What can I do in poetry,
Now the good spirit's gone from me?
Why, nothing now but lonely sit
And over-read what I have writ.

1

Hangs stormed with stars the night,
Deep over deep,
A majesty, a might,
To feel and keep.


2

Ah! what is such and such,
Love, canst thou tell?
That shrinks - though 'tis not much -
To weep farewell.


3

That hates the dawn and lark;
Would have the wail, -
Sobbed through the ceaseless dark, -
O' the nightingale.


4

Yes, earth, thy life were worth
Not much to me,
Were there not after earth
Eternity.


5

God gave thee life to keep -
And what hath life? -
Love, faith, and care, and sleep
Where dreams are rife.


6

Death's sleep, whose shadows start
The tears in eyes
Of love, that fill the heart
That breaks and d...

After the end that is drawing near
    Comes, and I no more see your face
Worn with suffering, lying here,
    What shall I do with the empty place?

You are so weary, that if I could
    I would not hinder, I would not keep
The great Creator of all things good,
    From giving his own beloved sleep.

But over and over I turn this thought.
    After they bear you away to the tomb,
And banish the glasses, and move the cot,
    What shall I do with the empty room?

And when you are lying at rest, my own,
    Hidden away in the grass and flowers,
And I listen in vain for your sigh and moan,
    What shall I do with the silent hours?

O God!    O God! in the great To Be
    What canst Thou give me to compensate
For the terrible silenc...

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.


Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;
Immense and silent moon.


I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.


I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring;
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.


For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and ...

I.

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
Little has yet been changed, I think
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink.

II.

Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name
It was not her time to love; beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,
And now was quiet, now astir,
Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.

III.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made...

He
Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.
Sit at the western window. Take the sun
Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,
Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,
And meditate on the beauty of your existence;
The beauty of this, that you exist at all.

She
The sun goes down, but without lamentation.
I close my eyes, and the stream of my sensation
In this, at least, grows clear to me:
Beauty is a word that has no meaning.
Beauty is naught to me.

He
The last blurred raindrops fall from the half-clear sky,
Eddying lightly, rose-tinged, in the windless wake of the sun.
The swallow ascending against cold waves of cloud
Seems winging upward over huge bleak stairs of stone.
The raindrop finds...

Already blushes on thy cheek
The bosom thought which thou must speak;
The bird, how far it haply roam
By cloud or isle, is flying home;
The maiden fears, and fearing runs
Into the charmed snare she shuns;
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is never wide.

Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth?
Or prayers the stony Parcae soothe,
Or coax the thunder from its mark?
Or tapers light the chaos dark?
In spite of Virtue and the Muse,
Nemesis will have her dues,
And all our struggles and our toils
Tighter wind the giant coils.

    I

    There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains
        A garden entangled with flowers,
    Where the whisper of echoing fountains
        Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers.
    Where torrents cast down from rock-masses,
        From caverns of red-granite steeps,
    With thunders sonorous clove passes
        And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps,
        With the dolorous foam of their leaps.


    II

    And, oh, when the sunrays came heaping
        The foam of those musical chasms,
    With a scintillant dust as of diamonds,
    It seemed that white spirits were sweeping
        Down, down thro' those voluble chasms,
        Wild weeping in resonant spasms.
    And the wave from the red-hearted granite
      ...

Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain,
The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng.
These I ignore to-day and only long
To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain,
One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song,
For all the victories of man's high endeavor,
Palm-bearing, laureled deeds that live forever,
The splendor clothing him whose will is strong.
Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one
Who has persisted and achieved?    Rejoice!
On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun.
Salute him with free heart and choral voice,
'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan,
The bold, significant, successful man.

It's such a little thing to weep,
So short a thing to sigh;
And yet by trades the size of these
We men and women die!

A frozen moon stands waxen,
White shadows,
Dead face,
Above me and the dull
Earth.
Throws green light
Like a garment,
A wrinkled one,
On bluish land.
But from the edge
Of the city,
Like a soft hand without fingers,
Gently rises
And fearfully threatening like death
Dark, nameless...
Rising
Without sound,
An empty slow sea swells towards us -
At first it was only like a weary
Moth, which crawled over the last houses.
Now it is a black bleeding hole.
It has already buried the city and half the sky.
Ah, had I flown -
Now it is too late.
My head falls into
Desolate hands.
On the horizon an apparition like a shriek
Announces
Terror and imminent end.

Long reaches of wet grasses sway
Where ran the sea but yesterday,
And white-winged boats at sunset drew
To anchor in the crimsoning blue.
The boats lie on the grassy plain,
Nor tug nor fret at anchor chain;
Their errand done, their impulse spent,
Chained by an alien element,
With sails unset they idly lie,
Though morning beckons brave and nigh;
Like wounded birds, their flight denied,
They lie, and long and wait the tide.

About their keels, within the net
Of tough grass fibres green and wet,
A myriad thirsty creatures, pent
In sorrowful imprisonment,
Await the beat, distinct and sweet,
Of the white waves' returning feet.
My soul their vigil joins, and shares
A nobler discontent than theirs;
Athirst like them, I patiently
Sit list...

Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
Wisdom, the truth! "All day the good glad sun
Showers love and labour on you, wine and song;
The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long
Till night."    And night ends all things.
    Then shall be
No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying,
Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover!
(And, heart, for all your sighing,
That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)

And has the truth brought no new hope at ...

Oh Life! I breathe thee in the breeze,
I feel thee bounding in my veins,
I see thee in these stretching trees,
These flowers, this still rock's mossy stains.

This stream of odours flowing by
From clover-field and clumps of pine,
This music, thrilling all the sky,
From all the morning birds, are thine.

Thou fill'st with joy this little one,
That leaps and shouts beside me here,
Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run
Through the dark woods like frighted deer.

Ah! must thy mighty breath, that wakes
Insect and bird, and flower and tree,
From the low trodden dust, and makes
Their daily gladness, pass from me,

Pass, pulse by pulse, till o'er the ground
These limbs, now strong, shall creep with pain,
And this fair world of sight and so...

I.

Now will we plunge into the frigid dark,
The living light of summer gone too soon!
A1ready I can hear a dismal sound,
The thump of logs on courtyard paving stones.

All winter comes into my being: wrath,
Hate, chills and horror, forced and plodding work,
And like the sun in polar underground
My heart will be a red and frozen block.

I Shudder as I hear each log that drops;
A gallows being built makes no worse sound.
My mind is like the tower that succumbs,
Under a heavy engine battered down.

It seems to me, dull with this constant thud,
That someone nails a coffin, but for whom?
Yesterday summer, now the fall! something
With all this eerie pounding will be gone.


II.

I love the greenish light in your long eye...

The mothers wish for no more daughters;
There is no future before them.
They bow their heads and their pride
At the end of the many tribes' journey.

The mothers weep over their children,
Loved and unwelcome together,
Who should have been dreamed, not born,
Since there is no road for the Indian.

The mothers see into the future,
Beyond the end of that Chieftain
Who shall be the last of the race
Which allowed only death to a coward.

The square, cold cheeks, lips firm-set,
The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line,
Held like a stag's on the cliff,
Shall be swept by the night-winds, and vanish!

A broken mirror in a trembling hand;
Sad, trembling lips that utter broken thought:
One of a wide and wandering, aimless band;
One in the world who for the world hath naught.

A heart that loves beyond the shallow word;
A heart well loved beyond its flowerless worth:
One who asks God to answer the prayer heard;
One from the dust returning to the earth.

Can miracle ne'er make the mirror whole
For one who, seeing, could be nobly bold?
Who could well die, to magnify the soul, -
Whose strength of love will shake the graveyard's mould?

Almighty! what is man?
But flesh and blood.
Like shadows flee his days,
He marks not how they vanish from his gaze,
Suddenly, he must die -
He droppeth, stunned, into nonentity.


Almighty! what is man?
A body frail and weak,
Full of deceit and lies,
Of vile hypocrisies.
Now like a flower blowing,
Now scorched by sunbeams glowing.
And wilt thou of his trespasses inquire?
How may he ever bear
Thine anger just, thy vengeance dire?
Punish him not, but spare,
For he is void of power and strength!


Almighty! what is man?
By filthy lust possessed,
Whirled in a round of lies,
Fond frenzy swells his breast.
The pure man sinks in mire and slime,
The noble shrinketh not from crime,
Wilt thou resent on him the charm...