"What ails the world?" the poet cried;
    "And why does death walk everywhere?
    And why do tears fall anywhere?
    And skies have clouds, and souls have care?"
Thus the poet sang, and sighed.

For he would fain have all things glad,
    All lives happy, all hearts bright;
    Not a day would end in night,
    Not a wrong would vex a right --
And so he sang -- and he was sad.

Thro' his very grandest rhymes
    Moved a mournful monotone --
    Like a shadow eastward thrown
    From a sunset -- like a moan
Tangled in a joy-bell's chimes.

"What ails the world?" he sang and asked --
    And asked and sang -- but all in vain;
    No answer came to any strain,
    And no reply to his refrain --
The mystery moved 'round him masked....

1.
Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary,
Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam;
Though the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary,
She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home.
I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle,
As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle;
And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle,
'Stay thy boat on the lake, - dearest Henry, I come.'

2.
High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection,
As lightly her form bounded over the lea,
And arose in her mind every dear recollection;
'I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.'
How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing,
When sympathy's swell the soft bosom is moving,
And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving,
Is t...

Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:

"Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me."

Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, "What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

"I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!"

Itchin! when I behold thy banks again,
Thy crumbling margin, and thy silver breast,
On which the self-same tints still seem to rest,
Why feels my heart a shivering sense of pain!
Is it, that many a summer's day has past
Since, in life's morn, I carolled on thy side!
Is it, that oft since then my heart has sighed,
As Youth, and Hope's delusive gleams, flew fast!
Is it, that those who gathered on thy shore,
Companions of my youth, now meet no more!
Whate'er the cause, upon thy banks I bend,
Sorrowing; yet feel such solace at my heart,
As at the meeting of some long-lost friend,
From whom, in happier hours, we wept to part.

Illius est nobis lege colendus amor

On her own terms, O lover, must thou take
The heart's beloved: be she kind, 'tis well,
Cruel, expect no more; not for thy sake
But for the fire in thee that melts her snows
For a brief spell
She loves thee - "loves" thee!    Though thy heart should break,
Though thou shouldst lie athirst for her in hell,
    She could not pity thee: who of the Rose,
Or of the Moon, asks pity, or return
    Of love for love? and she is even as those.
Beauty is she, thou Love, and thou must learn,
O lover, this:
Thine is she for the music thou canst pour
    Through her white limbs, the madness, the deep dream;
Thine, while thy kiss
    Can sweep her flaming with thee down the stream
That is not thou nor she but merely bliss;...

Lad, and can you rest now,
    There beneath your hill!
Your hands are on your breast now,
    But is your heart so still?
'Twas the right death to die, lad,
    A gift without regret,
But unless truth's a lie, lad,
    You dream of Devon yet.

Ay, ay, the year's awaking,
    The fire's among the ling,
The beechen hedge is breaking,
    The curlew's on the wing;
Primroses are out, lad,
    On the high banks of Lee,
And the sun stirs the trout, lad;
    From Brendon to the sea.

I know what's in your heart, lad,---
    The mare he used to hunt---
And her blue market-cart, lad,
    With posies tied in front---
We miss them from the moor road,
    They're getting old to roam,
The road they're on's a sure road
    And n...

Were not the sinful Mary's tears
    An offering worthy Heaven,
When, o'er the faults of former years,
    She wept--and was forgiven?

When, bringing every balmy sweet
    Her day of luxury stored,
She o'er her Saviour's hallowed feet
    The precious odors poured;--
And wiped them with that golden hair,
    Where once the diamond shone;
Tho' now those gems of grief were there
    Which shine for GOD alone!

Were not those sweets, so humbly shed--
    That hair--those weeping eyes--
And the sunk heart, that inly bled--
    Heaven's noblest sacrifice?

Thou that hast slept in error's sleep,
    Oh, would'st thou wake in Heaven,
Like Mary kneel, like Mary weep,
    "Love much" and be forgiven![1]

If you loved me ever so little,
I could bear the bonds that gall,
I could dream the bonds were brittle;
You do not love me at all.

O beautiful lips, O bosom
More white than the moon’s and warm,
A sterile, a ruinous blossom
Is blown your way in a storm.

As the lost white feverish limbs
Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift
In foam where the sea-weed swims,
Swam loose for the streams to lift,

My heart swims blind in a sea
That stuns me; swims to and fro,
And gathers to windward and lee
Lamentation, and mourning, and woe.

A broken, an emptied boat,
Sea saps it, winds blow apart,
Sick and adrift and afloat,
The barren waif of a heart.

Where, when the gods would be cruel,
Do they go for a torture? where
Plant thor...

My head is filled with olden rhymes beside this moaning sea,
But many and many a day has gone since I was dear to thee!
I know my passion fades away, and therefore oft regret
That some who love indeed can part and in the years forget.
Ah! through the twilights when we stood the wattle trees between,
We did not dream of such a time as this, fair Geraldine.

I do not say that all has gone of passion and of pain;
I yearn for many happy thoughts I shall not think again!
And often when the wind is up, and wailing round the eaves,
You sigh for withered Purpose shred and scattered like the leaves,
The Purpose blooming when we met each other on the green;
The sunset heavy in your curls, my golden Geraldine.

I think we lived a loftier life through hours of Long Ago,
For in...

Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn
Beside her sea-blown shore;
Her well beloved, her noblest born,
Is hers in life no more!

No lapse of years can render less
Her memory's sacred claim;
No fountain of forgetfulness
Can wet the lips of Fame.

A grief alike to wound and heal,
A thought to soothe and pain,
The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel
To her must still remain.

Good men and true she has not lacked,
And brave men yet shall be;
The perfect flower, the crowning fact,
Of all her years was he!

As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage,
What worthier knight was found
To grace in Arthur's golden age
The fabled Table Round?

A voice, the battle's trumpet-note,
To welcome and restore;
A hand, that all unwilling smote,

From the green Amesbury hill which bears the name
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,
Down the long valley of the Merrimac,
Midway between me and the river's mouth,
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest
Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,
Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,
Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,
Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,
The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays
Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where
The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade
Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.

To thee the echoes of the Island Sound
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan
Of the South Breaker prophesy...

The melody of autumn
    Is the only tune I know,
And I sing it over and over
    Because it thrills me so;
It stirs anew the happy wish,
    So near to perfect bliss,
To live a little longer in
    A world like this.

The sound was never sweeter,
    The voice so nearly mute,
As beauty, dying, loses
    Her hold upon the lute;
And like the harmonies that touch
    And blend with those above,
Forever must an echo wake
    The heart of love.

Her robe of brown and coral
    And amber glistens through
Rare jewels of the morning,
    The opals of the dew,
Like royal fabrics worn beneath
    The tinselry of pearls,
Or diamond dust by fashion strewn
    On sunny curls.

If I could wrap such garments
    In...

Should these songs, love, as they fleet,

Chance again to reach thy hand,
At the piano take thy seat,

Where thy friend was wont to stand!

Sweep with finger bold the string,

Then the book one moment see:
But read not! do nought but sing!

And each page thine own will be!

Ah, what grief the song imparts

With its letters, black on white,
That, when breath'd by thee, our hearts

Now can break and now delight!

We went a day's excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
And I did not think
That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,
And I full forgot
That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
No thought soever
That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

The Harp in lowliness obeyed;
And first we sang of the greenwood shade
And a solitary Maid;
Beginning, where the song must end,
With her, and with her sylvan Friend;
The Friend who stood before her sight,
Her only unextinguished light;
Her last companion in a dearth
Of love, upon a hopeless earth.
For She it was this Maid, who wrought
Meekly, with foreboding thought,
In vermeil colours and in gold
An unblest work; which, standing by,
Her Father did with joy behold,
Exulting in its imagery;
A Banner, fashioned to fulfil
Too perfectly his headstrong will:
For on this Banner had her hand
Embroidered (such her Sire's command)
The sacred Cross; and figured there
The five dear wounds our Lord did bear;
Full soon to be uplifted high,
And...

Fare thee well, O Love of Woman!
Lip of Beauty, fare thee well!
Thy soft heart, divinely human,
Holds me by a magic spell.
All that grieves me now to perish
Is the loss of one bright eye,
And I still the vision cherish
While I lay me down to die.

At my headstone, kindly kneeling,
May I beg a votive tear?
Woman, with her pure appealing,
Is my angel at the bier.
Let me have but one such linger,
Praying Christ to help and save,
Let me have but one dear finger
Place a chaplet on my grave.

Though the soldier dies in dying,
The true lover never dies;
Upward, from his embers flying,
He transfigures in the skies.
Heaven is rare, but Love is rarer,
Whether it be blest or crost;
Heaven blooms fair, but Love blooms fairer,
B...

O beautiful hills in the purple light,
    That shadow the western sky,
I dream of you oft in the silent night,
    As the golden days go by.

The river that flows at my longing feet
    Is tinged with a deeper glow;
But the song that it sings is as sad to-day
    As it was in the long ago.

The far-off clouds in the far-off sky
    Are tinted with gold and red;
But the lesson they tell to the hearts of men
    Is a lesson that never is said.

The star-crowned night in her sable plumes
    Is veiling the eastern sky,
And she trails her robes in the dying fires
    That far in the west do lie.

A single gem from her circlet old
    Is lost as she wanders by,
And the beautiful star with its golden light
    Shines out in the lo...

Still you stand, still you listen, still you smile!
Still melts your moonbeam through me, white awhile,
Softening, sweetening, till sweet. and soft
Increase so round this heart of mine, that oft
I could believe your moonbeam-smile has past
The pallid limit, lies, transformed at last
To sunlight and salvation, warms the soul
It sweets, softens! Would you pass that goal,
Gain love’s birth at the limit’s happier verge.
And, where an iridescence lurks, but urge
The hesitating pallor on to prime
Of dawn! true blood-streaked, sun-warmth, action-time,
By heart-pulse ripened to a ruddy glow
Of gold above my clay, I scarce should know
From gold’s self, thus suffused! For gold means love.
What means the sad slow silver smile above
My clay but pity, pardon? at the best,<...