Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.

I wait its close, I court its gloom,
But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
The tear that would have soothed it all.

Once through an autumn wood
I roamed in tearful mood,
By grief dismayed, doubting, and ill at ease;
When from a leafless oak,
Methought low murmurs broke,
Complaining accents, as of words like these:

"Incline thy mighty ear
Great Mother Earth, and hear
How I, thy child, am sorely vexed and tossed;
No one to heed my moan,
I shudder here, alone
With my destroyers, wind and snow, and frost.

Then low and unaware
This answer cleaved the air,
This tender answer, "Doubting one be still;
Oh trust to me, and know
The wind, the frost, the snow,
Are but my servants sent to do my will.

"For the destroyer frost,
His labor is not lost,
Rid thee he shall of many noisome things;
And thou shalt praise the snow
When drinking far b...

Be not dismayed, be not dismayed when death
Sets its white seal upon some worshipped face.
Poor human nature for a little space
Must suffer anguish, when that last drawn breath
Leaves such long silence; but let not thy faith
    Fail for a moment in God's boundless grace.
    But know, oh know, He has prepared a place
Fairer for our dear dead than worlds beneath,
Yet not beneath; for those entrancing spheres
    Surround our earth as seas a barren isle.
Ours is the region of eternal fears;
    Theirs is the region where God's radiant smile
Shines outward from the centre, and gives hope
Even to those who in the shadows grope.
They are not far from us.    At first though long
    And lone may seem the paths that intervene,
    If ever on the staff of prayer we l...

I.

Let me forget her face!
So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place
Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her;
Of dreams and moods that moved my soul's dim deeps,
As strong winds stir
Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.
In every lineament the mind can trace,
Let me forget her face!

II.

Let me forget her form!
Soft and seductive, that contained each charm,
Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies;
And all the sensuous youth of line and curve,
That makes men's eyes
Bondsmen of beauty eager still to serve.
In every part that memory can warm,
Let me forget her form!

III.

Let me forget her, God!
Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod
To scourge my heart with, barren with despair;
To tea...

And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee
Has been my heart - and thy dead memory
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,
Unchangingly preserved and buried there.

Farewell to the feast-day! the pray'r book is stained
With tears; of the booth scarce a trace has remained;
The lime branch is withered, the osiers are dying,
And pale as a corpse the fair palm-frond is lying;
The boughs of grey willow are trodden and broken--
Friend, these are your hopes and your longings unspoken!

Lo, there lie your dreamings all dimm'd and rejected,
And there lie the joys were so surely expected!
And there is the happiness blighted and perished,
And all that aforetime your soul knew and cherished,
The loved and the longed for, the striven for vainly--
Your whole life before you lies pictured how plainly!

The branches are sapless, the leaves will decay,
An end is upon us, and whence, who shall say?
The broom of the beadle outside now has h...

What can I say? What Arguments can prove
My Truth? What Colors can describe my Love?
If it's Excess and Fury be not known,
In what Thy Celia has already done?

Thy Infant Flames, whilst yet they were conceal'd
In tim'rous Doubts, with Pity I beheld;
With easie Smiles dispell'd the silent Fear,
That durst not tell Me, what I dy'd to hear:
In vain I strove to check my growing Flame,
Or shelter Passion under Friendship's Name:
You saw my Heart, how it my Tongue bely'd;
And when You press'd, how faintly I deny'd
E'er Guardian Thought could bring it's scatter'd Aid;
E'er Reason could support the doubting Maid;
My Soul surpriz'd, and from her self disjoin'd,
Left all Reserve, and all the Sex behind:
From your Command her Motions She receiv'd;
And not for M...

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest,
And then, at moments, suddenly,
We look up to the great wide sky,
Inquiring wherefore we were born…
For earnest or for jest?

The senses folding thick and dark
About the stifled soul within,
We guess diviner things beyond,
And yearn to them with yearning fond;
We strike out blindly to a mark
Believed in, but not seen.

We vibrate to the pant and thrill
Wherewith Eternity has curled
In serpent-twine about God’s seat;
While, freshening upward to His feet,
In gradual growth His full-leaved will
Expands from world to world.

And, in the tumult and excess
Of act and passion under sun,
We sometimes hear, oh, soft and far,
As silver star did touch with st...

This Advent moon shines cold and clear,
    These Advent nights are long;
Our lamps have burned year after year
    And still their flame is strong.
'Watchman, what of the night?' we cry,
    Heart-sick with hope deferred:
'No speaking signs are in the sky,'
    Is still the watchman's word.

The Porter watches at the gate,
    The servants watch within;
The watch is long betimes and late,
    The prize is slow to win.
'Watchman, what of the night?' But still
    His answer sounds the same:
'No daybreak tops the utmost hill,
    Nor pale our lamps of flame.'

One to another hear them speak
    The patient virgins wise:
'Surely He is not far to seek' -
    'All night we watch and rise.'
'The days are evil looking back,
    The...

There stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from the place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung.
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.
He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,
And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on; and when, with weariness o’er-spent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,
The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, s...

Ten years! and to my waking eye
Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream, and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,
The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the church-yard fair,
And ’neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush
Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
Quick through the oleanders brush,
And clap thy hands, and cry: ’Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wander’d back,
Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
And flitted down the flowery track
Where feet like ...

'Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,
With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,
And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,
And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?'

'From the other world I come back to you,
My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew.
You know the old, whilst I know the new:
But to-morrow you shall know this too.'

'Oh not to-morrow into the dark, I pray;
Oh not to-morrow, too soon to go away:
Here I feel warm and well-content and gay:
Give me another year, another day.'

'Am I so changed in a day and a night
That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright,
Is fain to turn away to left or right
And cover up his eyes from the sight?'

'Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend,
I loved you...

Once Love grew bold and arrogant of air,
Proud of the youth that made him fresh and fair;
So unto Grief he spake, "What right hast thou
To part or parcel of this heart?" Grief's brow
Was darkened with the storm of inward strife;
Thrice smote he Love as only he might dare,
And Love, pride purged, was chastened all his life.

We two stood simply friend-like side by side,
Viewing a twilight country far and wide,
Till she at length broke silence. “How it towers
Yonder, the ruin o’er this vale of ours!
The West’s faint flare behind it so relieves
Its rugged outline, sight perhaps deceives,
Or I could almost fancy that I see
A branch wave plain, belike some wind-sown tree
Chance-rooted where a missing turret was.
What would I give for the perspective glass
At home, to make out if ’tis really so!
Has Ruskin noticed here at Asolo
That certain weed-growths on the ravaged wall
Seem” . . . something that I could not say at all,
My thought being rather, as absorbed she sent
Look onward after look from eyes distent
With longing to reach Heaven’s gate left ajar,
“Oh, fancies that might be...

The weary, weary days gang by,
    The weary nichts they fa',
I mauna rest, I canna lie
    Since my ain bairn's awa'.

The soughing o' the springtide breeze
    Abune her heid blaws sweet,
There's nests amang the kirkyaird trees
    And gowans at her feet.

She gae'd awa' when winds were hie,
    When the deein' year was cauld,
An noo the young year seems to me
    A waur ane nor the auld.

And, bedded, 'twixt the nicht an' day,
    Yest're'en, I couldna bide
For thinkin', thinkin' as I lay
    O' the wean that lies outside.

O, mickle licht to me was gie'n
    To reach my bairn's abode,
But heaven micht blast a mither's een
    And her feet wad find the road.

The kirkyaird loan alang the brae
    Was choked ...

From the first circle I descended thus
Down to the second, which, a lesser space
Embracing, so much more of grief contains
Provoking bitter moans.    There, Minos stands
Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all
Who enter, strict examining the crimes,

Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath,
According as he foldeth him around:
For when before him comes th' ill fated soul,
It all confesses; and that judge severe
Of sins, considering what place in hell
Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft
Himself encircles, as degrees beneath
He dooms it to descend.    Before him stand
Always a num'rous throng; and in his turn
Each one to judgment passing, speaks, and hears
His fate, thence downward to his dwelling hurl'd.

"O thou! who to this reside...

I

Has she forgotten? On this very May
We were to meet here, with the birds and bees,
As on that Sabbath, underneath the trees
We strayed among the tombs, and stripped away
The vines from these old granites, cold and gray -
And yet indeed not grim enough were they
To stay our kisses, smiles and ecstasies,
Or closer voice-lost vows and rhapsodies.
Has she forgotten - that the May has won
Its promise? - that the bird-songs from the tree
Are sprayed above the grasses as the sun
Might jar the dazzling dew down showeringly?
Has she forgotten life - love - everyone -
Has she forgotten me - forgotten me?


II

Low, low down in the violets I press
My lips and whisper to her. Does she hear,
And yet hold silence, though I call her dear,

'Tis time, I feel, to leave thee now,
    While yet my soul is something free;
While yet those dangerous eyes allow
    One minute's thought to stray from thee.

Oh! thou becom'st each moment dearer;
    Every chance that brings me nigh thee
Brings my ruin nearer, nearer,--
    I am lost, unless I fly thee.

Nay, if thou dost not scorn and hate me,
    Doom me not thus so soon to fall
Duties, fame, and hopes await me,--
    But that eye would blast them all!

For, thou hast heart as false and cold
    As ever yet allured and swayed,
And couldst, without a sigh, behold
    The ruin which thyself had made.

Yet,--could I think that, truly fond,
    That eye but once would smile on me,
Even as thou art, how far beyond
   ...