She took my strength by minutes,
    She took my life by hours,
    She drained me like a fevered moon
    That saps the spinning world.
    The days went by like shadows,
    The minutes wheeled like stars.
    She took the pity from my heart,
    And made it into smiles.
    She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,
    My secret thoughts were fingers:
    They flew behind her pensive brow
    And lined it deep with pain.
    They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,
    And drooped the eye with sorrow.
    My soul had entered in the clay,
    Fighting like seven devils.
    It was not mine, it was not hers;
    She held it, but its struggles
    Modeled a face she hated,
    And a face I feared to see.
    I beat the windows, shook the bolt...

Amid my treasures once I found
    A simple faded flower;
A flower with all its beauty fled,
    The darling of an hour.

With bitterness I gazed awhile,
    Then flung it from my sight;
For with it all came back to me
    the pain and heedless blight.

But, moved with pity and regret
    I took it up again;
For oh, so long and wearily
    In darkness it had lain.

Ah, purple pansy, once I kissed
    Your dewy petals fair;
For then, indeed, I had no thought
    Of earthly pain or care.

Your faded petals now I touch
    With sacred love and awe;
For never will my heart kneel down
    To earthly will or law.

Your velvet beauty still is dear,
    Though faded now you seem;
You drooped and died, yet still yo...

        I.

Fleet swallows soared and darted
'Neath empty vaults of blue;
Thick leaves close clung or parted
To let the sunlight through;
Each wild rose, honey-hearted,
Bowed full of living dew.


        II.

Down deep, fair fields of Heaven,
Beat wafts of air and balm,
From southmost islands driven
And continents of calm;
Bland winds by which were given
Hid hints of rustling palm.


        III.

High birds soared high to hover;
Thick leaves close clung to slip;
Wild rose and snowy clover
Were warm for winds to dip,
And one ungentle lover,
A bee with robber lip.


        IV.

Dart on, O buoyant swallow!
Kiss leaves and willing rose!
Whose musk the sly winds follow,

When spring, to woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again,
The murdered traveller's bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung
Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o'erhead,
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,
And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed, and hard beset;

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain wolf and wil...

Why do I make so much of Aber Fall?
Four years ago
My little boy was with me here,
That’s all,
He died next year:
He died just seven years old,
A very gentle child, yet bold,
Having no fear.
You have seen such?
They are not much?
No . . . no.
And yet he was a very righteous child,
Stood up for what was right,
Intolerant of wrong, Pure azure light
Was cisterned in his eyes;
We thought him wise
Beyond his years, so sweet and mild,
But strong
For justice, doing what he could,
Poor little soul, to make all children good.
I almost think, and yet I am to blame,
He was a different child from others;
He had three sisters and two brothers:
He seemed a little king:
Among the children, ah I ‘tis a common thing,
Parents are all...

And passing here through evening dew,
He hastened happy to her door,
But found the old folk only two
With no more footsteps on the floor
To walk again below the skies
Where beaten paths do fall and rise.

For she wer gone from earthly eyes
To be a-kept in darksome sleep
Until the good again do rise
A joy to souls they left to weep.
The rose were dust that bound her brow;
The moth did eat her Sunday cape;
Her frock were out of fashion now;
Her shoes were dried up out of shape.

Our game was his but yesteryear;
    We wished him back; we could not know
The self-same hour we missed him here
    He led the line that broke the foe.

Blood-red behind our guarded posts
    Sank as of old and dying day;
The battle ceased; the mingled hosts
    Weary and cheery went their way:

"To-morrow well may bring," we said,
    "As fair a fight, as clear a sun."
Dear lad, before the world was sped,
    For evermore thy goal was won.

Like a white fungus, a lump of wind covers
The green corpse of the lost world.
Frozen rivers form an iron dam
Which holds together the rotten remains.
In a small rainy corner stands
The last city in stony patience.
A dead skull lies - like a prayer -
Slanted on the body, the black penitential bench.

    (After Robert Schumann.)


    Prelude.


Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July
    Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea:
    Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky.
Shall we not call him Prospero who held
    In his enchanted hands the fateful key
    Of that tempestuous hour's mystery,
And with him to wander by a sun-bright shore,
    To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly
With disembodied Ariel once more
    Above earth's wrack and ruin?    Far and nigh
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud,
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud.



    I.


Floating upon a swelling wave of sound,
    We seemed to overlook an endless sea:
    Poi...

The Spring spreads one green lap of flowers
Which Autumn buries at the fall,
No chilling showers of Autumn hours
Can stay them or recall;
Winds sing a dirge, while earth lays out of sight
Her garment of delight.

The cloven East brings forth the sun,
The cloven West doth bury him
What time his gorgeous race is run
And all the world grows dim;
A funeral moon is lit in heaven's hollow,
And pale the star-lights follow.

It was an humble cottage,
Snug in a rustic lane,
Geraniums and fuschias peep'd
From every window-pane;

The dark-leaved ivy dressed its walls,
Houseleek adorned the thatch;
The door was standing open wide, -
They had no need of latch.

And close besides the corner
There stood an old stone well,
Which caught a mimic waterfall,
That warbled as it fell.

The cat, crouched on the well-worn steps,
Was blinking in the sun;
The birds sang out a welcome
To the morning just begun.

An air of peace and happiness
Pervaded all the scene;
The tall trees formed a back ground
Of rich and varied green;

And all was steeped in quietness,
Save nature's music wild,
When all at once, methought I heard
The sobbing of a ch...

I wrenched from a passing comet in its flight,
    By that great force of two mad hearts aflame,
    A soul incarnate, back to earth you came,
To glow like star-dust for a little night.
Deep shadows hide you wholly from our sight;
    The centuries leave nothing but your name,
    Tinged with the lustre of a splendid shame,
That blazed oblivion with rebellious light.

The mighty passion that became your cause,
    Still burns its lengthening path across the years;
    We feel its raptures, and we see its tears
And ponder on its retributive laws.
    Time keeps that deathless story ever new;
    Yet finds no answer, when we ask of you.

II

At Argenteuil, I saw the lonely cell
    Where Heloise dreamed through her broken rest,
    That baby ...

If thus we needs must goe,
What shall our one Heart doe,
This One made of our Two?

Madame, two Hearts we brake,
And from them both did take
The best, one Heart to make.

Halfe this is of your Heart,
Mine in the other part,
Ioyn'd by our equall Art.

Were it cymented, or sowne,
By Shreds or Pieces knowne,
We each might find our owne.

But 'tis dissolu'd, and fix'd,
And with such cunning mix'd,
No diffrence that betwixt.

But how shall we agree,
By whom it kept shall be,
Whether by you, or me?

It cannot two Brests fill,
One must be heartlesse still,
Vntill the other will.

It came to me one day,
When I will'd it to say,
With whether it would stay?

It told me, in your Brest,
W...

'Twas when the leaves were yellow turn'd,
Selina, with the gentlest sigh,
Exclaim'd, "For you I long have burn'd,
For you alone, my love! I'll die."

Unthinking youth! I thought her true,
And, when the trees grew white with snow,
The wint'ry wind with music blew,
So did her love upon me grow.

The Spring had scarce unlock'd her store,
When lo! in much ungentle strain,
She bade me think of her no more,
She bade me never love again.

Then did my heart at once reply,
"If you are false, who can be true?
There's nothing here deserves a sigh,
Take this, the last, 'tis heav'd for you."

Ah! fickle fair! amid the scene
That giddy pleasure may prepare,
A pensive thought shall intervene,
And touch your wand'ring heart with care.
<...

Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,
The tiresome noises, all the common things
I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.
I longed for the cool quiet and the dark,
Under the common sod where louts and kings
Lie down, serene, unheeding, careless, stark,
Never to rise or move or feel again,
Filled with the ecstasy of being dead....

I put the shining pistol to my head
And pulled the trigger hard -- I felt no pain,
No pain at all; the pistol had missed fire
I thought; then, looking at the floor, I saw
My huddled body lying there -- and awe
Swept over me. I trembled -- and looked up.
About me was -- not that, my heart's desire,
That small and dark abode of death and peace --
But all from which I sought a vain release!
The sky, the people and the ...

Oh, I am hurt to death, my Love;
The shafts of Fate have pierced my striving heart,
And I am sick and weary of
The endless pain and smart.
My soul is weary of the strife,
And chafes at life, and chafes at life.

Time mocks me with fair promises;
A blooming future grows a barren past,
Like rain my fair full-blossomed trees
Unburden in the blast.
The harvest fails on grain and tree,
Nor comes to me, nor comes to me.

The stream that bears my hopes abreast
Turns ever from my way its pregnant tide.
My laden boat, torn from its rest,
Drifts to the other side.
So all my hopes are set astray,
And drift away, and drift away.

The lark sings to me at the morn,
And near me wings her skyward-soaring flight;
But pleasure dies as soon as ...

As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour
    Out by the low sand spaces,
The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore
    With lingering embraces,-

So in the tide of life that carries me
    From where thy true heart dwells,
Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee
    With lessening farewells;

Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;
    A care half lost in cares;
The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;
    Thy name among my prayers.

I would the day might come, so waited for,
    So patiently besought,
When I, returning, should fill up once more
    Thy desolated thought;

And fill thy loneliness that lies apart
    In still, persistent pain.
Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,
    As the tide comes ...

    Breaking up -
    as in the cloissoné jar you dropped. . .
    little regard,
    a few brittle pieces scattered about the floor.
    Let's call it "shedding feelings". Expensive?
    There's always another humidor tucked away in
    the cranny of another antique shop; after all,
    a woman is only a woman
    although a fine, Cuban import
    is a worthy smoke.

    "What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar".
    Panatellas?
    He might have added tight-fitting, long lasting.

    Nooks & crannies.
    Little things, your ways. Fruit fly (perhaps damsel wing)
    as symbol of perishability. My emblematic coat of arms.
    No season of regrets, rather
    snatch of minutes, the oasis span of a single candle.

    Who knows?...