Though long it be, years may repay the debt;
None loseth that which he in time may get.

But one short night between my Love and me!
    I watch the soft-shod dusk creep wistfully
    Through the slow-moving curtains, pausing by
And shrouding with its spirit-fingers free
    Each well-known chair. There is a growing grace
    Of tender magic in this little place.

Comes through half-opened windows, soft and cool
    As Spring's young breath, the vagrant evening air,
    My day-worn soul is hushed. I fain would bear
No burdens on my brain to-night, no rule
    Of anxious thought; the world has had my tears,
    My thoughts, my hopes, my aims these many years;

This is Thy hour, and I shall sink to sleep
    With a glad weariness, to know that when
    The new day dawns I shall lay by my pen
Needed no more. If I, perchance, should weep
   ...

I do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way
Or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray.
If these are added I rejoice, if not, I shall not mind
So long as I have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind.
For as we come and as we go (and deadly soon go we!)
The people, lord, Thy people, are good enough for me.

Thus I will honour pious men whose virtue shines so bright
(Though none are more amazed than I when I by chance do right)
And I will pity foolish men for woe their sins have bred
(Though ninety-nine percent of mine I brought on my own head)
And Amorite or Eremite or General Averagee
The people, Lord, Thy people are good enough for me

And when the bore me overmuch, I will not shake mine ears
Recalling many thousand such whom I have bored to tea...

The sun was black with judgment, and the moon
Blood: but between
I saw a man stand, saying, 'To me at least
The grass is green.

'There was no star that I forgot to fear
With love and wonder.
The birds have loved me'; but no answer came--
Only the thunder.

Once more the man stood, saying, 'A cottage door,
Wherethrough I gazed
That instant as I turned--yea, I am vile;
Yet my eyes blazed.

'For I had weighed the mountains in a balance,
And the skies in a scale,
I come to sell the stars--old lamps for new--
Old stars for sale.'

Then a calm voice fell all the thunder through,
A tone less rough:
'Thou hast begun to love one of my works
Almost enough.'

The debt is paid,
The verdict said,
The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed.
All fortunes made;
Turn the key and bolt the door,
Sweet is death forevermore.
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the Past;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can reënter there,--
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.

Christian, lookup? thy feet may slide;
    This is a slippery way!
Yet One is walking by thy side
    Whose arm should be thy stay,
Thou canst not see that blessed form,
    Nor view that loving smile
With eager eyes thus earthward bent -
    Christian, look up a while!

Christian, look up! - what seest thou here
    To court thy anxious eyes?
Earth is beneath thee, lone and drear,
    Above, thy native skies!
Beneath, the wreck of faded bloom,
    The shadow, and the clod,
The broken reed, the open tomb, -
    Above thee, is THY GOD!

Look up! thy head too long has been
    Bowed darkly toward the earth,
Thou son of a most Royal Sire,
    Creature of kingly birth!
What! dragging like a very slave
    Earth's heavy galling ch...

Sunrise In The Place De La Concorde. (Paris, August 1865.)



I stand at the break of day
In the Champs Elysees.
The tremulous shafts of dawning,
As they shoot o'er the Tuileries early,
Strike Luxor's cold grey spire,
And wild in the light of the morning
With their marble manes on fire,
Ramp the white Horses of Marly.

But the Place of Concord lies
Dead hushed 'neath the ashy skies.
And the Cities sit in council
With sleep in their wide stone eyes.
I see the mystic plain
Where the army of spectres slain
In the Emperor's life-long war
March on with unsounding tread
To trumpets whose voice is dead.
Their spectral chief still leads them, -
The ghostly flash of his sword
Like a comet through mist shines far, -
An...

Thou who wert born of Psyche and of Love
And fondly nurst on Poesy's warm breast
                    Painting, oh, power adored!
                    My country's sons have poured
To thee their orisons; and thou hast blest
Their votive sighs, nor vainly have they strove.

Thou who art wont to soothe the varied pain
That ceaseless throbs at absent lover's heart,
                    Who first bestowed thine aid
                    On the young Rhodian maid [FN#19]
When doomed, from him whose love was life, to part,
From a lone bard accept an humble heartfelt strain.


[FN#19]    I do not positively recollect whether the incident, here described is supposed to have transpired at Rhodes, Corinth, or some other place, and have not, at present, the means for ascertaining....

WOOLLEN-DRAPER IN DUBLIN, WHOSE SIGN WAS THE GOLDEN FLEECE

Jason, the valiant prince of Greece,
From Colchis brought the Golden Fleece;
We comb the wool, refine the stuff,
For modern Jasons, that's enough.
Oh! could we tame yon watchful dragon,[1]
Old Jason would have less to brag on.

Call to remembrance, reader, if thou e'er
Hast, on a mountain top, been ta'en by cloud,
Through which thou saw'st no better, than the mole
Doth through opacous membrane; then, whene'er
The wat'ry vapours dense began to melt
Into thin air, how faintly the sun's sphere
Seem'd wading through them; so thy nimble thought
May image, how at first I re-beheld
The sun, that bedward now his couch o'erhung.

Thus with my leader's feet still equaling pace
From forth that cloud I came, when now expir'd
The parting beams from off the nether shores.

O quick and forgetive power! that sometimes dost
So rob us of ourselves, we take no mark
Though round about us thousand trumpets clang!
What moves thee, if the senses stir not? Light
Kindled in heav'n, spontaneous, sel...

See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
And well the car Love guideth.
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty;
And enamour'd, do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.

Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that Love's world compriseth!
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As Love's star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead's smoother
Than words that soothe her;
And from her arched brows, such a grace
Sheds itself through the face
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife.

Have you seen but a bright lily grow...

Wake up my harp! thy strings begin to rust!
Has the soul fled that once within thee dwelt?
Idle so long, shake off that coat of dust!
Are there no souls to cheer, no hearts to melt?
Are there no victims under tyrants' yoke,
Whose wrongs thy stirring music should proclaim?
Or have the fetters of mankind been broke?
Or are there none deserving songs of fame?

Awake! awake! thy slumber has been long!
And let thy chords once more arouse the heart;
And teach us in thy most impassioned song,
How in our sphere we best may play our part.
Tell the down-trodden, who with daily toil,
Wear out their lives, another's greed to fill;
That they have rights and interests in the soil,
And they can win them if they have the will.

Tell the high-born that chance of birt...

There was a girl that lost things--
    Nor only from her hand;
She lost, indeed--why, most things,
    As if they had been sand!

She said, "But I must use them,
    And can't look after all!
Indeed I did not lose them,
    I only let them fall!"

That's how she lost her thimble,
    It fell upon the floor:
Her eyes were very nimble
    But she never saw it more.

And then she lost her dolly,
    Her very doll of all!
That loss was far from jolly,
    But worse things did befall.

She lost a ring of pearls
    With a ruby in them set;
But the dearest girl of girls
    Cried only, did not fret.

And then she lost her robin;
    Ah, that was sorrow dire!
He hopped along, and--bob in--
    Hopped bob in...

The weary Old Year is dead at last;
His corpse 'mid the ruins of Time is cast,
Where the mouldering wrecks of lost Thought lie,
And the rich-hued blossoms of Passion die
To a withering grass that droops o'er his grave,
The shadowy Titan's refuge cave.
Strange lights from pale moony Memory lie
On the weedy columns beneath its eye;
And strange is the sound of the ghostlike breeze,
In the lingering leaves on the skeleton trees;
And strange is the sound of the falling shower,
When the clouds of dead pain o'er the spirit lower;
Unheard in the home he inhabiteth,
The land where all lost things are gathered by Death.

Alone I reclined in the closing year;
Voice, nor breathing, nor step was near;
And I said in the weariness of my breast:
Weary Old Year, thou...

Happy are they whom men and women love,
And you were happy as a river that flows
Down between lonely hills, and knows
The pang and virtue of that loneliness,
And moves unresting on until it move
Under the trees that stoop at the low brink
And deepen their cool shade, and drink
And sing and hush and sing again,
Breathing their music's many-toned caress;
While the river with his high clear music speaks
Sometimes of loneliness, of hills obscure,
Sometimes of sunlight dancing on the plain,
Or of the night of stars unbared and deep
Multiplied in his depths unbared and pure;
Sometimes of winds that from the unknown sea creep,
Sometimes of morning when most clear it breaks
Spilling its brightness on his breast like rain:--
And then flows on in loneliness again

    Lord, we thank and thee adore,
        For temp'ral gifts we little merit;
    At present we will ask no more,
        Let William Hyslop give the spirit.

Keen in his blood ran the old mad desire
To right the world's wrongs and champion truth;
Deep in his eyes shone a heaven-lit fire,
And royal and radiant day-dreams of youth!

Gracious was he to both beggar and stranger,
And for a rose tossed from fair finger-tips
He would have ridden hard-pressed through all danger,
The rose on his heart and a song on his lips!

All the king's foes he counted his foemen;
His not to say that a cause could be lost;
Spirits like his faced the enemies' bowmen
On long vanished fields - nor counted the cost.

Wide was his out-look and far was his vision;
Soul-fretting trifles he sent down the wind;
Small griefs gained only his cheerful derision, -
God's weather always was fair to his mind.

But he would comfort a...

Upon the "table-rock" I stand,
And gaze into the depths profound,
In ecstacy at sights so grand,
And deafened by the sound
Of rushing waters, as they leap
Like maddened steeds, down hillside steep.

The falling spray my head bedews,
As gently as a vernal shower;
Or, as the Holy Ghost imbues
In consecrated hour,
The soul that inly yearns for love,
And seeks it from the throne above.

But I see more than chasm deep,
Than falling spray and rushing tide.
Sublime, indeed, the awful leap;
The awe will long abide--
God's rainbow hangs in colors bright,
A thing of beauty in my sight.

Our cousins on the other side
And we too often disagree;
Puffed up, I fear, at times, with pride,
Each strong, and brave, and free;
But we fo...