Sadness

My careful plans all storm-subdued,
In disappointing solitude
    The weary hours began;
And scarce I deemed when time had sped,
Marked only by the passing tread
    Of some pedestrian.

But with the morrow's tranquil dawn,
A fairy scene I looked upon
    That filled me with delight;
Far-reaching from my own abode,
The world in matchless splendor glowed,
    Arrayed in spotless white.

The surface of the hillside slope
Gleamed in my farthest vision's scope
    Like opalescent stone;
Rich jewels hung on every tree,
Whose crystalline transparency
    Golconda's gems outshone.

Beyond the line where wayside posts
Stood up, like fear-inspiring ghosts
    Of awful form and mien,
A mansion tall, my neighbor's pride,
A see...

Love's worshippers alone can know
The thousand mysteries that are his;
His blazing torch, his twanging bow,
His blooming age are mysteries.
A charming science, but the day
Were all too short to con it o'er;
So take of me this little lay,
A sample of its boundless lore.

As once, beneath the fragrant shade
Of myrtles breathing heaven's own air,
The children, Love and Folly, played,
A quarrel rose betwixt the pair.
Love said the gods should do him right,
But Folly vowed to do it then,
And struck him, o'er the orbs of sight,
So hard he never saw again.

His lovely mother's grief was deep,
She called for vengeance on the deed;
A beauty does not vainly weep,
Nor coldly does a mother plead.
A shade came o'er the eternal bliss
That ...

And wilt thou, faithless one, then, leave me,
With all thy magic phantasy,
With all the thoughts that joy or grieve me,
Wilt thou with all forever fly?
Can naught delay thine onward motion,
Thou golden time of life's young dream?
In vain! eternity's wide ocean
Ceaselessly drowns thy rolling stream.

The glorious suns my youth enchanting
Have set in never-ending night;
Those blest ideals now are wanting
That swelled my heart with mad delight.
The offspring of my dream hath perished,
My faith in being passed away;
The godlike hopes that once I cherish
Are now reality's sad prey.

As once Pygmalion, fondly yearning,
Embraced the statue formed by him,
Till the cold marble's cheeks were burning,
And life diffused through every limb,
So...

I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth,
And searched for Pleasure.    On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies.
Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway
I caught the glimmer of a golden goal,
While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love.

Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed at Love
With all the haughty insolence of youth,
As past her bower I strode to seek my goal.
"Now will I climb to glory's dizzy height,"
I said, "for there above the common way
Doth pleasure dwell companioned by the skies."

But when I reached that summit near the skies,
So far from man I seemed, so far from Love -
"Not here," I cried, "doth Pleasure find her way."
Seen from the distant borderland of youth,
Fame smiles upon us from he...

October 1, 1913

    I
    I left thee in the crowds and in the light,
    And if I laughed or sorrowed none could tell.
    They could not know our true and deep farewell
    Was spoken in the long preceding night.

    Thy mighty shadow in the garden's dip!
    To others dormant, but to me awake;
    I saw a window in the moonlight shake,
    And traced the angle of the gable's lip,

    And knew thy soul, benign and grave and mild,
    Towards me, morsel of morality,
    And grieving at the parting soon to be,
    A patriarch about to lose a child.

    For many come and soon their tale is told,
    And thou remainest, dimly feeling pain,
    Aware the time draws near to don again
    The sober mourning of the very old.

 ...

    High on the hill, with moss o'ergrown,
    A hermit chapel stood;
    It spoke the tale of seasons gone,
    And half-revealed its ivied stone.
    Amid the beechen wood.

    Here often, when the mountain trees
    A leafy murmur made,
    Now still, now swaying to the breeze,
    (Sounds that the musing fancy please),
    The widowed mourner strayed.

    And many a morn she climbed the steep,
    From whence she might behold,
    Where, 'neath the clouds, in shining sweep,
    And mingling with the mighty deep,
    The sea-broad Severn rolled.

    Her little boy beside her played,
    With sea-shells in his hand;
    And sometimes, 'mid the bents delayed,
    And sometimes running onward, said,
    Oh, where is Holy Land!<...

Through all the district's length, where from the shacks
Hang shutters for concealing secret acts,
When shafts of sunlight strike with doubled heat
On towns and fields, on rooftops on the wheat,
I practise my quaint swordsmWhip alone,
Stumbling on words as over paving stones,
Sniffing in corners all the risks of rhyme,
To find a verse I'd dreamt of a long time.

This foster-father, fighter of chlorosis,
Wakes in the fields the worms as well as roses;
He sends our cares in vapour to the skies,
And fills our minds, with honey fills the hives,
Gives crippled men a new view of the world,
And makes them gay and gentle as young girls,
Commands the crops to grow, and nourishes
Them, in that heart that always flourishes!

When, poet-like, he comes to town aw...

And what are you that, wanting you
    I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
    With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
    As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
    And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
    And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
    The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
    As any sage will tell,--
And what am I, that I should love
    So wisely and so well?

When life begins anew,
And Youth, from gathering flowers,
From vague delights, rapt musings, twilight hours,
Turns restless, seeking some great deed to do,
To sum his foster'd dreams; when that fresh birth
Unveils the real, the throng'd and spacious Earth,
And he awakes to those more ample skies,
By other aims and by new powers possess'd:
How deeply, then, his breast
Is fill'd with pangs of longing! how his eyes
Drink in the enchanted prospect! Fair it lies
Before him, with its plains expanding vast,
Peopled with visions, and enrich'd with dreams;
Dim cities, ancient forests, winding streams,
Places resounding in the famous past,
A kingdom ready to his hand!
How like a bride Life seems to stand
In welcome, and with festal robes array'd!
He feels her ...

Lines addressed to the daughter of Richard Dalton Williams.



Child of the heart of a child of sweetest song!
The poet's blood flows through thy fresh pure veins;
Dost ever hear faint echoes float along
Thy days and dreams of thy dead father's strains?
        Dost ever hear,
    In mournful times,
        With inner ear,
The strange sweet cadences of thy father's rhymes?

Child of a child of art, which Heaven doth give
To few, to very few as unto him!
His songs are wandering o'er the world, but live
In his child's heart, in some place lone and dim;
    And nights and days
        With vestal's eyes
        And soundless sighs
Thou keepest watch above thy father's lays.

Child of a dreamer of dreams all unfulfilled --
(And t...

Measures of oil for others,
    Oil and red wine,
Lips laugh and drink, but never
    Are the lips mine.

Worlds at the feet of others,
    Power gods have known,
Hearts for the favoured round me
    Mine beats, alone.

Fame offering to others
    Chaplets of bays,
I with no crown of laurels,
    Only grey days.

Sweet human love for others,
    Deep as the sea,
God-sent unto my neighbour -
    But not to me.

Sometime I'll wrest from others
    More than all this,
I shall demand from Heaven
    Far sweeter bliss.

What profit then to others,
    Laughter and wine?
I'll have what most they covet -
    Death, will be mine.

Turn thy fair face to the breaking dawn,
Lily so white, that through all the dark,
Hast kept lone watch on the dewy lawn,
Deeming thy comrades grown cold and stark;
Soon shall the sunbeam, joyous and strong,
Dry the tears in thy stamens of gold--
Glinteth the day up merry and long,
    And the night grows old.

Turn thy fair face to Faith's rosy sky,
Soul so white that lone night hath kept
Sighing for spirits sin-bound that lie;
Wrong has ruled right, and the truth has slept;
The dawn shall show thee a host ere long,
Planting sweet roses abqve the mould;
The sun of righteousness beameth strong,
    And sin's night grows old.

Turn thine eyes to the burnished zone
From out of thy nest neath darkened eaves,
Oh bird, who hast mingled thy plain...

Was Time not harsh to you, or was he kind,
O pale Erinna of the perfect lyre,
That he has left no word of singing fire
Whereby you waked the dreaming Lesbian wind,
And kindled night along the lyric shore?
O girl whose lips Erato stooped to kiss,
Do you go sorrowing because of this
In fields where poets sing forevermore?
Or are you glad and is it best to be
A silent music men have never heard,
A dream in all our souls that we may say:
"Her voice had all the rapture of the sea,
And all the clear cool quiver of a bird
Deep in a forest at the break of day"?

May God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind
That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
Nor quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.

Though pedantry denies,
It’s plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.
Yet never could, although
They say he counted grass,
Count all the praises due
When Sheba was his lass,
When she the iron wrought, or
When from the smithy fire
It shuddered in the water:
Harshness of their desire
That made them stretch and yawn,
Pleasure that comes with sleep,
Shudder that made them one.
What else He give or keep
God grant me—no, not here,
For I am not so bold
To hope ...

Pale girl with russet hair,
Tatters in what you wear
Show us your poverty
And your beauty,

For me, poor poet, in
The frail and freckled skin
Of your young flesh
Is a sweetness.

You move in shoes of wood
More gallantly than could
A velvet-buskined Queen
Playing a scene;

In place of rags for clothes
Let a majestic robe
Trail in its bustling pleats
Down to your feet;

Behind the holes in seams
Let a gold dagger gleam
Laid for the roue's eye
Along your thigh;

Let loosened ribbons, then,
Unveil us for our sins
Two breasts as undisguised
And bright as eyes;

As for your other charms,
Let your resistant arms
Frustrate with saucy blows
The groping rogues;

Pearls of a lu...

Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.

To-night the west o'er-brims with warmest dyes;
Its chalice overflows
With pools of purple colouring the skies,
Aflood with gold and rose;
And some hot soul seems throbbing close to mine,
As sinks the sun within that world of wine.

I seem to hear a bar of music float
And swoon into the west;
My ear can scarcely catch the whispered note,
But something in my breast
Blends with that strain, till both accord in one,
As cloud and colour blend at set of sun.

And twilight comes with grey and restful eyes,
As ashes follow flame.
But O! I heard a voice from those rich skies
Call tenderly my name;
It was as if some priestly fingers stole
In benedictions o'er my lonely soul.

I know not why, but all my being longed
And leapt at that sweet ...

Not into these dark cities,
These sordid marts and streets,
That the sun in his rising pities,
And the moon with sorrow greets,
Does she, with her dreams and flowers,
For whom our hearts are dumb,
Does she of the golden hours,
Earth's heaven-born Beauty, come.

Afar 'mid the hills she tarries,
Beyond the farthest streams,
In a world where music marries
With color that blooms and beams;
Where shadow and light are wedded,
Whose children people the Earth,
The fair, the fragrant-headed,
The pure, the wild of birth.

Where Morn with rosy kisses
Wakes ever the eyes of Day;
And, winds in her radiant tresses,
Haunts every wildwood way:
Where Eve, with her mouth's twin roses,
Her kisses sweet with balm,
The eyes of the glad Day c...