She will not sleep, for fear of dreams,
But, rising, quits her restless bed,
And walks where some beclouded beams
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.

Obedient to the goad of grief,
Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow,
In varying motion seek relief
From the Eumenides of woe.

Wringing her hands, at intervals,
But long as mute as phantom dim,
She glides along the dusky walls,
Under the black oak rafters grim.

The close air of the grated tower
Stifles a heart that scarce can beat,
And, though so late and lone the hour,
Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet;

And on the pavement spread before
The long front of the mansion grey,
Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar,
Which pale on grass and granite lay.

No...

Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above.

It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.

One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.

The fair brow and ruddy cheek
Spoke of less burning skies;
Words cannot paint the look that beamed
In his dark lustrous eyes.

The other was a slender girl,
Blooming and young and fair.
The snowy neck was shaded with
The long bright sunny hair.

And those deep eyes of watery blue,
So sweetly sad they seemed.
And every featu...

The rose, that wrote its message on the noon's
Bright manuscript, has turned her perfumed face
Towards Fall, and waits, heart-heavy, for the moon's
Pale flower to take her place.

With eyes distraught, and dark disheveled hair,
The Season dons a tattered cloak of storm
And waits with Night that, darkly, seems to share
Her trouble and alarm.

It is the close of summer. In the sky
The sunset lit a fire of drift and sat
Watching the last Day, robed in empire, die
Upon the burning ghat.

The first leaf crimsons and the last rose falls,
And Night goes stalking on, her cloak of rain
Dripping, and followed through her haunted halls
By all Death's phantom train.

The sorrow of the Earth and all that dies,
And all that suffers, in her breast sh...

        There is a haunting phantom called Regret,
    A shadowy creature robed somewhat like Woe,
    But fairer in the face, whom all men know
        By her sad mien and eyes forever wet.
        No heart would seek her; but once having met,
    All take her by the hand, and to and fro
    They wander through those paths of long ago -
        Those hallowed ways 'twere wiser to forget.

        One day she led me to that lost land's gate
    And bade me enter; but I answered "No!
        I will pass on with my bold comrade, Fate;
    I have no tears to waste on thee - no time;
    My strength I hoard for heights I hope to climb:
        No friend art thou for souls that would be great."

She loved him--but she heeded not--
    Her heart had only room for pride:
All other feelings were forgot,
    When she became another's bride.
As from a dream she then awoke,
    To realize her lonely state,
And own it was the vow she broke
    That made her drear and desolate!

She loved him--but the sland'rer came,
    With words of hate that all believed;
A stain thus rested on his name--
    But he was wronged and she deceived;
Ah! rash the act that gave her hand,
    That drove her lover from her side--
Who hied him to a distant land,
    Where, battling for a name, he died!

She loved him--and his memory now
    Was treasured from the world apart:
The calm of thought was on her brow,
    The seeds of death were in her heart.

She turned her head on the pillow, and cried once more.
And drawing a shaken breath, and closing her eyes,
To shut out, if she could, this dingy room,
The wigs and costumes scattered around the floor,
Yellows and greens in the dark, she walked again
Those nightmare streets which she had walked so often . . .
Here, at a certain corner, under an arc-lamp,
Blown by a bitter wind, she stopped and looked
In through the brilliant windows of a drug-store,
And wondered if she dared to ask for poison:
But it was late, few customers were there,
The eyes of all the clerks would freeze upon her,
And she would wilt, and cry . . . Here, by the river,
She listened to the water slapping the wall,
And felt queer fascination in its blackness:
But it was cold, the little waves looked...

[Greek: Aeì d' aeí me pheugei.] - [Pseud.] ANACREON, [Greek: Eis chruson].


1.

The roses of Love glad the garden of life,
Though nurtur'd 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,
Till Time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
Or prunes them for ever, in Love's last adieu!


2.

In vain, with endearments, we soothe the sad heart,
In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
Or Death disunite us, in Love's last adieu!


3.

Still Hope, breathing peace, through the grief-swollen breast,
Will whisper, "Our meeting we yet may renew:"
With this dream of deceit, half our sorrow's represt,
Nor taste we the poison, of Love's last adieu!


4.

Oh! mark you yon pair,...

What part of the dread eternity
Are those strange minutes that I gain,
Mazed with the doubt of love and pain,
When I thy delicate face may see,
A little while before farewell?

What share of the world's yearning-tide
That flash, when new day bare and white
Blots out my half-dream's faint delight,
And there is nothing by my side,
And well remembered is farewell?

What drop in the grey flood of tears
That time, when the long day toiled through,
Worn out, shows nought for me to do,
And nothing worth my labour bears
The longing of that last farewell?

What pity from the heavens above,
What heed from out eternity,
What word from the swift world for me?
Speak, heed, and pity, O tender love,
Who knew'st the days before farewell!

Who is the maid with silken hair
    By clear Maine Water roaming?
For the fairy Queen is not so fair
    As she in the lonely gloaming

It is sweet Mysie of Bellee,
    John Millar's lovely daughter;
She is waiting where the old elm tree
    Droops over the sweet Maine Water.

"The trysting time has come and past,
    The day is fast declining;
Oh my true love, are you coming fast,
    For the star of love is shining?"

"The moon is bright, the ford is safe,
    The market folks crossed over;
Oh, come to me, it is wearing late,
    And I wait for thee, my lover.

"I fear me there will be a storm,
    The clouds, with murky fingers,
Are muffling the stars o'er far Galgorm,
    Where my own true lover lingers."

She ...

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 ...

I.

I shall not soon forget her and her eyes,
The haunts of hate, where suffering seemed to write
Its own dark name, whose syllables are sighs,
In strange and starless night.

I shall not soon forget her and her face,
So quiet, yet uneasy as a dream,
That stands on tip-toe in a haunted place
And listens for a scream.

She made me feel as one, alone, may feel
In some grand ghostly house of olden time,
The presence of a treasure, walls conceal,
The secret of a crime.


II.

With lambent faces, mimicking the moon,
The water lilies lie;
Dotting the darkness of the long lagoon
Like some black sky.

A face, the whiteness of a water-flower,
And pollen-golden hair,
In shadow half, half in the moonbeams' glower,

Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend
Now that the cottage Spinning-wheel is mute;
And Care, a comforter that best could suit
Her froward mood, and softliest reprehend;
And Love, a charmer's voice, that used to lend,
More efficaciously than aught that flows
From harp or lute, kind influence to compose
The throbbing pulse, else troubled without end:
Even Joy could tell, Joy craving truce and rest
From her own overflow, what power sedate
On those revolving motions did await
Assiduously to soothe her aching breast;
And, to a point of just relief, abate
The mantling triumphs of a day too blest.

I’d a dream to-night
As I fell asleep,
O! the touching sight
Makes me still to weep:
Of my little lad,
Gone to leave me sad,
Ay, the child I had,
But was not to keep.

As in heaven high,
I my child did seek,
There in train came by
Children fair and meek,
Each in lily white,
With a lamp alight;
Each was clear to sight,
But they did not speak.

Then, a little sad,
Came my child in turn,
But the lamp he had,
O it did not burn!
He, to clear my doubt,
Said, half turn’d about,
‘Your tears put it out;
Mother, never mourn.’

June 8, 1857


A hundred, a thousand to one; even so;
    Not a hope in the world remained:
The swarming howling wretches below
    Gained and gained and gained.

Skene looked at his pale young wife:--
    'Is the time come?'--'The time is come!'--
Young, strong, and so full of life:
    The agony struck them dumb.

Close his arm about her now,
    Close her cheek to his,
Close the pistol to her brow--
    God forgive them this!

'Will it hurt much?'--'No, mine own:
    I wish I could bear the pang for both.'
'I wish I could bear the pang alone:
    Courage, dear, I am not loth.'

Kiss and kiss: 'It is not pain
    Thus to kiss and die.
One kiss more.'--'And yet one again.'--
    'Good-bye.'--'Good-bye.'

When the twilight shadows deepen and the far-off lands are dim,
And the vesper dirge is stealing like the chant of cherubim,
There's a prayer within my bosom that's responsive to the sound,
There's a thought that springs within me--but 'tis sad and silence-bound.

There's a sorrow in those shadows as they lengthen on the lawn,
For the joy of life has vanished and its sweetness--all is gone,
And the purple mists of even as they hover o'er the glade
Seem to hush in voiceless gloom the deep recesses of the shade.

Oh thou beyond those heathery hills, beyond those woodlands blue,
Which, as they meet the eastern sky, receive its azure hue,
Ah, must I lonely linger here, where nought but griefs await,
Where life is but one long, long sigh, and all disconsolate?

I'm weep...

Let me not see your grief!
O, let not any see
That grief,
Nor how your heart still rocks
Like a temple with long earthquake shocks.
Let me not see
Your grief.

These eyes have seen such wrong,
Yet remained cold:
Ills grown strong,
Corruption's many-headed worm
Destroying feet that moved so firm--
Shall these eyes see
Your grief?

And that black worm has crawled
Into the brain
Where thought had walked
Nobly, and love and honour moved as one,
And brave things bravely were begun....
Now, can thought see
Unabashed your grief?

Into that brain your grief
Has run like cleansing fire:
Your grief
Through these unfaithful eyes has leapt
And touched honour where it lightly slept.
Now when I see
In mem...

The years go by, but they little seem
Like those within our dream;
The years that stood in such luring guise,
Beckoning us into Paradise,
To jailers turn as time goes by
Guarding that fair land, By-and-By,
Where we thought to blissfully rest,
The sound of whose forests' balmy leaves
Swaying to dream winds strangely sweet,
We heard in our bed 'neath the cottage eaves,
Whose towers we saw in the western skies
When with eager eyes and tremulous lip,
We watched the silent, silver ship
Of the crescent moon, sailing out and away
O'er the land we would reach some day, some day.

But years have flown, and our weary feet
Have never reached that Isle of the Blest;
But care we have felt, and an aching breast,
A lifelong struggle, grief, unrest,
That h...

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. -
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
- I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once, you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?