thy peak,
What tales, white-headed Ben,
Could'st thou of ancient ages speak,
That mock th' historian's pen!

Thy long duration makes our livea
Seem but so many hours;
And likens, to the bees' frail hives,
Our most stupendous towers.

Temples and towers thou seest begun,
New creeds, new conquerers sway;
And, like their shadows in the sun,
Hast seen them swept away.

Thy steadfast summit, heaven-allied
(Unlike life's little span),
Looks down a mentor on the pride
Of perishable man.

Over the mossy walls,
Above the slumbering fields
Where yet the ground no fruitage yields,
Save as the sunlight falls
In dreams of harvest-yellow,
What voice remembered calls, -
So bubbling fresh, so soft and mellow?

A darting, azure-feathered arrow
From some lithe sapling's bow-curve, fleet
The bluebird, springing light and narrow,
Sings in flight, with gurglings sweet:

"Out of the South I wing,
Blown on the breath of Spring:
The little faltering song
That in my beak I bring
Some maiden shall catch and sing,
Filling it with the longing
And the blithe, unfettered thronging
Of her spirit's blossoming.

"Warbling along
In the sunny weather,
Float, my notes,
Through the sunny motes,
Falling light as a feather!

I sought among the drifting leaves,
The golden leaves that once were green,
To see if Love were hiding there
And peeping out between.

For thro’ the silver showers of May
And thro’ the summer’s heavy heat,
In vain I sought his golden head
And light, fast-flying feet.

Perhaps when all the world is bare
And cruel winter holds the land,
The Love that finds no place to hide
Will run and catch my hand.

I shall not care to have him then,
I shall be bitter and a-cold
It grows too late for frolicking
When all the world is old.

Then little hiding Love, come forth,
Come forth before the autumn goes,
And let us seek thro’ ruined paths
The garden’s last red rose.

How have I wandered here to this vaulted room
In the house of life? - the floor was ruffled with gold
Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,
Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight unfold

For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom
Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,
And damp old web of misery's heirloom
Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold.

And what is this that floats on the undermist
Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling
Unsightly its way to the warmth? - this thing with a list
To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?

Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it missed
Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing
Upon me! - my own reflection! - explicit gist
Of my presence th...

It pleased her to step in front and sit
Where the cragged slope was green,
While I stood back that I might pencil it
With her amid the scene;
Till it gloomed and rained;
But I kept on, despite the drifting wet
That fell and stained
My draught, leaving for curious quizzings yet
The blots engrained.

And thus I drew her there alone,
Seated amid the gauze
Of moisture, hooded, only her outline shown,
With rainfall marked across.
- Soon passed our stay;
Yet her rainy form is the Genius still of the spot,
Immutable, yea,
Though the place now knows her no more, and has known her not
Ever since that day.

From an old note.

"Whose are the little beds," I asked,
"Which in the valleys lie?"
Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
And no one made reply.

"Perhaps they did not hear," I said;
"I will inquire again.
Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
So thick upon the plain?"

"'T is daisy in the shortest;
A little farther on,
Nearest the door to wake the first,
Little leontodon.

"'T is iris, sir, and aster,
Anemone and bell,
Batschia in the blanket red,
And chubby daffodil."

Meanwhile at many cradles
Her busy foot she plied,
Humming the quaintest lullaby
That ever rocked a child.

"Hush! Epigea wakens! --
The crocus stirs her lids,
Rhodora's cheek is crimson, --
She's dreaming of the woods."

Then, turning from ...

Oh that I could write a story
    Of love's dealing with affection!
How he makes the spirit sorry
    That is touch'd with his infection.

But he doth so closely wind him,
    In the plaits of will ill-pleased,
That the heart can never find him
    Till it be too much diseased.

'Tis a subtle kind or spirit
    Of a venom-kind of nature,
That can, like a coney-ferret,
    Creep unawares upon a creature.

Never eye that can behold it,
    Though it worketh first by seeing;
Nor conceit that can unfold it,
    Though in thoughts be all its being.

Oh! it maketh old men witty,
    Young men wanton, women idle,
While that patience weeps, for pity
    Reason bite not nature's bridle.

What it is, in conjecture;
    S...