The dying need but little, dear, --
A glass of water's all,
A flower's unobtrusive face
To punctuate the wall,

A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
And certainly that one
No color in the rainbow
Perceives when you are gone.

I envy seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
I envy speechless hills

That gaze upon his journey;
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As heaven, unto me!

I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
The happy, happy leaves

That just abroad his window
Have summer's leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me.

I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad, --
Myself his noon could bring,

Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.

The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
    Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
    For a dream's sake.

I hang my harp upon a tree,
    A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapt
    For a dream's sake.

Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
    My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
    For a dream's sake.

Then I asked: 'Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?'

He replied: 'All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.'

Blake's 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.






I

At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again, again, forgotten tombs
Are all now that love wa...

With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps' flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.

I leaned to catch the words he said
That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
The words my heart was calling.

And on we walked and on we walked
Past the fiery lights of the picture shows
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
On the errand each man knows.

And on we walked and on we walked,
At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
My heart's unuttered cry.

With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps' flare
But oh, the girls who can ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.

I.

Floating!
Floating--and all the stillness waits
And listens at the ivory gates,
Full of a dim uncertain presage
Of some strange, undelivered message.
There is no sound save from the bush
The alto of the shy wood-thrush,
And ever and anon the dip
Of a lazy oar.

The rhythmic drowsiness keeps time
To hazy subtleties of rhyme
That seem to slip
Through the lulled soul to seek the sleepy shore.
The idle clouds go floating by;
Above us sky, beneath us sky;
The sun shines on us as we lie
Floating.

It is a dream.
It is a dream, my love; see how
The ripples quiver at the prow,
And all the long reflections shake
Unsteadily beneath the lake.
The mists about the uplands show
Dim violet towers that come and go.

How shallow is this mere that gleams!
Its depth of blue is from the skies;
And from a distant sun the dreams
And lovely light within your eyes.

We deem our love so infinite
Because the Lord is everywhere,
And love awakening is made bright
And bathed in that diviner air.

We go on our enchanted way
And deem our hours immortal hours,
Who are but shadow kings that play
With mirrored majesties and powers.

They have left you, little Henry, but they have not left you lonely -
    Brothers' hearts so knit together could not, might not separate dwell.
Fain to seek you in the mansions far away - One lingered only
    To bid those behind farewell!

Gentle Boy! - His childlike nature in most guileless form was moulded,
    And it may be that his spirit woke in glory unaware,
Since so calmly he resigned it, with his hands still meekly folded,
    Having said his evening prayer.

Or - if conscious of that summons - "Speak, O Lord, Thy servant heareth" -
    As one said, whose name they gave him, might his willing answer be,
"Here am I" - like him replying - "At Thy gates my soul appeareth,
    For behold Thou calledst me!"

A deep silence - utter silence, on his earthly home...

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
    In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
    Melted away in mist.

Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes
    Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whom I had known in days departed,
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams
    On faces seen in dreams.

A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore
    Stood lonely as before;
And the wild-roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed
    Their petals of pale red.

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things the...

Amor che meco al buon tempo ti stavi.

HE VENTS HIS SORROW TO ALL WHO WITNESSED HIS FORMER FELICITY.


    Love, that in happier days wouldst meet me here
Along these meads that nursed our kindred strains;
And that old debt to clear which still remains,
Sweet converse with the stream and me wouldst share:
Ye flowers, leaves, grass, woods, grots, rills, gentle air,
Low valleys, lofty hills, and sunny plains:
The harbour where I stored my love-sick pains,
And all my various chance, my racking care:
Ye playful inmates of the greenwood shade;
Ye nymphs, and ye that in the waves pursue
That life its cool and grassy bottom lends:--
My days were once so fair; now dark and dread
As death that makes them so. Thus the world through
On each as soon as bo...

An hour ago when the wind blew high
    At my lady's window a red leaf beat.
Then dropped at her door, where, passing by,
    She carelessly trod it under her feet.

I have taken it out of the dust and dirt,
    With a tender pity but half defined.
Ah! poor bruised leaf, with your stain and hurt,
    'A fellow-feeling doth make us kind.'

On winds of passion my heart was blown,
    Like an autumn leaf one hapless day.
At my lady's window with tap and moan
    It burned and fluttered its life away.

Bright with the blood of its wasting tide
    It glowed in the sun of her laughing eyes.
What cared she though a stray heart died -
    What to her were its sobs and sighs.

The winds of passion were spent at last,
    And my heart like the ...

Say, art thou angry? words unkind
    Have fallen upon thine ear,
Thy spirit hath been wounded too
    By mocking jest or sneer,
But mind it not - relax at once
    Thine o'ercast and troubled brow -
What will be taunt or jest to thee
    In a few short years from now?

Or, perhaps thou mayst be pining
    Beneath some bitter grief,
From whose pangs in vain thou seekest
    Or respite or relief;
Fret not 'neath Heav'n's chastening rod
    But submissive to it bow;
Thy griefs will all be hushed to rest
    In a few short years from now.

Art toiling for some worldly aim,
    Or for some golden prize,
Devoting to that glitt'ring goal
    Thy thoughts, thy smiles, thy sighs?
Ah! rest thee from the idle chase,
    With no bliss c...

A splendid sun betwixt the trees
Long spikes of flame did shoot,
When turning to the fragrant South,
With longing eyes and burning mouth,
I stretched a hand athwart the drouth,
And plucked at cooling fruit.

So thirst was quenched, and hastening on
With strength returned to me,
I set my face against the noon,
And reached a denser forest soon;
Which dipped into a still lagoon
Hard by the sooming sea.

All day the ocean beat on bar
And bank of gleaming sand;
Yet that lone pool was always mild,
It never moved when waves were wild,
But slumbered, like a quiet child,
Upon the lap of land.

And when I rested on the brink,
Amongst the fallen flowers,
I lay in calm; no leaves were stirred
By breath of wind, or wing of bird;

For your letter, dear - [Hattie], accept my best thanks,
Rendered long and amusing by virtue of franks,
Though concise they would please, yet the longer the better,
The more news that's crammed in, more amusing the letter,
All excuses of etiquette nonsense I hate,
Which only are fit for the tardy and late,
As when converse grows flat, of the weather they talk,
How fair the sun shines - a fine day for a walk,
Then to politics turn, of Burdett's reformation,
One declares it would hurt, t'other better the nation,
Will ministers keep? sure they've acted quite wrong,
The burden this is of each morning-call song.
So - is going to - you say,
I hope that success her great efforts will pay [ - ]
That [the Colonel] will see her, be dazzled outright,
And declare he can't bear...

I here engage
Upon this page
    A picture to portray,
Of two of an age
Yet neither a sage,
    But right honest hearts have they.
Each loves to play
And have his own way,
Yet I'm happy to say
    They quarrel, if ever, but seldom.
Though competent quite
To maintain their own right,
And even to fight,
    Yet peace to their bosom is welcome.
Both go to school,
And learn by rule
    That in neither a dunce we may find;
Both read and spell
And like it well;
    Thus with pleasure is profit combined.
One's eyes are black,
The other's blue;
    They both have honest hearts and true,
    And love each other dearly:
One's father, is brother
To the other one's mother,
    So cousins german are they most clearly;
...

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...

Child of a day, thou knowest not
The tears that overflow thy urn,
The gushing eyes that read thy lot,
Nor, if thou knewest, couldst return!

And why the wish! the pure and blest
Watch like thy mother o'er thy sleep.
O peaceful night! O envied rest!
Thou wilt not ever see her weep.

Una donna più bella assai che 'l sole.

GLORY AND VIRTUE.


    A lady, lovelier, brighter than the sun,
Like him superior o'er all time and space,
Of rare resistless grace,
Me to her train in early life had won:
She, from that hour, in act, and word and thought,
--For still the world thus covets what is rare--
In many ways though brought
Before my search, was still the same coy fair:
For her alone my plans, from what they were,
Grew changed, since nearer subject to her eyes;
Her love alone could spur
My young ambition to each hard emprize:
So, if in long-wish'd port I e'er arrive,
I hope, for aye through her,
When others deem me dead, in honour to survive.

Full of first hope, burning with youthful love,
She, at her will, ...