The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream.
Surely reality cannot be this!
Somehow, somewhere this surely doth but seem!
The sky, the sea, this great extent disclosed
Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel,
Is not something, but something interposed.
Only what in this is not this is real.
If this be to have sense, if to be awake
Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,
For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take
And for truth commune with imaginings,
    Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse,
    This common sleep of men, the universe.

Forth to his study the sculptor goes
    In a mood of lofty mirth:
"Now shall the tongues of my carping foes
    Confess what my art is worth!
In my brain last night the vision arose,
    To-morrow shall see its birth!"

He stood like a god; with creating hand
    He struck the formless clay:
"Psyche, arise," he said, "and stand;
    In beauty confront the day.
I have sought nor found thee in any land;
    I call thee: arise; obey!"

The sun was low in the eastern skies
    When spoke the confident youth;
Sweet Psyche, all day, his hands and eyes
    Wiled from the clay uncouth,
Nor ceased when the shadows came up like spies
    That dog the steps of Truth.

He said, "I will do my will in spite
    Of the rising dark; for, see,

My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one,
My songs do not belong to me.

Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.

"Are you awake,
Comrades, this silent night?
Well 'twere if all of our glossy gluey make
Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!"

"O viol, my friend,
I watch, though Phosphor nears,
And I fain would drowse away to its utter end
This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!"

And they felt past handlers clutch them,
Though none was in the room,
Old players' dead fingers touch them,
Shrunk in the tomb.

"'Cello, good mate,
You speak my mind as yours:
Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,
Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?"

"Once I could thrill
The populace through and through,
Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will." . . .
(A contra-basso spake so, and the r...

Friend of mine! whose lot was cast
With me in the distant past;
Where, like shadows flitting fast,

Fact and fancy, thought and theme,
Word and work, begin to seem
Like a half-remembered dream!

Touched by change have all things been,
Yet I think of thee as when
We had speech of lip and pen.

For the calm thy kindness lent
To a path of discontent,
Rough with trial and dissent;

Gentle words where such were few,
Softening blame where blame was true,
Praising where small praise was due;

For a waking dream made good,
For an ideal understood,
For thy Christian womanhood;

For thy marvellous gift to cull
From our common life and dull
Whatsoe'er is beautiful;

Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees
Droppi...

Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood --
And gone are phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
What m...

Sweet sounds, begone -
Whose music on my ear
Stirs foolish discontent
Of lingering here;
When, if I crossed
The crystal verge of death,
Him I should see
Who these sounds murmureth.

Sweet sounds, begone -
Ask not my heart to break
Its bond of bravery for
Sweet quiet's sake;
Lure not my feet
To leave the path they must
Tread on, unfaltering,
Till I sleep in dust.

Sweet sounds, begone:
Though silence brings apace
Deadly disquiet
Of this homeless place;
And all I love
In beauty cries to me,
'We but vain shadows
And reflections be.'

(THE PARSON'S BROTHER, SISTER, AND TWO CHILDREN)


Preface.

What wonder man should fail to stay
A nursling wafted from above,
The growth celestial come astray,
That tender growth whose name is Love!

It is as if high winds in heaven
Had shaken the celestial trees,
And to this earth below had given
Some feathered seeds from one of these.

O perfect love that 'dureth long!
Dear growth, that shaded by the palms.
And breathed on by the angel's song,
Blooms on in heaven's eternal calms!

How great the task to guard thee here,
Where wind is rough and frost is keen,
And all the ground with doubt and fear
Is checkered, birth and death between!

Space is against thee - it can part;
Time is against thee - it can ...

When the dark comes,
“Is this the end?” I pray,
No answer from the night,
And then once more the day.
I take the world again
Upon my neck and go
Pace with the serious hours.
Since fate will have it so,
Begone dead man, unclasp
Your hands from round my heart,
I and my burden pass,
You and your peace depart.

If grief come early
Joy comes late,
If joy come early
Grief will wait;
Aye, my dear and tender!

Wise ones joy them early
While the cheeks are red,
Banish grief till surly
Time has dulled their dread.

And joy being ours
Ere youth has flown,
The later hours
May find us gone;
Aye, my dear and tender!

Neglected now is the old guitar
And moldering into decay;
Fretted with many a rift and scar
That the dull dust hides away,
While the spider spins a silver star
In its silent lips to-day.

The keys hold only nerveless strings -
The sinews of brave old airs
Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings
So closely here declares
A sad regret in its ravelings
And the faded hue it wears.

But the old guitar, with a lenient grace,
Has cherished a smile for me;
And its features hint of a fairer face
That comes with a memory
Of a flower-and-perfume-haunted place
And a moonlit balcony.

Music sweeter than words confess
Or the minstrel's powers invent,
Thrilled here once at the light caress
Of the fairy hands that lent
This exc...

Whispers of heavenly death, murmur'd I hear;
Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing;
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;
With, at times, a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.

(Some parturition, rather, some solemn, immortal birth:
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,
Some Soul is passing over.)

There is a splendid tropic flower which flings
    Its fiery disc wide open to the core--
        One pulse of subtlest fragrance--once a life
That rounds a century of blossoming things
    And dies, a flower's apotheosis: nevermore
        To send up in the sunshine, in sweet strife
With all the winds, a fountain of live flame,
    A winged censer in the starlight swung
        Once only, flinging all its wealth abroad
To the wide deserts without shore or name
    And dying, like a lovely song, once sung
    By some dead poet, music's wandering ghost,
    Aeons ago blown oat of life and lost,
        Remembered only in the heart of God.

It is death that consoles and allows us to live.
Alas! that life's end should be all of our hope;
It goes to our heads like a powerful drink,
And gives us the heart to walk into the dark;

Through storm and through snow, through the frost at our feet,
It's the pulsating beacon at limit of sight,
The illustrious inn* that's described in the book,
Where we'll sit ourselves down, and will eat and will sleep;

It's an Angel who holds in his magical grip
Our peace, and the gift of magnificent dreams,
And who makes up the bed of the poor and the bare;

It's the glory of gods, it's the mystical loft,
It's the purse of the poor and their true native land,
It's the porch looking out on mysterious skies!

The dawn grows red in the eastern sky,
    (Long, so long is the day,)
And I lean from my lattice and sigh and sigh,
As I watch the night fog creeping by
    And vanish over the bay.

The thrush soars up, over green clad hills,
    (The day is long, so long;)
Like liquid silver his music spills,
And ever it quivers, and runs, and trills
    In a glad sweet burst of song.

Under my window there blooms a rose,
    (How long a day can be.)
And I lean and whisper what no soul knows
Of my heart's sorrows and secret woes,
    And the red rose sighs, 'Ah me!'

A ship sails into the waiting bay,
    (The day is long, alack,)
But what would that matter to me, I pray
If the ship that sailed out yesterday
    Should never more come back.

All through the tepid Summer night
The starless sky had poured a cool
Monotony of pleasant rain
In music beautiful.

And for an hour I'd sat to watch
Clouds moving on majestic feet,
Had heard down avenues of night
Their hearts of thunder beat;

Saw ponderous limbs far-veined with gold
Pulse fiery life o'er wood and plain,
While scattered, fell from monstrous palms
The largess of the rain;

Beholding at each lightning's flash
The generous silver on the sod,
In meek devotion bowed, I thanked
These almoners of God.

Hope is the shadowy essence of a wish,
    A fond desire which floats before our eyes;
With lurid aberration, feverish,--
    We clutch the shadow which elusive, flies;
Though at our grasp the mocking fancy flees,
Hope still pursues and soothes realities.

Hope, as a mirage on the desert waste,
    Lures the lost traveler, by a vision fair
Of gushing fountains which he may not taste,
    Of streamlets cool depicted on the air;
With tongue outstretched and parched he onward speeds,
But as he moves the phantom scene recedes.

In the foul dungeon or the narrow cell,
    The prisoner doth pace his lonely beat,
And as he treads, his shackles clank a knell
    Responsive to each movement of his feet;
Yet through his grated window, he discerns
The star...

Up to the little grave, with blossoms kept,
They went together; and one hid her face,
And spoke aloud the boy's dear name, and wept.
The other woman stood apart a space.
And prayed to God. "If only I," she said,
"Might keep a grave, and mourn my little dead!"