I left behind the ways of care,
        The crowded hurrying hours,
    I breathed again the woodland air,
        I plucked the woodland flowers:

    Bluebells as yet but half awake,
        Primroses pale and cool,
    Anemones like stars that shake
        In a green twilight pool--

    On these still lay the enchanted shade,
        The magic April sun;
    With my own child a child I strayed
        And thought the years were one.

    As through the copse she went and came
        My senses lost their truth;
    I called her by the dear dead name
        That sweetened all my youth.

I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow;
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.
When the pilgrimage is done,
And we've the landscape overrun,
I am bitter, vacant, thwarted,
And your heart is unsupported.
Vainly valiant, you have missed
The manhood that should yours resist,--
Its complement; but if I could,
In severe or cordial mood,
Lead you rightly to my altar,
Where the wisest Muses falter,
And worship that world-warming spark
Which dazzles me in midnight dark,
Equalizing small and large,
While the soul it doth surcharge,
Till the poor is wealthy grown,
And the hermit never alone,--
The traveller and the road seem one
With the errand to be done,--
That were a man's and lover...

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frown’d,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlock’d his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens sooth’d an exile’s grief;
The Sonnet glitter’d a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crown’d
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheer’d mild Spenser, call’d from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains, alas, too few!

    I

    When the clouds hide the sun away
    The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
    And when the rain adown it streams
    'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.

    When the clouds vanish and the rain
    Stops, and the sun comes out again,
    It shimmers golden in the sun
    Almost too bright to look upon.

    But soon beneath the steady rays
    The roof is dried and reft of blaze,
    'Tis dusty yellow traversed through
    By long thin lines of deepest blue.

    Then at the last, as night draws near,
    The lines grow faint and disappear,
    The roof becomes a purple mist,
    A great square darkening amethyst

    Which sinks into the gathering shade
    Till separate form and colour fade,
    And ...

The heavens look down with chilly frown,
The sun blinks oot wi' watery e'e,
The drift flies fast upon the blast,
The naked trees moan shiveringly.

The sun is gone, by mists withdrawn,
Muffling his head in snow-clouds grey,
The earth turns white, against the night,
The laden winds drive furiously.

The flowers are slain that graced the plain,
The earth is locked wi' bitter frost;
And my heart cries to stormy skies
After the dreary loved and lost.

The spring will come, the flowers will bloom,
The leaves in beauty clothe the tree,
But never more, oh, never more,
Will my lost darling come to me.

Beyond the skies her happy eyes
Look fearlessly in eyes Divine;
The bitter smart, the hungry heart,
Waiting with empty arms, is mine.

Intra Muros

The sunbeams, lost for half a year,
Slant through my pane their morning rays;
For dry northwesters cold and clear,
The east blows in its thin blue haze.

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close against the sheltering wall
The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfolding ball.

The golden-chaliced crocus burns;
The long narcissus-blades appear;
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns
To light her blue-flamed chandelier.

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
By the wild winds of gusty March,
With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
Are swaying by the tufted larch.

The elms have robed their slender spray
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf;
Wide o'er the clasping arch of day
Soars like a cl...

I stood for a long while before the shop window
Looking at the blue butterflies embroidered on tawny silk.
The building was a tower before me,
Time was loud behind me,
Sun went over the housetops and dusty trees;
And there they were, glistening, brilliant, motionless,
Stitched in a golden sky
By yellow patient fingers long since turned to dust.

Each spot where tulips prank their state
Has drunk the life-blood of the great;
The violets yon field which stain
Are moles of beauties Time hath slain.



Unbar the door, since thou the Opener art,
Show me the forward way, since thou art guide,
I put no faith in pilot or in chart,
Since they are transient, and thou dost abide.

What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating

Heart-sick of his journey was the Wanderer;
Footsore and sad was he;
And a Witch who long had lurked by the wayside,
Looked out of sorcery.

'Lift up your eyes, you lonely Wanderer,'
She peeped from her casement small;
'Here's shelter and quiet to give you rest, young man,
And apples for thirst withal.'

And he looked up out of his sad reverie,
And saw all the woods in green,
With birds that flitted feathered in the dappling,
The jewel-bright leaves between.

And he lifted up his face towards her lattice,
And there, alluring-wise,
Slanting through the silence of the long past,
Dwelt the still green Witch's eyes.

And vaguely from the hiding-place of memory
Voices seemed to cry;
'What is the darkness of one brief life-time
To ...

Here we go round the mulberry bush,
the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush;
Here we go round the mulberry bush,
All on a frosty morning.

This is the way we clap our hands,
This is the way we clap our hands,
This is the way we clap our hands,
All on a frosty morning.

I.

    O Logan, sweetly didst thou glide,
    That day I was my Willie's bride!
    And years synsyne hae o'er us run
    Like Logan to the simmer sun.
    But now thy flow'ry banks appear
    Like drumlie winter, dark and drear,
    While my dear lad maun face his faes,
    Far, far frae me and Logan braes!

II.

    Again the merry month o' May
    Has made our hills and valleys gay;
    The birds rejoice in leafy bowers,
    The bees hum round the breathing flowers;
    Blythe Morning lifts his rosy eye,
    And Evening's tears are tears of joy:
    My soul, delightless, a' surveys,
    While Willie's far frae Logan braes.

III.

    Within yon milk-white hawthorn bush,
    Amang her nestlings sits the thrush;

O life with the sad seared face,
I weary of seeing thee,
And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would'st tell
Of Death, Time, Destiny -
I have known it long, and know, too, well
What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array
Thyself in rare disguise,
And feign like truth, for one mad day,
That Earth is Paradise?

I'll tune me to the mood,
And mumm with thee till eve;
And maybe what as interlude
I feign, I shall believe!

Just for a space that I met her--
Just for a day in the train!
It began when she feared it would wet her,
That tiniest spurtle of rain:
So we tucked a great rug in the sashes,
And carefully padded the pane;
And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes,
Longing to do it again!

Then it grew when she begged me to reach her
A dressing-case under the seat;
She was "really so tiny a creature,
That she needed a stool for her feet!"
Which was promptly arranged to her order
With a care that was even minute,
And a glimpse--of an open-work border,
And a glance--of the fairyest boot.

Then it drooped, and revived at some hovels--
"Were they houses for men or for pigs?"
Then it shifted to muscular novels,
With a little digression on prigs:
She thought...

Dear, noble friend! a virgin cask
Of wine solicits your attention;
And roses fair, to deck your hair,
And things too numerous to mention.
So tear yourself awhile away
From urban turmoil, pride, and splendor,
And deign to share what humble fare
And sumptuous fellowship I tender.
The sweet content retirement brings
Smoothes out the ruffled front of kings.

The evil planets have combined
To make the weather hot and hotter;
By parboiled streams the shepherd dreams
Vainly of ice-cream soda-water.
And meanwhile you, defying heat,
With patriotic ardor ponder
On what old Rome essays at home,
And what her heathen do out yonder.
Mæcenas, no such vain alarm
Disturbs the quiet of this farm!

God in His providence obscures
The goal beyond...

I

"O Lord, why grievest Thou? -
Since Life has ceased to be
Upon this globe, now cold
As lunar land and sea,
And humankind, and fowl, and fur
Are gone eternally,
All is the same to Thee as ere
They knew mortality."

II

"O Time," replied the Lord,
"Thou read'st me ill, I ween;
Were all THE SAME, I should not grieve
At that late earthly scene,
Now blestly past - though planned by me
With interest close and keen! -
Nay, nay: things now are NOT the same
As they have earlier been.

III

"Written indelibly
On my eternal mind
Are all the wrongs endured
By Earth's poor patient kind,
Which my too oft unconscious hand
Let enter undesigned.
No god can cancel deeds foredone,
Or thy old coils unwi...

When winter comes and takes away the rose,
And all the singing of sweet birds is done,
The warm and honeyed world lost deep in snows,
Still, independent of the summer sun,
In vain, with sullen roar,
December shakes my door,
And sleet upon the pane
Threatens my peace in vain,
While, seated by the fire upon my knee,
My love abides with me.

For he who, wise in time, his harvest yields
Reaped into barns, sweet-smelling and secure,
Smiles as the rain beats sternly on his fields,
For wealth is his no winter can make poor;
Safe all his waving gold
Shut in against the cold,
Treasure of summer grass -
So sit I with my lass,
My harvest sheaves of all her garnered charms
Safe in my happy arms.

Still fragrant in the garden of her breast,

Soft spread the southern sumer night
Her veil of darksome blue;
Ten thousand stars combined to light
The terrace of Saint Cloud.

The evening breezes gently sigh'd,
Like breath of lover true,
Bewailing the deserted pride
And wreck of sweet Saint Cloud.

The drum's deep roll was heard afar,
The bugle wildly blew
Good-night to Hulan and Hussar
That garrison Saint Cloud.

The startled Naiads from the shade
With broken urns withdrew
And silenced was that proud cascade,
The glory of Saint Cloud.

We sate upon its steps of stone,
Nor could its silence rue
When waked, to music of our own,
The echoes of Saint Cloud.

Slow Seine might hear each lovely note
Fall light as summer dew
While through the moonless air the...