"Chevalita,
    Pretty cretr,
    I do love her
    Like a brother;
    Just to ride
    Is my delight,
    For she does not
    Kick or bite,"

The curse of Adam, the old curse of all,
Though I inherit in this feverish life
Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought, in Care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall
I taste, through thee, my Eve, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise! - how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame,
Of this fair earth, and its delightful bow'rs,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flow'rs; -
But oh! as many and such tears are ours,
As only should be shed for guilt and shame!

    The wide Pacific waters
    And the Atlantic meet.
    With cries of joy they mingle,
    In tides of love they greet.
    Above the drowned ages
    A wind of wooing blows: -
    The red rose woos the lotos,
    The lotos woos the rose . . .

    The lotos conquered Egypt.
    The rose was loved in Rome.
    Great India crowned the lotos:
    (Britain the rose's home).
    Old China crowned the lotos,
    They crowned it in Japan.
    But Christendom adored the rose
    Ere Christendom began . . .

    The lotos speaks of slumber:
    The rose is as a dart.
    The lotos is Nirvana:
    The rose is Mary's heart.
    The rose is deathless, restless,
    The splendor of our pain:
    The flush and fire of labor
 ...

Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,
And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,
I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes
Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse
Unbroken by the petty incidents
Of noisy life:    Oh hear me once again!

Winds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft,
Above the murmur of the uneasy world,
My thoughts in exultation held their way:
Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade
Were once to me unearthly tones of love,
Joy without object, wordless music, stealing
Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast
With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire--
Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep
Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores,
Of silent labour, and eternal change;
First teacher of the ...

Who is it that this darke night
Vnderneath my window playneth?
It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah exil'd, disdayneth
Euery other vulgar light.

Why, alas, and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changed?
Deare, when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estranged,
Let my chaunge to ruin be.

Well, in absence this will dy;
Leaue to see, and leaue to wonder.
Absence sure will helpe, if I
Can learne how my selfe to sunder
From what in my hart doth ly.

But time will these thoughts remoue;
Time doth work what no man knoweth.
Time doth as the subiect proue;
With time still the affection groweth
In the faithful turtle-doue.

What if we new beauties see,
Will they not stir new affection?
I will thinke they...

(Art and Poetry [The Germ, No. 3], March 1850)


She sat alway thro' the long day
Spinning the weary thread away;
And ever said in undertone:
'Come, that I be no more alone.'

From early dawn to set of sun
Working, her task was still undone;
And the long thread seemed to increase
Even while she spun and did not cease.
She heard the gentle turtle-dove
Tell to its mate a tale of love;
She saw the glancing swallows fly,
Ever a social company;
She knew each bird upon its nest
Had cheering songs to bring it rest;
None lived alone save only she; -
The wheel went round more wearily;
She wept and said in undertone:
'Come, that I be no more alone.'

Day followed day, and still she sighed
For love, and was not satisf...

O Lady, I have looked on thee once more,
Thou too hast looked on me, as thou hadst said,
And though the joy was pain, the pain was bliss,
Bliss that more happy lovers well may miss:
Captives feast richly on a little bread,
So are we very rich who are so poor.

Hurrah! the Season's past at last;
At length we've "done" our pleasure.
Dear "Pater," if you only knew
How much I've longed for home and you,--
Our own green lawn and leisure!

And then the pets! One half forgets
The dear dumb friends--in Babel.
I hope my special fish is fed;--
I long to see poor Nigra's head
Pushed at me from the stable!

I long to see the cob and "Rob,"--
Old Bevis and the Collie;
And won't we read in "Traveller's Rest"!
Home readings after all are best;--
None else seem half so "jolly!"

One misses your dear kindly store
Of fancies quaint and funny;
One misses, too, your kind bon-mot;--
The Mayfair wit I mostly know
Has more of gall than honey!

How tired one grows of "calls and balls!"
This "tou...

1

Oh say not, sweet Anne, that the Fates have decreed
The heart which adores you should wish to dissever;
Such Fates were to me most unkind ones indeed, -
To bear me from Love and from Beauty for ever.


2.

Your frowns, lovely girl, are the Fates which alone
Could bid me from fond admiration refrain;
By these, every hope, every wish were o'erthrown,
Till smiles should restore me to rapture again.


3.

As the ivy and oak, in the forest entwin'd,
The rage of the tempest united must weather;
My love and my life were by nature design'd
To flourish alike, or to perish together.


4.

Then say not, sweet Anne, that the Fates have decreed
Your lover should bid you a lasting adieu:
Till Fate can ordain tha...

    1

    Her violets in thine eyes
        The Springtide stained I know,
    Two bits of mystic skies
    On which the green turf lies,
        Whereon the violets blow.


    2

    I know the Summer wrought
        From thy sweet heart that rose,
    With that faint fragrance fraught,
    Its sad poetic thought
        Of peace and deep repose.


    3

    That Autumn, like some god,
        From thy delicious hair--
    Lost sunlight 'neath the sod
    Shot up this golden-rod
        To toss it everywhere.


    4

    That Winter from thy breast
        The snowdrop's whiteness stole--
    Much kinder than the rest--
    Thy innocence confessed,
        The pureness of...

Although my life, which thou hast scarred and shaken,
Retains awhile some influence of thee,
As shells, by faithless waves long since forsaken,
Still murmur with the music of the Sea,

I shall forget.    Not thine the haunting beauty,
Which, once beheld, for ever holds the heart,
Or, if resigned from stress of Fate or Duty,
Takes part of life away: - the dearer part.

I gave thee love; thou gavest but Desire.
Ah, the delusion of that summer night!
Thy soul vibrated at the rate of Fire;
Mine, with the rhythm of the waves of Light.

It is my love for thee that I regret,
Not thee, thyself, and hence, - I shall forget!

Many, many thanks my friend,
For those sweet verses thou didst send,
    So good they were and witty;
And now I will confess to thee,
Mixed up with bad, much good I see
    Within the crowded city.

Boston, "with all thy faults I love
Thee still," though much I disapprove -
    See much in thee to blame;
Yet to be candid, I'll allow
Thy equal no one can me show
    From Mexico to Maine.

It is my boast, perhaps my pride,
To be to English blood allied,
    Warm in my veins it's flowing;
And when I see the homage given
To foreign men and foreign women,[1]
    That blood with shame is glowing.

I hope when Kossuth fever's cool
And we have put our wits to school,
    And sober senses found;
When the Hungarian's...

We that were born, beloved, so far apart,
So many seas and lands,
The gods, one sudden day, joined heart to heart,
Locked hands in hands,
Distance relented and became our friend,
And met, for our sakes, world's end with world's end.
The earth was centred in one flowering plot
Beneath thy feet, and all the rest was not.

Now wouldst thou rend our nearness, and again
Bring distance back, and place
Poles and equators, mountain range and plain,
Between me and thy face,
Undoing what the gods divinely planned;
Heart, canst thou part? hand, loose me from thy hand?
Not twice the gods their slighted gifts bestow;
Bethink thee well, beloved, ere thou dost go.

Thou who hast taught the teachers of mankind
How from the least of things the mightiest grow,
What marvel jealous Nature made thee blind,
Lest man should learn what angels long to know?
Thou in the flinty rock, the river's flow,
In the thick-moted sunbeam's sifted light
Hast trained thy downward-pointed tube to show
Worlds within worlds unveiled to mortal sight,
Even as the patient watchers of the night, -
The cyclope gleaners of the fruitful skies, -
Show the wide misty way where heaven is white
All paved with suns that daze our wondering eyes.

Far o'er the stormy deep an empire lies,
Beyond the storied islands of the blest,
That waits to see the lingering day-star rise;
The forest-tinctured Eden of the West;
Whose queen, fair Freedom, twines her iron c...

Such age how beautiful! O Lady bright,
Whose mortal lineaments seem all refined
By favouring Nature and a saintly Mind
To something purer and more exquisite
Than flesh and blood; whene'er thou meet'st my sight,
When I behold thy blanched unwithered cheek,
Thy temples fringed with locks of gleaming white,
And head that droops because the soul is meek,
Thee with the welcome Snowdrop I compare;
That child of winter, prompting thoughts that climb
From desolation toward the genial prime;
Or with the Moon conquering earth's misty air,
And filling more and more with crystal light
As pensive Evening deepens into night.

Before I found her I had found
Within my heart, as in a brook,
Reflections of her: now a sound
Of imaged beauty; now a look.

So when I found her, gazing in
Those Bibles of her eyes, above
All earth, I read no word of sin;
Their holy chapters all were love.

I read them through. I read and saw
The soul impatient of the sod
Her soul, that through her eyes did draw
Mine to the higher love of God.

The spirit of the shower,
    Of the sunshine and the breeze,
Of the dewy twilight hour,
Of the bud and opening flower,
    My soul delighted sees.
Stern winter's robe of gray,
    Beneath thy balmy sigh,
Like mist-wreaths melt away,
When the rosy laughing day
    Lifts up his golden eye.--

Spirit of ethereal birth,
    Thy azure banner floats,
In lucid folds, o'er air and earth,
And budding woods pour forth their mirth
    In rapture-breathing notes.
I see upon the fleecy cloud
    The spreading of thy wings;
The hills and vales rejoice aloud,
And Nature, starting from her shroud,
    To meet her bridegroom springs.

Spirit of the rainbow zone,
    Of the fresh and breezy morn,--
Spirit of climes where joy alone
F...

Lo! where the car of Day down slopes of flame
On burnished axle quits the drowsy skies!
And as his snorting steeds of glowing brass
Rush 'neath the earth, a glimmering dust of gold
From their fierce hoofs o'er heaven's azure meads
Rolls to yon star that burns beneath the moon.
With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound,
The Night steps in, sad votaress, like a nun,
To pace lone corridors of th' ebon-archéd sky.
How sad! how beautiful! her raven locks
Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen
On her deep, holy eyes, and woo to sleep,
Sleep or the easeful slumber of white Death!
How calm o'er this great water, in its flow
Silent and vast, smoothes yon cold sister sphere,
Her lucid chasteness feathering the wax-white foam!
As o'er a troubled brow falls c...