Following upon the faint wind's fickle courses
A feather drifts and strays.
My thought after her thought
Floated--how many ways and days!

She swayed me as the wind swayeth a feather.
I was a leaf upon
Her breath, a dream within
Her dream. The dream how soon was done!

For now all's changed, not Time's change more wondrous,
I am her sun, and she
(Herself doth swear) the moon;
Or she the ship upon my sea.

How should this be? I know not; I so grossly
Mastering her spirit pure.
O, how can her bird's breast
My nervous and harsh hand endure?

Tell me if this be love indeed, fond lovers,
That high stoop to low,
Soul be to flesh subdued;
That the sun around the earth should go?

I know not: I but know that love is misery,...

("O douleur! j'ai voulu savoir.")

[XXXIV. i., October, 183-.]


I have wished in the grief of my heart to know
If the vase yet treasured that nectar so clear,
And to see what this beautiful valley could show
Of all that was once to my soul most dear.
In how short a span doth all Nature change,
How quickly she smoothes with her hand serene -
And how rarely she snaps, in her ceaseless range,
The links that bound our hearts to the scene.

Our beautiful bowers are all laid waste;
The fir is felled that our names once bore;
Our rows of roses, by urchins' haste,
Are destroyed where they leap the barrier o'er.
The fount is walled in where, at noonday pride,
She so gayly drank, from the wood descending;
In her fairy hand was transformed the...

I. NOONDAY.

Two angry men - in heat they sever,
    And one goes home by a harvest field: -
"Hope's nought," quoth he, "and vain endeavor;
    I said and say it, I will not yield!

"As for this wrong, no art can mend it,
    The bond is shiver'd that held us twain;
Old friends we be, but law must end it,
    Whether for loss or whether for gain.

"Yon stream is small - full slow its wending;
    But winning is sweet, but right is fine;
And shoal of trout, or willowy bending -
    Though Law be costly - I'll prove them mine.

"His strawberry cow slipped loose her tether,
    And trod the best of my barley down;
His little lasses at play together
    Pluck'd the poppies my boys had grown.

"What then? - Why naught! She lack'...

Gifts of one who loved me,--
'T was high time they came;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.

Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul;
Thy gentle words are drops of balm
In life's too bitter bowl;
No grief is mine, but that alone
These choicest blessings I have known.

Harriet! if all who long to live
In the warm sunshine of thine eye,
That price beyond all pain must give, -
Beneath thy scorn to die;
Then hear thy chosen own too late
His heart most worthy of thy hate.

Be thou, then, one among mankind
Whose heart is harder not for state,
Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
Amid a world of hate;
And by a slight endurance seal
A fellow-being's lasting weal.

For pale with anguish is his cheek,
His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,
Thy name is struggling ere he speak,
Weak is each trembl...

Some vast amount of years ago,
Ere all my youth had vanished from me,
A boy it was my lot to know,
Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.

I love to gaze upon a child;
A young bud bursting into blossom;
Artless, as Eve yet unbeguiled,
And agile as a young opossum:

And such was he. A calm-browed lad,
Yet mad, at moments, as a hatter:
Why hatters as a race are mad
I never knew, nor does it matter.

He was what nurses call a 'limb;'
One of those small misguided creatures,
Who, though their intellects are dim,
Are one too many for their teachers:

And, if you asked of him to say
What twice 10 was, or 3 times 7,
He'd glance (in quite a placid way)
From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven:

And smile, and look politel...

Love!--what is love? a mere machine, a spring
For freaks fantastic, a convenient thing,
A point to which each scribbling wight most steer,
Or vainly hope for food or favour here;
A summer's sigh; a winter's wistful tale:
A sound at which th' untutor'd maid turns pale;
Her soft eyes languish, and her bosom heaves,
And Hope delights as Fancy's dream deceives.

Thus speaks the heart which cold disgust invades,
When time instructs, and Hope's enchantment fades;
Through life's wide stage, from sages down to kings,
The puppets move, as art directs the strings:
Imperious beauty bows to sordid gold,
Her smiles, whence heaven flows emanent, are sold;
And affectation swells th' entrancing tones,
Which nature subjugates, and truth disowns.

I love th' ingenuous...

I said that I would see
Her once, to curse her fair, deceitful grace,
To curse her for my life-long agony;
But when I saw her face,
I said, "Sweet Christ, forgive both her and me."

High swelled the chanted hymn,
Low on the marble swept the velvet pall,
I bent above, and my eyes grew dim,
My sad heart saw it all -
She loved me, loved me though she wedded him.

And then shot through my soul
A thrill of fierce delight, to think that he
Must yield her form, his all, to Death's control,
The while her love for me
Would live, when sun and stars had ceased to roll.

But no, on the white brow,
Graved in its marble, was deep calm impressed,
Saying that peace had come to her through woe;
Saying, she had found rest
At last, and I, I must not...

Her true beauty leaves behind
Apprehensions in my mind
Of more sweetness than all art
Or inventions can impart;
Thoughts too deep to be expressed,
And too strong to be suppressed....
... What pearls, what rubies can
Seem so lovely fair to man,
As her lips whom he doth love
When in sweet discourse they move:
Or her lovelier teeth, the while
She doth bless him with a smile!
Stars indeed fair creatures be;
Yet amongst us where is he
Joys not more the whilst he lies
Sunning in his mistress' eyes.
Than in all the glimmering light
Of a starry winter's night?
    Note the beauty of an eye,
And if aught you praise it by
Leave such passion in your mind,
Let my reason's eye be blind.
Mark if ever red or white
Anywhere gave such delight...

    "One time when I was pleasing to you, Lydia,
        And when no other youth, preferred to me,
    Your snowy neck could with his arms encircle,
        Then happier I than Persia's King may be."

    "When of another you were less enamored,
        Nor ranked me after Chloe in your love,
    Then I, your Lydia, of wide reputation,
        Than Roman Ilia more renowned could prove."

    "Now Thracian Chloe, skilled in mellow measures,
        And expert on the harp, holds me her slave,
    To die for her would never cause me terror,
        If her - my soul - the Fates alive would save."

    "'Tis Calais, Ornytus' son, the Thurian,
        Who now consumes me with a mutual fire,
    Ah! death for him twice over would I suffer,
        Would but...

A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago.
        And etched on vacant places,
        Are half forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know -
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.

Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,
We see, with strange emotion that is not free from fear,
        That continent Elysian
        Long vanished from our vision,
Youth's lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.

When gloomy gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
        And draws from youth's recesses
        Some mem...

My Mary's as sweet as the flowers that grow,
By the side of the brooklet that runs near her cot;
Her brow is as fair as the fresh fallen snow,
And the gleam of her smile can be never forgot.
Her figure is lithe and as graceful I ween
As was Venus when Paris awarded the prize,
She's the wiles of a fairy, - the step of a queen,
And the light of true love's in her bonny brown eyes.

To see was to love her, - to love was to mourn, -
For her heart was as fickle as April days
When you'd given her all and asked some return,
You got but a taste of her false winsome ways.
You never could tell, though you knew her so well,
That her sweet fascinations were nothing but lies,
Like a fool you loved on when of hope there was none
And your heart sought relief in her bonny bro...

On a golden dawn in the dawn sublime
Of years ere the stars had ceased to sing,
Beautiful out of the sea-deeps cold
Aphrodite arose, the Flower of Time,
That, dear till the day of her blossoming,
The old, old Sea had borne in his heart.
Around her worshipping waves did part
Tremulous, glowing in rose and gold.

And the birds broke forth into singing sweet,
And flowers born scentless breathed perfume:
Softly she smiled upon Man forlorn,
And the music of love in his wild heart beat,
And down to the pit went his gods of gloom,
And earth grew bright and fair as a bride,
And folk in star-worlds wondering cried,
“Lo in the skies a new star is born!”

O Beloved, thus on my small world you
Rose, flushing it all with rosy flame!
Changing sad thought...

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried,
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says, what she never will swear,
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of ...

Name, my Laura, name the whirl-compelling
Bodies to unite in one blest whole
Name, my Laura, name the wondrous magic
By which soul rejoins its kindred soul!

See! it teaches yonder roving planets
Round the sun to fly in endless race;
And as children play around their mother,
Checkered circles round the orb to trace.

Every rolling star, by thirst tormented,
Drinks with joy its bright and golden rain
Drinks refreshment from its fiery chalice,
As the limbs are nourished by the brain.

'Tis through Love that atom pairs with atom,
In a harmony eternal, sure;
And 'tis Love that links the spheres together
Through her only, systems can endure.

Were she but effaced from Nature's clockwork,
Into dust would fly the mighty world;
O'er thy s...

Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die, because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be.

Should my heart be grieved or pined
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well-disposèd nature
Joinèd with a lovely creature?
Be she meeker, kinder than
Turtle-dove or pelican:
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be.

Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or, her well-deserving known,
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her name of best
If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be.

'Cause her fortune seems...

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie
Beneath the many-changing sky
And mirror all of life and time,
- Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,
And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns,
- Thus heaven and earth together vie
Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love
Is hid by storms that rage above,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress
Of grief hath died in bitterness,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and ...