There was a Boy, long years ago,
Who hour by hour awake would lie,
And watch the white moon gliding slow
Along her pathway in the sky.

And every night as thus he lay
Entranced in lonely fantasy,
Borne swiftly on a bright moon-ray
There came to him a Golden Key.

And with that Golden Key the Boy
Oped every night a magic door
That to a melody of Joy
Turned on its hinges evermore.

Then, trembling with delight and awe,
When he the charmèd threshold crossed,
A radiant corridor he saw,
Its end in dazzling distance lost.

Great windows shining in a row
Lit up the wondrous corridor,
And each its own rich light did throw
In stream resplendent on the floor.

One window showed the Boy a scene
Within a forest old and dim...

The song of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.

The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!

I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.

Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?

.    .    .    .    .

And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:

“Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,” saith the water,
“With the moss on their feet?

“Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers
The golden and purple
Of honey-s...

There are some qualities, some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a two-fold Silence, sea and shore,
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless: his name's "No More."
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!

If you could bring her glories back!
You gentle sirs who sift the dust
And burrow in the mould and must
Of Babylon for bric-a-brac;
Who catalogue and pigeon-hole
The faded splendours of her soul
And put her greatness under glass -
If you could bring her past to pass!

If you could bring her dead to life!
The soldier lad; the market wife;
Madam buying fowls from her;
Tip, the butcher's bandy cur;
Workmen carting bricks and clay;
Babel passing to and fro
On the business of a day
Gone three thousand years ago -
That you cannot; then be done,
Put the goblet down again,
Let the broken arch remain,
Leave the dead men's dust alone -

Is it nothing how she lies,
This old mother of you all,
You great cities proud and tall
To...

    In a lingering fever many visions come to you:
    I was in the little house again
    With its great yard of clover
    Running down to the board-fence,
    Shadowed by the oak tree,
    Where we children had our swing.
    Yet the little house was a manor hall
    Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea.
    I was in the room where little Paul
    Strangled from diphtheria,
    But yet it was not this room -
    It was a sunny verandah enclosed
    With mullioned windows
    And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak
    With a face like Euripides.
    He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him - I could not tell.
    We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded
    Under a summer wind, and little Paul came
    With clover blo...

Poichè per mio destino.

IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: IN THEM HE FINDS EVERY GOOD, AND HE CAN NEVER CEASE TO PRAISE THEM.


    Since then by destiny
I am compell'd to sing the strong desire,
Which here condemns me ceaselessly to sigh,
May Love, whose quenchless fire
Excites me, be my guide and point the way,
And in the sweet task modulate my lay:
But gently be it, lest th' o'erpowering theme
Inflame and sting me, lest my fond heart may
Dissolve in too much softness, which I deem,
From its sad state, may be:
For in me--hence my terror and distress!
Not now as erst I see
Judgment to keep my mind's great passion less:
Nay, rather from mine own thoughts melt I so,
As melts before the summer sun the snow.

At first I fondly thought

"O I am weary!" she sighed, as her billowy
Hair she unloosed in a torrent of gold
That rippled and fell o'er a figure as willowy,
Graceful and fair as a goddess of old:
Over her jewels she flung herself drearily,
Crumpled the laces that snowed on her breast,
Crushed with her fingers the lily that wearily
Clung in her hair like a dove in its nest.
And naught but her shadowy form in the mirror
To kneel in dumb agony down and weep near her!

"Weary?" Of what? Could we fathom the mystery?
Lift up the lashes weighed down by her tears
And wash with their dews one white face from her history,
Set like a gem in the red rust of years?
Nothing will rest her - unless he who died of her
Strayed from his grave, and in place of the groom,
Tipping her face, kneeling the...

Labor not in the murky dell,
But till your harvest hill at morn;
Stoop to no words that, rank and fell,
Grow faster than the rustling corn.

With gladdening eyes go greet the sun,
Who lifts his brow in varied light;
Bring light where'er your feet may run:
So bring a day to sorrow's night.

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor,
Onward she slid
In a shroud that furs half-hid.

"Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
Past being read!"
"Still, it is so," she said.

"These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
To their death;
But you deemed me chaste me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
Could pace this street
Eyeing some man to greet?...

When pearl and gold, o'er deeps of musk,
The moon curves, silvering the dusk,
As in a garden, dreaming,
A lily slips its dewy husk
A firefly in its gleaming,
I of my garden am a guest;
My garden, that, in beauty dressed
Of simple shrubs and oldtime flowers,
Chats with me of the perished hours,
When she companioned me in life,
Living remote from care and strife.

It says to me:"How sad and slow
The hours of daylight come and go,
Until the Night walks here again
With moon and starlight in her train,
And she and I with perfumed words
Of winds and waters, dreaming birds,
And flowers and crickets and the moon,
For hour on hour, in soul commune.

And you, and you,
Sit here and listen in the dew
For her, the love, you used to know,<...

[1]

A husband's death brings always sighs;
The widow sobs, sheds tears - then dries.
Of Time the sadness borrows wings;
And Time returning pleasure brings.
Between the widow of a year
And of a day, the difference
Is so immense,
That very few who see her
Would think the laughing dame
And weeping one the same.
The one puts on repulsive action,
The other shows a strong attraction.
The one gives up to sighs, or true or false;
The same sad note is heard, whoever calls.
Her grief is inconsolable,
They say. Not so our fable,
Or, rather, not so says the truth.

To other worlds a husband went
And left his wife in prime of youth.
Above his dying couch she bent,
And cried, 'My love, O wait for me!
My soul would gladly g...

Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish,
    Not they who, while sad years go by them, in
The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish,
    Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.

'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected
    Yet with grim fear forever at their side,
Who hug the corpse of some sin undetected,
    A corpse no grave or coffin-lid can hide -

'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted
    By thoughts that like unbidden guests intrude,
And sit down, uninvited and unwanted,
    And make a nightmare of the solitude.

Amor, Natura, e la bell' alma umile.

DURING A SERIOUS ILLNESS OF LAURA.


    Love, Nature, Laura's gentle self combines,
She where each lofty virtue dwells and reigns,
Against my peace: To pierce with mortal pains
Love toils--such ever are his stern designs.
Nature by bonds so slight to earth confines
Her slender form, a breath may break its chains;
And she, so much her heart the world disdains,
Longer to tread life's wearying round repines.
Hence still in her sweet frame we view decay
All that to earth can joy and radiance lend,
Or serve as mirror to this laggard age;
And Death's dread purpose should not Pity stay,
Too well I see where all those hopes must end,
With which I fondly soothed my lingering pilgrimage.

WRANGHAM.
<...

Se 'l dolce sguardo di costei m' ancide.

HE IS CONTINUALLY IN FEAR OF DISPLEASING HER.


    If thus the dear glance of my lady slay,
On her sweet sprightly speech if dangers wait,
If o'er me Love usurp a power so great,
Oft as she speaks, or when her sun-smiles play;
Alas! what were it if she put away,
Or for my fault, or by my luckless fate,
Her eyes from pity, and to death's full hate,
Which now she keeps aloof, should then betray.
Thus if at heart with terror I am cold,
When o'er her fair face doubtful shadows spring,
The feeling has its source in sufferings old.
Woman by nature is a fickle thing,
And female hearts--time makes the proverb sure--
Can never long one state of love endure.

MACGREGOR.


    If the sof...

    I asked Aunt Persis yester-eve, as twilight fell,
    If she had things of value hidden safe away -
    Treasures that were her very own? And did she love
    To bring them forth, and feast her eyes upon their worth,
    And finger them with all a miser's greed of touch?

    She smiled that slow, warm smile of hers, and drew me down
    Beside her in the inglenook. The rain beat hard
    Against the panes, without the world was doubly gray
    With twilight and with cloud. The room was full of shade
    Till Persis stirred the slumbering grate fire wide awake,
    And made it send its flickering shafts of light into
    Each corner dim - gay shafts that chased the shadows forth
    And took their place, then stole away and let
    The shadow back, and then gave cha...

    At times thy image to my mind returns,
    Aspasia. In the crowded streets it gleams
    Upon me, for an instant, as I pass,
    In other faces; or in lonely fields,
    At noon-tide bright, beneath the silent stars,
    With sudden and with startling vividness,
    As if awakened by sweet harmony,
    The splendid vision rises in my soul.
    How worshipped once, ye gods, what a delight
    To me, what torture, too! Nor do I e'er
    The odor of the flowery fields inhale,
    Or perfume of the gardens of the town,
    That I recall thee not, as on that day,
    When in thy sumptuous rooms, so redolent
    Of all the fragrant flowers of the spring,
    Arrayed in robe of violet hue, thy form
    Angelic I beheld, as it reclined
    On dainty cushions ...

O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate!
Dear child of sorrow son of misery!
How soon the film of death obscur'd that eye,
Whence Genius mildly falsh'd, and high debate.
How soon that voice, majestic and elate,
Melted in dying numbers! Oh! how nigh
Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die
A half-blown flow'ret which cold blasts amate.
But this is past: thou art among the stars
Of highest heaven: to the rolling spheres
Thou sweetly singest: nought thy hymning mars,
Above the ingrate world and human fears.
On earth the good man base detraction bars
From thy fair name, and waters it with tears.

The white moth-mullein brushed its slim
Cool, faery flowers against his knee;
In places where the way lay dim
The branches, arching suddenly,
Made tomblike mystery for him.

The wild-rose and the elder, drenched
With rain, made pale a misty place,
From which, as from a ghost, he blenched;
He walking with averted face,
And lips in desolation clenched.

For far within the forest, where
Weird shadows stood like phantom men,
And where the ground-hog dug its lair,
The she-fox whelped and had her den,
The thing kept calling, buried there.

One dead trunk, like a ruined tower,
Dark-green with toppling trailers, shoved
Its wild wreck o'er the bush; one bower
Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved,
The one who haunted him each hour.