Ev'ry youth for love's sweet portion sighs,

Ev'ry maiden sighs to win man's love;
Why, alas! should bitter pain arise

From the noblest passion that we prove?

Thou, kind soul, bewailest, lov'st him well,

From disgrace his memory's saved by thee;
Lo, his spirit signs from out its cell:

BE A MAN, NOR SEEK TO FOLLOW ME.

I strove, like Israel, with my youth,
    And said, "Till thou bestow
Upon my life Love's joy and truth,
    I will not let thee go."

And sudden on my night there woke
    The trouble of the dawn;
Out of the east the red light broke,
    To broaden on and on.

And now let death be far or nigh,
    Let fortune gloom or shine,
I cannot all untimely die,
    For love, for love is mine.

My days are tuned to finer chords,
    And lit by higher suns;
Through all my thoughts and all my words
    A purer purpose runs.

The blank page of my heart grows rife
    With wealth of tender lore;
Her image, stamped upon my life,
    Gives value evermore.

She is so noble, firm, and true,
    I drink truth from her eyes,
...

The moon shone down on fair Eliza's face,
And made it beautiful. No fitter place
Could she have chosen for her gracious smile;
For as she sat there in the languid light,
Methought I'd found a soul as free from guile
As ever came from God. Oh, favored Night!
Oh, mild, impassioned moon and starry spheres!
To gaze upon her through the silent years
Without rebuke. But I have looked within,
And found the truest beauty; have laid bare
A spiritual excellence as rare
As ever mortal being hoped to win.
Heart, mind, and soul, I analysed them all,
And saw where heaven kept divinest carnival.

Farewell, my Highland lassie! when the year returns around,
Be it Greece, or be it Norway, where my vagrant feet are found,
I shall call to mind the place, I shall call to mind the day,
The day that’s gone for ever, and the glen that’s far away;
I shall mind me, be it Rhine or Rhone, Italian land or France,
Of the laughings and the whispers, of the pipings and the dance;
I shall see thy soft brown eyes dilate to wakening woman thought,
And whiter still the white cheek grow to which the blush was brought;
And oh, with mine commixing I thy breath of life shall feel,
And clasp thy shyly passive hands in joyous Highland reel;
I shall hear, and see, and feel, and in sequence sadly true,
Shall repeat the bitter-sweet of the lingering last adieu;
I shall seem as now to leave thee, with ...

A violet grew by the river-side,
And gladdened all hearts with its bloom;
While over the fields, on the scented air,
It breathed a rich perfume.
But the clouds grew dark in the angry sky,
And its portals were opened wide;
And the heavy rain beat down the flower
That grew by the river-side.

Not far away in a pleasant home,
There lived a little boy,
Whose cheerful face and childish grace
Filled every heart with joy.
He wandered one day to the river's verge,
With no one near to save;
And the heart that we loved with a boundless love
Was stilled in the restless wave.

The sky grew dark to our tearful eyes,
And we bade farewell to joy;
For our hearts were bound by a sorrowful tie
To the grave of the little boy.
The birds still sing in...

    Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream,
    A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers,
    Love is a search for the lost, the ever vanishing gleam
    Of wings, desires and sorrows and haunted hours.

    Will the look return to your eyes, the warmth to your hand?
    Love is a doubt, an ache, love is a writhing fear.
    Love is a potion drunk when the ship puts out from land,
    Rudderless, sails at full, and with none to steer.

    The end is a shattered lamp, a drunken seraph asleep,
    The upturned face of the drowned on a barren beach.
    The glare of noon is o'er us, we are ashamed to weep,
    The beginning and end of love are devoid of speech.

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
As whose children we are brethren: one.

And any moment may descend hot death
To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast
Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath
Not less for dying faithful to the last.

O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,
Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,
Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony!
O sudden spasm, release of the dead!

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief o...

I

I nursed it in my bosom while it lived,
    I hid it in my heart when it was dead;
In joy I sat alone, even so I grieved
    Alone and nothing said.

I shut the door to face the naked truth,
    I stood alone - I faced the truth alone,
Stripped bare of self-regard or forms or ruth
    Till first and last were shown.

I took the perfect balances and weighed;
    No shaking of my hand disturbed the poise;
Weighed, found it wanting: not a word I said,
    But silent made my choice.

None know the choice I made; I make it still.
    None know the choice I made and broke my heart,
Breaking mine idol: I have braced my will
    Once, chosen for once my part.

I broke it at a blow, I laid it cold,
    Crushed in my deep heart wher...

Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live
As might from India's farthest plain
Recall the not unwilling Maid,
Assist me to detain
The lovely Fugitive:
Check with thy notes the impulse which, betrayed
By her sweet farewell looks, I longed to aid.
Here let me gaze enrapt upon that eye,
The impregnable and awe-inspiring fort
Of contemplation, the calm port
By reason fenced from winds that sigh
Among the restless sails of vanity.
But if no wish be hers that we should part,
A humbler bliss would satisfy my heart.
Where all things are so fair,
Enough by her dear side to breathe the air
Of this Elysian weather;
And, on or in, or near, the brook, espy
Shade upon the sunshine lying
Faint and somewhat pensively;
And downward Image gaily vying

I.

There is a scent of roses and spilt wine
Between the moonlight and the laurel coppice;
The marble idol glimmers on its shrine,
White as a star, among a heaven of poppies.
Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine.
There is a mouth of music like a lute,
A nightingale that sigheth to one flower;
Between the falling flower and the fruit,
Where love hath died, the music of an hour.

II.

To sit alone with memory and a rose;
To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;
To make one hour of a year of woes
And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,
With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose,
To shape from music and the scent of buds
Love's spirit and its presence of sweet fire,
Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's,
Is...

My Polly's varry bonny,
Her een are black an breet;
They shine under her raven locks,
Like stars i'th' dark o'th' neet.

Her little cheeks are like a peach,
'At th' sun has woo'd an missed;
Her lips like cherries, red an sweet,
Seem moulded to be kissed.

Her breast is like a drift o' snow,
Her little waist's soa thin,
To clasp it wi' a careless arm
Wod ommost be a sin.

Her little hands an tiny feet,
Wod mak yo think shoo'd been
Browt up wi' little fairy fowk
To be a fairy queen.

An when shoo laffs, it saands as if
A little crystal spring,
Wor bubblin up throo silver rocks,
Screened by an angel's wing.

It saands soa sweet, an yet soa low,
One feels it forms a part
Ov what yo love, an yo can hear
It...

Shut it out of the heart this grief,
O Love, with the years grown old and hoary!
And let in joy that life is brief,
And give God thanks for the end of the story.

The bond of the flesh is transitory,
And beauty goes with the lapse of years
The brow's white rose and the hair's dark glory
God be thanked for the severing shears!

Over the past, Heart, waste no tears!
Over the past and all its madness,
Its wine and wormwood, hopes and fears,
That never were worth a moment's sadness.

Here she lies who was part o' its gladness,
Wife and mistress, and shared its woe,
The good of life as well as its badness,
Look on her face and see if you know.

Is this the face? yea, ask it slow!
The hair, the form, that we used to cherish?
Where is th...

'T is said that each succeeding year
Another circlet weaves
Within each living, waving tree;
Yet not in buds or leaves,--
But far within the silent core,
The tiny shuttles ply,
At Nature's ever-working loom,
Unseen by human eye.

And thus, within my "heart of hearts,"
Doth this returning day,
Another golden zone complete,
Another circle lay;
And when unto the shadowy past
In retrospect I flee,
I numerate the fleeting years
By deepening love for thee.

Since last we met this sunny day
How bright the hours have flown!
Youth, Love, and Hope, with fadeless light,
Around our way have shone;
And if a shadow from the past
Has floated o'er the dream,
'T was softened, like a violet cloud
Reflected in a stream.

Yet...

A Canzonet

I pray thee leaue, loue me no more,
    Call home the Heart you gaue me,
I but in vaine that Saint adore,
    That can, but will not saue me:
These poore halfe Kisses kill me quite;
    Was euer man thus serued?
Amidst an Ocean of Delight,
    For Pleasure to be sterued.

Shew me no more those Snowie Brests,
    With Azure Riuerets branched,
Where whilst mine Eye with Plentie feasts,
    Yet is my Thirst not stanched.
O TANTALVS, thy Paines n'er tell,
    By me thou art preuented;
'Tis nothing to be plagu'd in Hell,
    But thus in Heauen tormented.

Clip me no more in those deare Armes,
    Nor thy Life's Comfort call me;
O, these are but too pow'rfull Charmes,
    And doe but more inthrall me.
But see, how ...

I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes!

And then a voice may meet my ear
That death has silenced long ago;
And hope and rapture may appear
Instead of solitude and woe.

Cold in the grave for years has lain
The form it was my bliss to see,
And only dreams can bring again
The darling of my heart to me.

All the roses now are gone,
All their glories shed:
Here's a rose that grows not wan,
Rose of love to wear upon
Your fair breast instead.

Everywhere sere leaves are seen
Golden, red and grey:
Here's a leaf for ever green,
Leaf of truth to hold between
Your white hands alway.

Here's my leaf and here's my rose.
Take them. They are yours.
In my garden nothing grows,
Garden of my heart, God knows,
That as long endures.

I saw a child some four years old,
Along a meadow stray;
Alone she went unchecked untold
Her home not far away.

She gazed around on earth and sky
Now paused, and now proceeded;
Hill, valley, wood, she passed them by,
Unmarked, perchance unheeded.

And now gay groups of roses bright,
In circling thickets bound her
Yet on she went with footsteps light,
Still gazing all around her.

And now she paused, and now she stooped,
And plucked a little flower
A simple daisy 'twas, that drooped
Within a rosy bower.

The child did kiss the little gem,
And to her bosom pressed it;
And there she placed the fragile stem,
And with soft words caressed it.

I love to read a lesson true,
From nature's open book
And oft I lear...

Artist, fashion! talk not long!
Be a breath thine only song!