Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
                Grey Autumn meets her fate.

                Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
                Making perpetual moan.

                Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
                Searching for her lost loves.

                From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
                Along the amber slope,--

                And valleys drowsed between,
In the ...

The spring shall visit thee again,
Itchin! and yonder ancient fane,[1]
That casts its shadow on thy breast,
As if, by many winters beat,
The blooming season it would greet,
With many a straggling wild-flower shall be dressed.

But I, amid the youthful train
That stray at evening by thy side,
No longer shall a guest remain,
To mark the spring's reviving pride.
I go not unrejoicing; but who knows,
When I have shared, O world! thy common woes,
Returning I may drop some natural tears;
As these same fields I look around,
And hear from yonder dome[2] the slow bell sound,
And think upon the joys that crowned my stripling years!

    O youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain,
    In sight and hearing of thy father's cot,
    These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain,
    These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not.
    Wander not yet where noon's unpitying glare
    Beats down the toilers in the city bare;
    Forsake not yet, not yet, the homely plot,
    O Youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain.

I mind the days when ladies fair
Helped on my overcoat,
And tucked the silken handkerchief
About my precious throat;
They used to see the poet’s soul
In every song I wrote.

They pleaded hard, but I had work
To do, and could not stay
I used to work the whole night through,
And what have you to say?

’Twas clever, handsome woman then,
And I their rising star;
I could not see they worshipped me,
Because I saw too far.
(’Tis well for one or two, I think,
That things are as they are.)

(I used to write for writing’s sake,
I used to write till day,
I loved my prose and poetry,
And what have you to say?)

I guess if one should meet me now
That she would gasp to think,
She ever knew a thing like me,
As down the s...

There was a damned successful Poet;
There was a Woman like the Sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.
They did not know their time was done.
They did not know his hymns
Were silence; and her limbs,
That had served Love so well,
Dust, and a filthy smell.

And so one day, as ever of old,
Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;
On fire to cling and kiss and hold
And, in the other's eyes, to see
Each his own tiny face,
And in that long embrace
Feel lip and breast grow warm
To breast and lip and arm.

So knee to knee they sped again,
And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told,
Across the streets of Hell . . .
And then
They suddenly felt the wind blow cold,
And knew, so closely pressed,
Chill air on lip and breast,
And,...

    Sweet brook! I've met thee many a summer's day,
    And ventured fearless in thy shallow flood,
    And rambled oft thy sweet unwearied way,
    'Neath willows cool that on thy margin stood,
    With crowds of partners in my artless play--
    Grasshopper, beetle, bee, and butterfly--
    That frisked about as though in merry mood
    To see their old companion sporting by.
    Sweet brook! life's glories then were mine and thine;
    Shade clothed thy spring that now doth naked lie;
    On thy white glistening sand the sweet woodbine
    Darkened and dipt its flowers. I mark, and sigh,
    And muse o'er troubles since we met the last,
    Like two fond friends whose happiness is past.

The white moon wasteth,
And cold morn hasteth
    Athwart the snow,
The red east burneth
And the tide turneth,
    And thou must go.

Think not, sad rover,
Their story all over
    Who come from far -
Once, in the ages
Won goodly wages
    Led by a star.

Once, for all duly
Guidance doth truly
    Shine as of old,
Opens for me and thee
Once, opportunity
    Her gates of gold.

Enter, thy star is out,
Traverse nor faint nor doubt
    Earth's antres wild,
Thou shalt find good and rest
As found the Magi blest
    That divine Child.

Far above the hollow
Tempest, and its moan,
Singeth bright Apollo
In his golden zone, -
Cloud doth never shade him,
Nor a storm invade him,
On his joyous throne.

So when I behold me
In an orb as bright,
How thy soul doth fold me
In its throne of light!
Sorrow never paineth,
Nor a care attaineth
To that blessed height.

        Ah Ben!
    Say how, or when
    Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts
    Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
    Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
    And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

                My Ben!
            Or come again,
            Or send to us
    Thy wit's great overplus;
            But teach us yet
    Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend:
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock; the store
Of such a wit the world should have no more.

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.

See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet.

(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was ...

Was it a dream? We sail’d, I thought we sail’d,
Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream,
Under o’erhanging pines; the morning sun,
On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,
On the red pinings of their forest floor,
Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines
The mountain skirts, with all their sylvan change
Of bright-leaf’d chestnuts, and moss’d walnut-trees,
And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.
Swiss chalets glitter’d on the dewy slopes,
And from some swarded shelf high up, there came
Notes of wild pastoral music: over all
Rang’d, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow.
Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge.
Back’d by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood,
Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves
Muffled its walls, and on the stone-stre...

Shall I go to Love and tell,
Thou art all turned icicle?
Shall I say her altars be
Disadorn'd and scorn'd by thee?
O beware! in time submit;
Love has yet no wrathful fit:
If her patience turns to ire,
Love is then consuming fire.

"Scorn not the sonnet," though its strength be sapped,
    Nor say malignant its inventor blundered;
The corpse that here in fourteen lines is wrapped
    Had otherwise been covered with a hundred.

    Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me,
    Needing a name from my books;
    Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.
    Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore
    Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue:
    Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England,
    Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.
    I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,
    Held such converse afar with the great
    Who knew her better than I.
    Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater,
    Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight.
    With shells from the river cover me, cover me.
    I lived in wonder, worshipping earth and heaven.
    I have passed on the march eternal of endless life.

What life like that of the bard can be--
The wandering bard, who roams as free
As the mountain lark that o'er him sings,
And, like that lark, a music brings
Within him, where'er he comes or goes,--
A fount that for ever flows!
The world's to him like some playground,
Where fairies dance their moonlight round;--
If dimmed the turf where late they trod,
The elves but seek some greener sod;
So, when less bright his scene of glee,
To another away flies he!

Oh, what would have been young Beauty's doom,
Without a bard to fix her bloom?
They tell us, in the moon's bright round,
Things lost in this dark world are found;
So charms, on earth long past and gone,
In the poet's lay live on.--
Would ye have smiles that ne'er grow dim?
You've only to giv...

In the winter, flowers are springing;
In the winter, woods are green,
Where our banished birds are singing,
Where our summer sun is seen!
Our cold midnights are coeval
With an evening and a morn
Where the forest-gods hold revel,
And the spring is newly born!

While the earth is full of fighting,
While men rise and curse their day,
While the foolish strong are smiting,
And the foolish weak betray--
The true hearts beyond are growing,
The brave spirits work alone,
Where Love's summer-wind is blowing
In a truth-irradiate zone!

While we cannot shape our living
To the beauty of our skies,
While man wants and earth is giving--
Nature calls and man denies--
How the old worlds round Him gather
Where their Maker is their sun!
Ho...

Where does Cinderella sleep?
By far-off day-dream river.
A secret place her burning Prince
Decks, while his heart-strings quiver.

Homesick for our cinder world,
Her low-born shoulders shiver;
She longs for sleep in cinders curled -
We, for the day-dream river.

Those evening bells, those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells, -
Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,
And letters only just in time!

The Muffin-boy has passed away,
The Postman gone - and I must pay,
For down below Deaf Mary dwells,
And does not hear those Evening Bells.[1]

And so 'twill be when she is gone,
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
And other maids with timely yells
Forget to stay those Evening Bells.