I scanned her picture dreaming,
Till each dear line and hue
Was imaged, to my seeming,
As if it lived anew.

Her lips began to borrow
Their former wondrous smile;
Her fair eyes, faint with sorrow,
Grew sparkling as erstwhile.

Such tears as often ran not
Ran then, my love, for thee;
And O, believe I cannot
That thou are lost to me!

SPRING.

Muse of the pastoral reed and sylvan reign,
Divine inspirer of each tuneful swain,
Who taught the Doric Shepherd to portray
Primeval nature in his simple lay;
And him of Mantua, in a nicer age,
To form the graces of his artful page;
O, come! where crystal Avon winds serene,
And with thy presence bless the brightening scene;
Now, while I rove his willowy banks along,
With fond intent to wake the rural song,
Inspire me, Goddess! to my strains impart
The force of nature, and the grace of art.

Now has the Night her dusky veil withdrawn,
And, softly blushing, peeps the smiling Dawn;
The lark, on quivering wings, amid the skies
Pours his shrill song, inviting her to rise;
The breathing Zephyrs just begin to play,
Waking the flowers to s...

They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat's breath,
Harsh of tongue.

This grey that stares
Lies not, stark skin and bone.
Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.
Dire hunger holds his hour.
Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears.
Pluck and devour!

A fresh young voice that sings to me
So often many a simple thing,
Should surely not unanswered be
By all that I can sing.

Dear voice, be happy every way
A thousand changing tones among,
From little child's unfinished lay
To angel's perfect song.

In dewy woods--fair, soft, and green
Like morning woods are childhood's bower--
Be like the voice of brook unseen
Among the stones and flowers;

A joyful voice though born so low,
And making all its neighbours glad;
Sweet, hidden, constant in its flow
Even when the winds are sad.

So, strengthen in a peaceful home,
And daily deeper meanings bear;
And when life's wildernesses come
Be brave and faithful there.

Try all the glorious magic range,
Worship, forgive, consol...

Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips, sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh.--O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul forever!

Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendors,
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium,--night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness.

Again I know forgotten dreams and longings;
Ideals lost; desires dead and buried
Beside the altar sacrific...

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

I

Come up, dear chosen morning, come,
Blessing the air with light,
And bid the sky repent of being dark:
Let all the spaces round the world be white,
And give the earth her green again.
Into new hours of beautiful delight,
Out of the shadow where she has lain,
Bring the earth awake for glee,
Shining with dews as fresh and clear
As my beloved's voice upon the air.
For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee
A wondrous duty lies:
There was an evening that did loveliness foretell;
Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell
To fashion into perfect destiny
The radiant prophecy.
For in an evening of young moon, that went
Filling the moist air with a rosy fire,
I and my beloved knew our love;
And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise

I Bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago,
    And etched on vacant places
    Are half-forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know -
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.

Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,
We see, with strange emotion, that is not free from fear,
    That continent Elysian
    Long vanished from our vision,
Youth's lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.

When gloomy, gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
    And draws from youth's recesses
    Some memory it possesses,
...

I.

Beneath an old beech-tree
They sat together,
Fair as a flower was she
Of summer weather.
They spoke of life and love,
While, through the boughs above,
The sunlight, like a dove,
Dropped many a feather.

II.

And there the violet,
The bluet near it,
Made blurs of azure wet
As if some spirit,
Or woodland dream, had gone
Sprinkling the earth with dawn,
When only Fay and Faun
Could see or hear it.

III.

She with her young, sweet face
And eyes gray-beaming,
Made of that forest place
A spot for dreaming:
A spot for Oreads
To smooth their nut-brown braids,
For Dryads of the glades
To dance in, gleaming.

IV.

So dim the place, so blest,
One had not wondered
H...

If I kiss Anthea's breast,
There I smell the ph[oe]nix nest:
If her lip, the most sincere
Altar of incense I smell there -
Hands, and thighs, and legs are all
Richly aromatical.
Goddess Isis can't transfer
Musks and ambers more from her:
Nor can Juno sweeter be,
When she lies with Jove, than she.

Methinks I see thee, lying calm and low,
    Silent and dark within thy earthy bed;
    Thy mighty hands, in which I trusted, dead,
Resting, with thy long arms, from work or blow;
And the night-robe, around thy tall form, flow
    Down from the kingly face, and from the head,
    Save by its thick dark curls, uncovered--
My brother, dear from childhood, lying so!
Not often since thou went'st, I think of thee,
    (With inward cares and questionings oppressed);
    And yet, ere long, I seek thee in thy rest,
And bring thee home my heart, as full, as free,
As sure that thou wilt take me tenderly,
    As then when youth and nature made us blest.

Eileen of four,
Eileen of smiles;
Eileen of five,
Eileen of tears;
Eileen of ten, of fifteen years,
Eileen of youth
And woman's wiles;
Eileen of twenty,
In love's land,
Eileen all tender
In her bliss,
Untouched by sorrow's treacherous kiss,
And the sly weapon in life's hand, -
Eileen aroused to share all fate,
Eileen a wife,
Pale, beautiful,
Eileen most grave
And dutiful,
Mourning her dreams in queenly state.
Eileen! Eileen!....

Let moderation on thy passions wait;
Who loves too much, too much the lov'd will hate.

L' aspetto sacro della terra vostra.

THE VIEW OF ROME PROMPTS HIM TO TEAR HIMSELF FROM LAURA, BUT LOVE WILL NOT ALLOW HIM.


    The solemn aspect of this sacred shore
Wakes for the misspent past my bitter sighs;
'Pause, wretched man! and turn,' as conscience cries,
Pointing the heavenward way where I should soar.
But soon another thought gets mastery o'er
The first, that so to palter were unwise;
E'en now the time, if memory err not, flies,
When we should wait our lady-love before.
I, for his aim then well I apprehend,
Within me freeze, as one who, sudden, hears
News unexpected which his soul offend.
Returns my first thought then, that disappears;
Nor know I which shall conquer, but till now
Within me they contend, nor hope of rest allow!

Mæcenas, I conjure thee cease
    To wake my harp's enamour'd strings
To tones, that fright recumbent Peace,
    That Pleasure flies on rapid wings!

Slow conquest on Numantia's plain,
    Or Hannibal, that dauntless stood,
Tho' thrice he saw Ausonia's main
    Redden with Carthaginian blood;

The Lapithæ's remorseless pride,
    Hylæus' wild inebriate hours;
The Giants, who the Gods defied,
    And shook old Saturn's splendid towers;

These, dear Mæcenas, thou should'st paint,
    Each glory of thy Cæsar's reign,
In eloquence, that scorns restraint,
    And sweeter than the Poet's strain;

Show captive Kings, who from the fight
    Drag at his wheels their galling chain,
And the pale lip indignant bite
    With mutter...

VII.

Fairies.


    Glory endures when calumny hath fled;
    And fairies show themselves, in friendly guise,
    To all who hold a trust beyond the dead,
    And all who pray, albeit so worldly-wise,
    With cheerful hearts or wildly-weeping eyes.
    They come and go when children are in bed
    To gladden them with dreams from out the skies
    And sanctify all tears that they have shed!
    Fairies are wing'd for wandering to and fro.
    They live in legends; they survive the Greeks.
    Wisdom is theirs; they live for us and grow,
    Like...

She gave a rose,
And I kissed it and pressed it.
I love her, she knows,
And my action confessed it.
She gave me a rose,
And I kissed it and pressed it.

Ah, how my heart glows,
Could I ever have guessed it?
It is fair to suppose
That I might have repressed it:
She gave me a rose,
And I kissed it and pressed it.

'T was a rhyme in life's prose
That uplifted and blest it.
Man's nature, who knows
Until love comes to test it?
She gave me a rose,
And I kissed it and pressed it.