She left me at the silent time
When the moon had ceased to climb
The azure path of Heaven's steep,
And like an albatross asleep,
Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovered in the purple night,
Ere she sought her ocean nest
In the chambers of the West.
She left me, and I stayed alone
Thinking over every tone
Which, though silent to the ear,
The enchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;
And feeling ever - oh, too much! -
The soft vibration of her touch,
As if her gentle hand, even now,
Lightly trembled on my brow;
And thus, although she absent were,
Memory gave me all of her
That even Fancy dares to claim: -
Her presence had made weak and tame
All passions, and I lived alone

At night, when Passion's ebbing tide
    Left bare the Sands of Truth,
Yasmini, resting by my side,
    Spoke softly of her youth.

"And one" she said "was tall and slim,
    Two crimson rose leaves made his mouth,
And I was fain to follow him
    Down to his village in the South.

"He was to build a hut hard by
    The stream where palms were growing,
We were to live, and love, and lie,
    And watch the water flowing.

"Ah, dear, delusive, distant shore,
    By dreams of futile fancy gilt!
The riverside we never saw,
    The palm leaf hut was never built!

"One had a Tope of Mangoe trees,
    Where early morning, noon and late,
The Persian wheels, with patient ease,
    Brought up their liquid, silver freight.

"A...

                Once as the aureole
                Day left the earth,
                Faded, a twilight soul,
                Memory, had birth:
Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth.

                Dark mirrors are her eyes:
                Wherein who gaze
                See wan effulgencies
                Flicker and blaze -
Lorn fleeting shadows of beautiful days.

                Scan those deep mirrors well
                After long years:
                Lo! what aforetime fell
                In rain of tears,
In radiant glamour-mist now reappears.

                See old wild gladness
                Tamed now and coy;
                Grief that was madness
                Turned into joy.
Fate cannot harr...

I must leave thee, lady sweet
Months shall waste before we meet;
Winds are fair and sails are spread,
Anchors leave their ocean bed;
Ere this shining day grow dark,
Skies shall gird my shoreless bark.
Through thy tears, O lady mine,
Read thy lover's parting line.

When the first sad sun shall set,
Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet;
When the morning star shall rise,
Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes;
When the second sun goes down,
Thou more tranquil shalt be grown,
Taught too well that wild despair
Dims thine eyes and spoils thy hair.

All the first unquiet week
Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek;
In the first month's second half
Thou shalt once attempt to laugh;
Then in Pickwick thou shalt dip,
Slightly puckering round the lip,...

You were here at his young beginning,
You are not here at his aged end;
Off he coaxed you from Life's mad spinning,
Lest you should see his form extend
Shivering, sighing,
Slowly dying,
And a tear on him expend.

So it comes that we stand lonely
In the star-lit avenue,
Dropping broken lipwords only,
For we hear no songs from you,
Such as flew here
For the new year
Once, while six bells swung thereto.

Heart, my heart, thou hast found thy home!
From gloom and sorrow thou hast come forth,
Thou who wast foolish, and sought to roam
'Neath the cruel stars of the frozen North.

Thou hast returned to thy dear delights;
The golden glow of the quivering days,
The silver silence of tropical nights,
No more to wander in alien ways.

Here, each star is a well-loved friend;
To me and my heart at the journey's end.

These are my people, and this my land,
I hear the pulse of her secret soul.
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple and sane and whole.

Washed in the light of a clear fierce sun, -
Heart, my heart, the journey is done.

See! the painted piece of the skies,
Where the rose-hued opal of sunset lies.
Hear the pass...

The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back, a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale...

Well, some may hate, and some may scorn,
And some may quite forget thy name;
But my sad heart must ever mourn
Thy ruined hopes, thy blighted fame!
'Twas thus I thought, an hour ago,
Even weeping o'er that wretch's woe;
One word turned back my gushing tears,
And lit my altered eye with sneers.
Then "Bless the friendly dust," I said,
"That hides thy unlamented head!
Vain as thou wert, and weak as vain,
The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain
My heart has nought akin to thine;
Thy soul is powerless over mine."
But these were thoughts that vanished too;
Unwise, unholy, and untrue:
Do I despise the timid deer,
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl,
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or, hear with joy the ...

    The rich, red blood
Doth stain the fair, green grass, and daisies white
    In generous flood ...
This sun-drowsed day for me is darkest night.
O! wreck of splintered wood and twisted wire,
What blind, unmeasured hatred you inspire
Because yours was the power that life to end ...
    Of him, who was my friend!

This morn we lay upon the grass,
And watched the languid hours pass;
A lark, deep in the sky's blue sea,
Sang ecstasies to him and me.

And with the daisies did he play,
As on the waving grass we lay,
And made a little daisy chain
To bring his childhood back again.

And while he watched the clouds above
He drifted into thoughts of love.
He said, "I know why skylarks sing -
Because they love, and it is Spring.

When Time a mellowing tint has thrown
O'er many a scene to mem'ry dear.
It scatters round a charm, unknown
When first th' impression rested there.

But, oh! should distance intervene,
Should Ocean's wave, should changeful clime.
Divide - how sweeter far the scene!
How richer ev'ry tint of time!

E'en thus with those (a treasur'd few)
Who gladden'd life with many a smile,
Tho' long has pass'd the sad adieu,
In thought we love to dwell awhile.

Then with keen eye, and beating heart,
The anxious mind still seeks relief
From those who can the tale impart,
How pass their day, in joy or grief.

If haply health and fortune bless,
We feel as if on us they shone;
If sickness and if sorrow press,
Then feeling makes their woes our own.<...

We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them: -
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, -
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine
Slow-dropped fr...

    Where is my love -
In silence and shadow she lies,
Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies;
    And a bird above,
In the darkness tender and clear,
Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here!

    Not that she's dead;
Only her soul is flown
Out of its last pure earthly mansion;
    And cries instead
In the darkness, tender and clear,
Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love - love lies here.

All is over! fleet career,
Dash of greyhound slipping thongs,
Flight of falcon, bound of deer,
Mad hoof-thunder in our rear,
Cold air rushing up our lungs,
Din of many tongues.

Once again, one struggle good,
One vain effort; he must dwell
Near the shifted post, that stood
Where the splinters of the wood,
Lying in the torn tracks, tell
How he struck and fell.

Crest where cold drops beaded cling,
Small ear drooping, nostril full,
Glazing to a scarlet ring,
Flanks and haunches quivering,
Sinews stiff’ning, void and null,
Dumb eyes sorrowful.

Satin coat that seems to shine
Duller now, black braided tress,
That a softer hand than mine
Far away was wont to twine,
That in meadows far from this
Softer lips might kis...

Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother,
Once a queen - now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders;
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent - she too long silent - mourning her shrouded hope and heir;
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.

Yet a word, ancient mother;
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between your knees;
O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white hair, so dishevel'd;
For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an illusion - the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;
The Lord is not dead - he is risen again, young and strong, in anot...

I.

Fallen with autumn's falling leaf
Ere yet his summer's noon was past,
Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief, -
What words can match a woe so vast!

And whose the chartered claim to speak
The sacred grief where all have part,
Where sorrow saddens every cheek
And broods in every aching heart?

Yet Nature prompts the burning phrase
That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall,
The loud lament, the sorrowing praise,
The silent tear that love lets fall.

In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme,
Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir, - -
The singers of the new-born time,
And trembling age with outworn lyre.

No room for pride, no place for blame, -
We fling our blossoms on the grave,
Pale, - scentless, - faded, - all we cl...

Another hand is beckoning us,
Another call is given;
And glows once more with Angel-steps
The path which reaches Heaven.

Our young and gentle friend, whose smile
Made brighter summer hours,
Amid the frosts of autumn time
Has left us with the flowers.

No paling of the cheek of bloom
Forewarned us of decay;
No shadow from the Silent Land
Fell round our sister's way.

The light of her young life went down,
As sinks behind the hill
The glory of a setting star,
Clear, suddenly, and still.

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
Eternal as the sky;
And like the brook's low song, her voice,
A sound which could not die.

And half we deemed she needed not
The changing of her sphere,
To give to Heaven a Shining O...

Febrile perfumes as of faded roses
In the old house speak of love to-day,
Love long past; and where the soft day closes,
Down the west gleams, golden-red, a ray.

Pointing where departed splendor perished,
And the path that night shall walk, and hang,
On blue boughs of heaven, gold, long cherished
Fruit Hesperian, that the ancients sang.

And to him, who sits there dreaming, musing,
At the window in the twilight wan,
Like old scent of roses interfusing,
Comes a vision of a day that's gone.

And he sees Youth, walking brave but dimly
'Mid the roses, in the afterglow;
And beside him, like a star seen slimly,
Love, who used to meet him long-ago.

And again he seems to hear the flowers
Whispering faintly of what no one knows
Of the dr...

If we must part,
Then let it be like this;
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
But touch mine hand and say:
"Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part."

Words are so weak
When love hath been so strong:
Let silence speak:
"Life is a little while, and love is long;
A time to sow and reap,
And after harvest a long time to sleep.
But words are weak."