Chill'd by unkind Honora's alter'd eye,
    "Why droops my heart with fruitless woes forlorn,"
    Thankless for much of good? - what thousands, born
    To ceaseless toil beneath this wintry sky,
Or to brave deathful Oceans surging high,
    Or fell Disease's fever'd rage to mourn,
    How blest to them wou'd seem my destiny!
    How dear the comforts my rash sorrows scorn! -
Affection is repaid by causeless hate!
    A plighted love is chang'd to cold disdain!
    Yet suffer not thy wrongs to shroud thy fate,
But turn, my Soul, to blessings which remain;
    And let this truth the wise resolve create,
    THE HEART ESTRANGED NO ANGUISH CAN REGAIN.

July 1773.

If I can bear your love like a lamp before me,
When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness,
I shall not fear the everlasting shadows,
Nor cry in terror.

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.

They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
That shine with tears. Sappho, you saw the sun
Just now when you came hither, and again,
When you have left me, all the shimmering
Great meadows will laugh lightly, and the sun
Put round about you warm invisible arms
As might a lover, decking you with light.
I go toward darkness tho’ I lie so still.
If I could see the sun, I should look up
And drink the light until my eyes were blind;
I should kneel down and kiss the blades of grass,
And I should call the birds with such a voice,
With such a longing, tremulous and keen,
That they would fly to me and on the breast
Bear evermore to tree-tops and to fields
The kiss I gave them. Sappho, tell me this,
Was I not sometimes fair? ...

May God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind
That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
Nor quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.

Though pedantry denies,
It’s plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.
Yet never could, although
They say he counted grass,
Count all the praises due
When Sheba was his lass,
When she the iron wrought, or
When from the smithy fire
It shuddered in the water:
Harshness of their desire
That made them stretch and yawn,
Pleasure that comes with sleep,
Shudder that made them one.
What else He give or keep
God grant me—no, not here,
For I am not so bold
To hope ...

Amid the florid multitude her face
Was like the full moon seen behind the lace
Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part
When Spring shines in the world and in the heart.
As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor
Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour,
So to my being's innermost recess
Flooded the light of so much loveliness;
She held as in a vase of priceless ware
The wine that over arid ways and bare
My youth was the pathetic thirsting for,
And where she moved the veil of Nature grew
Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through
Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.

'T was somewhere in the April time,
Not long before the May,
A-sitting on a bank o' thyme
I heard a maiden say,
"My true love is a sailor,
And ere he went away
We spent a year together,
And here my lover lay.

The gold furze was in blossom,
So was the daisy too;
The dew-drops on the little flowers
Were emeralds in hue.
On this same Summer morning,
Though then the Sabbath day,
He crop't me Spring pol'ant'uses,
Beneath the whitethorn may.

He crop't me Spring pol'ant'uses,
And said if they would keep
They'd tell me of love's fantasies,
For dews on them did weep.
And I did weep at parting,
Which lasted all the week;
And when he turned for starting
My full heart could not speak.

The same roots grow pol'ant'us...

Since Man first lifted up his eyes to hers
And saw her vampire beauty, which is lust,
All else is dust
Within the compass of the universe.
With heart of Jael and with face of Ruth
She sits upon the tomb of Time and quaffs
Heart's blood and laughs
At all Life calls most noble and the truth.
The fire of conquest and the wine of dreams
Are in her veins; and in her eyes the lure
Of things unsure,
Urging the world forever to extremes.
Without her, Life would stagnate in a while.
Her touch it is puts pleasure even in pain.
So Life attain
Her end, she cares not if the means be vile.
She knows no pity, mercy, or remorse.
Hers is to build and then exterminate:
To slay, create,
And twixt the two maintain an equal course.

The afternoon is lonely for your face,
    The pampered morning mocks the day's decline -
    I was so rich at noon, the sun was mine,
Mine the sad sea that in that rocky place
    Girded us round with blue betrothal ring.
    Because your heart was mine, your heart, that precious thing.

The night will be a desert till the dawn,
    Unless you take some ferry-boat of dreams,
    And glide to me, a glory of silver beams,
Under my eyelids, like sad curtains drawn;
    So, by good hap, my heart can find its way
    Where all your sweetness lies in fragrant disarray.

Ah! but with morn the world begins anew,
    Again the sea shall sing up to your feet,
    And earth and all the heavens call you sweet,
You all alone with me, I all alone with you,
    An...

        Spring-time is coming again, my dear;
            Sunshine and violets blue, you know;
        Crocuses lifting their sleepy heads
            Out of their sheets of snow.
        And I know a blossom sweeter by far
        That violets blue, or crocuses are,
            And bright as the sunbeam's glow.
        But how can I dare to look in her eyes,
            Colored with heaven's own hue?
        That wouldn't do at all, my dear,
            It really wouldn't do.

        Her hair is a rippling, tossing sea;
            In its golden depths the fairies play,
        Beckoning, dancing, mocking there,
            Luring my heart away.
        And her merry lips are the ripest red
        That ever addled a poor man's head,
            Or...

Pleasures newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet:
February last, my heart
First at sight of thee was glad;
All unheard of as thou art,
Thou must needs, I think, have had,
Celandine! and long ago,
Praise of which I nothing know.

I have not a doubt but he,
Whosoe'er the man might be,
Who the first with pointed rays
(Workman worthy to be sainted)
Set the sign-board in a blaze,
When the rising sun he painted,
Took the fancy from a glance
At thy glittering countenance.

Soon as gentle breezes bring
News of winter's vanishing,
And the children build their bowers,
Sticking 'kerchief-plots of mould
All about with full-blown flowers,
Thick as sheep in shepherd's fold!
With the proudest thou art there,
Mantling i...

There is no Paradise like that which lies
Deep in the heavens of her azure eyes:
There is no Eden here on Earth that glows
Like that which smiles rich in her mouth's red rose.

What loveliness the years contrive
To rob us of! what exquisite
Beliefs, in which thought chanced to hit
On truths that with the world survive!
Dream-truths, that still attend their flocks
On the high hills of heart and mind,
Peopling the streams, the woods and rocks
With Beauty running like the wind.
They are not dead; but year by year
Still hold us through the inner eye
Of thought, and so can never die
As long as there's one heart to hear
Nature addressing words of love,
(As once she spoke to Rome and Greece,)
Unto the soul, whose faith shall prove
The dream will last though all else cease.

Sweet, sweet!
I rise to greet
The sapphire sky
The air slips by
On either side
As up I ride
On mounting wing,
And sing and sing -
Then reach my bliss,
The sun's great kiss;
And poise a space
To see his face,
Sweet, sweet,
In radiant grace,
Ah, sweet! ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet!
Beneath my feet
My nestlings call:
And down I fall
Unerring, true,
Through heaven's blue;
And haste to fill
Each noisy bill.
My brooding breast
Stills their unrest.
Sweet, sweet,
Their quick hearts beat,
Safe in the nest:
Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet!
Ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet
The calling sky
That bids me fly
Up--up--on high.
Sweet, sweet
The claiming earth;
It holds my nest
And dr...

An angel found a daisy where it lay
On Heaven's highroad of transparent gold,
And, turning to one near, he said, "I pray,
Tell me what manner of strange bloom I hold.
You came a long, long way - perchance you know
In what far country such fair flowers blow?"

Then spoke the other: "Turn thy radiant face
And gaze with me down purple depth of space.
See, where the stars lie spilled upon the night,
Like amber beads that hold a yellow light.
Note one that burns with faint yet steady glow;
It is the Earth - and there these blossoms grow.
Some little child from that dear, distant land
Hath borne this hither in his dimpled hand."

Still gazed he down. "Ah, friend," he said, "I, too,
Oft crossed the fields at home where daisies grew."

Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve,
    That you were married, or soon to be.
I have not thought of you, I believe,
    Since last we parted.    Let me see:
Five long Summers have passed since then -
    Each has been pleasant in its own way -
And you are but one of a dozen men
    Who have played the suitor a Summer day.

But, nevertheless, when I heard your name,
    Coupled with some one's, not my own,
There burned in my bosom a sudden flame,
    That carried me back to the day that is flown.
I was sitting again by the laughing brook,
    With you at my feet, and the sky above,
And my heart was fluttering under your look -
    The unmistakable look of Love.

Again your breath, like a South wind, fanned
    My cheek, where the blushes came ...

I watched the glory of her childhood change,
Half-sorrowful to find the child I knew,
(Loved long ago in lily-time)
Become a maid, mysterious and strange,
With fair, pure eyes--dear eyes, but not the eyes I knew
Of old, in the olden time!

Till on my doubting soul the ancient good
Of her dear childhood in the new disguise
Dawned, and I hastened to adore
The glory of her waking maidenhood,
And found the old tenderness within her deepening eyes,
But kinder than before.

FROM ABDALLAH,[1] IN LONDON, TO MOHASSAN, IN ISPAHAN.


Whilst thou, Mohassan, (happy thou!)
Dost daily bend thy loyal brow
Before our King--our Asia's treasure!
Nutmeg of Comfort: Rose of Pleasure!--
And bearest as many kicks and bruises
As the said Rose and Nutmeg chooses;
Thy head still near the bowstring's borders.
And but left on till further orders--
Thro' London streets with turban fair,
And caftan floating to the air,
I saunter on, the admiration
Of this short-coated population--
This sewed-up race--this buttoned nation--
Who while they boast their laws so free
Leave not one limb at liberty,
But live with all their lordly speeches
The slaves of buttons and tight breeches.

    Yet tho' they thus their knee-pans fette...

There never was a valley without a faded flower,
There never was a heaven without some little cloud;
The face of day may flash with light in any morning hour,
But evening soon shall come with her shadow-woven shroud.

There never was a river without its mists of gray,
There never was a forest without its fallen leaf;
And joy may walk beside us down the windings of our way,
When, lo! there sounds a footstep, and we meet the face of grief.

There never was a seashore without its drifting wreck,
There never was an ocean without its moaning wave;
And the golden gleams of glory the summer sky that fleck,
Shine where dead stars are sleeping in their azure-mantled grave.

There never was a streamlet, however crystal clear,
Without a shadow resting in the ripples of i...