I stood by the shore at the death of day,
As the sun sank flaming red;
And the face of the waters that spread away
Was as gray as the face of the dead.

And I heard the cry of the wanton sea
And the moan of the wailing wind;
For love's sweet pain in his heart had he,
But the gray old sea had sinned.

The wind was young and the sea was old,
But their cries went up together;
The wind was warm and the sea was cold,
For age makes wintry weather.

So they cried aloud and they wept amain,
Till the sky grew dark to hear it;
And out of its folds crept the misty rain,
In its shroud, like a troubled spirit.

For the wind was wild with a hopeless love,
And the sea was sad at heart
At many a crime that he wot of,
Wherein he had played hi...

A knight and a lady once met in a grove
While each was in quest of a fugitive love;
A river ran mournfully murmuring by,
And they wept in its waters for sympathy.

"Oh, never was knight such a sorrow that bore!"
"Oh, never was maid so deserted before!"
"From life and its woes let us instantly fly,
And jump in together for company!"

They searched for an eddy that suited the deed,
But here was a bramble and there was a weed;
"How tiresome it is!" said the fair, with a sigh;
So they sat down to rest them in company.

They gazed at each other, the maid and the knight;
How fair was her form, and how goodly his height!
"One mournful embrace," sobbed the youth, "ere we die!"
So kissing and crying kept company.

"Oh, had I but loved such an angel ...

My mother groaned, my father wept:
Into the dangerous world I leapt,
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swaddling-bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.

Lord, I am waiting, weeping, watching for Thee:
My youth and hope lie by me buried and dead,
My wandering love hath not where to lay its head
Except Thou say "Come to Me."

My noon is ended, abolished from life and light,
My noon is ended, ended and done away,
My sun went down in the hours that still were day,
And my lingering day is night.

How long, O Lord, how long in my desperate pain
Shall I weep and watch, shall I weep and long for Thee?
Is Thy grace ended, Thy love cut off from me?
How long shall I long in vain?

O God Who before the beginning hast seen the end,
Who hast made me flesh and blood, not frost and not fire,
Who hast filled me full of needs and love and desire
And a heart that craves a friend,

Who hast said "Come to Me an...

ART.


One is so fair, I turn to go,
As others go, its beckoning length;
Such paths can never lead to woe,
I say in eager, early strength.
What is the goal?
Visions of heaven, wake;
But the wind's whispers round me roll:
"For you, mistake!"


LOVE.


One leads beneath high oaks, and birds
Choose there their joyous revelry;
The sunbeams glint in golden herds,
The river mirrors silently.
Under these trees
My heart would bound or break;
Tell me what goal, resonant breeze?
"For you, mistake!"


CHARITY.


What is there left? The arid way,
The chilling height, whence all the world
Looks little, and each radiant day,
Like the soul's banner, flies unfurled.
May I stand here;
In ...

In the dim chamber whence but yesterday
    Passed my beloved, filled with awe I stand;
    And haunting Loves fluttering on every hand
Whisper her praises who is far away.
A thousand delicate fancies glance and play
    On every object which her robes have fanned,
    And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expand
In the sweet memory of her beauty's ray.
Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest trace
    Of all the loveliness once mirrored there,
    The clustering glory of the shadowy hair
That framed so well the dear young angel face!
    But no, it shows my own face, full of care,
And my heart is her beauty's dwelling place.

Long time his pulse hath ceased to beat
But benefits, his gift, we trace,
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place.

To stately Hall and Cottage rude
Flowed from his life what still they hold,
Light pleasures, every day, renewed;
And blessings half a century old.

Oh true of heart, of spirit gay,
Thy faults, where not already gone
From memory, prolong their stay
For charity's sweet sake alone.

Such solace find we for our loss;
And what beyond this thought we crave
Comes in the promise from the Cross,
Shining upon thy happy grave.

The full-orbed Paschal moon; dark shadows flung
On the brown Lenten earth; tall spectral trees
Stand in their huge and naked strength erect,
And stretch wild arms towards the gleaming sky.
A motionless girl-figure, face upraised
In the strong moonlight, cold and passionless.

    *    *    *    *    *

A proud spring sunset; opal-tinted sky,
Save where the western purple, pale and faint
With longing for her fickle Love, - content
Had merged herself into his burning red.
A fair young maiden, clad in velvet robe
Of sombre green, stands in the golden glow,
One hand held up to shade her dazzled eyes,
A bunch of white Narcissus at her throat.

    *    *    *    *    *

November's day, dark, leaden, lowering, -
Grey purple shadows fading on...

To Victor Hugo


Orpheus, the night is full of tears and cries,
And hardly for the storm and ruin shed
Can even thine eyes be certain of her head
Who never passed out of thy spirit’s eyes,
But stood and shone before them in such wise
As when with love her lips and hands were fed,
And with mute mouth out of the dusty dead
Strove to make answer when thou bad’st her rise.

Yet viper-stricken must her lifeblood feel
The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ
Even when she wakes of hell’s most poisonous worm,
Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel.
Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee;
Wait, and see hell yield up Eurydice.

Ruggiero, to amaze the British host,
And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks,
The bridle of his winged courser loosed,
And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks;
High in the air, even to the topmost banks
Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse,
And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx,
And now across the sea he shaped his course,
Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald shores.

There round Hibernia's fabled realm he coasted,
Where the old saint had left the holy cave,
Sought for the famous virtue that it boasted
To purge the sinful visitor and save.
Thence back returning over land and wave,
Ruggiero came where the blue currents flow,
The shores of Lesser Brittany to lave,
And, looking down while sailing to and fro,
He saw Angelica...

"I love the Lady of Merle," he said.
"She is not for thee!" her suitor cried.
And in the valley the lovers fought
By the salt river's tide.

The braver fell on the dewy sward:
The unloved lover returned once more;
In yellow satin the lady came
And met him at the door.

"Hast thou heard, dark Edith," laughed he grim,
"Poor Hugh hath craved thee many a day?
Soon would it have been too late for him
His low-born will to say.

"I struck a blade where lay his heart's love,
And voice for thee have I left him none,
To brag he still seeks thee over the hills
When thou and I are one!"

Fearless across the wide country
Rode the dark Lady Edith of Merle;
She looked at the headlands soft with haze,
And the moor's mists of pearl.

And should she die, her grave should be
Upon the bare top of a sunny hill,
Among the moorlands of her own fair land,
Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones
In gorse and heather all embosomed.
There should be no tall stone, no marble tomb
Above her gentle corse;--the ponderous pile
Would press too rudely on those fairy limbs.
The turf should lightly he, that marked her home.
A sacred spot it would be--every bird
That came to watch her lone grave should be holy.
The deer should browse around her undisturbed;
The whin bird by, her lonely nest should build
All fearless; for in life she loved to see
Happiness in all things--
And we would come on summer days
When all around was bright, and set us down
And think of all that lay beneath that turf
On which ...

Sad is the wane of beauty to the fair,
Sad is the flux of fortune to the proud,
Sad is the look dejected lovers wear,
And sad is worth beneath detraction's cloud.
Sad is our youth's inexorable end,
Sad is the bankruptcy of fancy's wealth,
Sad is the last departure of a friend,
And sadder than most things is loss of health.

And yet more sad than these to think upon
Is this - the saddest thought beneath the sun -
Life, flowing like a river, almost gone
Into eternity, and nothing done.
Let me be spared that bootless last regret:
Let me work now; I may do something yet.

Wit, weight, or wealth there was not
In anything that was said,
In anything that was done;
All was of scope to cause not
A triumph, dazzle, or dread
To even the subtlest one,
My friend,
To even the subtlest one.

But there was a new afflation -
An aura zephyring round,
That care infected not:
It came as a salutation,
And, in my sweet astound,
I scarcely witted what
Might pend,
I scarcely witted what.

The hills in samewise to me
Spoke, as they grayly gazed,
First hills to speak so yet!
The thin-edged breezes blew me
What I, though cobwebbed, crazed,
Was never to forget,
My friend,
Was never to forget!

I.

Gim me back my stone-bruised heel,
    And them tow-linen pants,
An' that old pole an' line an' reel,
    An' all them boyhood ha'nts,
An' that old hat I used to wear,
    That didn't hav' no crown,
An' that same crop uv yeller hair--
    Sun-burnt on top ter brown--
An' them playmates I used ter know,
    An' loved like very brothers--
An' you kin let the old world go
    An' giv' its wealth ter others!


II.

Gim me back one gallus, too,
    That buttoned with a peg,
An' them blamed ticks that burrowed through
    The skin uv either leg,
An' that old single-barrel gun,
    As crooked as a rail,
An' that same dog that used ter run
    The molly cotton-tail,
An' lem me hav' the tops I spun--
    The ki...

"My life is drear; walking I labour sore;
    The heart in me is heavy as a stone;
And of my sorrows this the icy core:
    Life is so wide, and I am all alone!"

Thou did'st walk so, with heaven-born eyes down bent
    Upon the earth's gold-rosy, radiant clay,
That thou had'st seen no star in all God's tent
    Had not thy tears made pools first on the way.

Ah, little knowest thou the tender care
    In a love-plenteous cloak around thee thrown!
Full many a dim-seen, saving mountain-stair
    Toiling thou climb'st--but not one step alone!

Lift but thy languid head and see thy guide;
    Let thy steps go in his, nor choose thine own;
Then soon wilt thou, thine eyes with wonder wide,
    Cry, Now I know I never was alone!

Affections lose their object; Time brings forth
No successors; and, lodged in memory,
If love exist no longer, it must die,
Wanting accustomed food, must pass from earth,
Or never hope to reach a second birth.
This sad belief, the happiest that is left
To thousands, share not Thou; howe'er bereft,
Scorned, or neglected, fear not such a dearth.
Though poor and destitute of friends thou art,
Perhaps the sole survivor of thy race,
One to whom Heaven assigns that mournful part
The utmost solitude of age to face,
Still shall be left some corner of the heart
Where Love for living Thing can find a place.

How my heart yearns towards my friends at home!
Poor suffering souls, whose lives are like the trees,
Bent, crushed, and broken in the storm of life!
A whirlwind of existence seems to roam
Through some poor hearts continually. These
Have neither rest nor pause; one day is rife
With tempest, and another dashed with gloom;
And the few rays of light that might illume
Their thorny path are drenched with tearful rain.
Yet these pure souls live not their lives in vain;
For they become as spiritual guides
And lights to others; rising with the tides
Of their full being into higher spheres,
Brighter and brighter still through all the coming years.