A beautiful and happy girl,
With step as light as summer air,
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair;
A seeming child in everything,
Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
As Nature wears the smile of Spring
When sinking into Summer's arms.

A mind rejoicing in the light
Which melted through its graceful bower,
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
And stainless in its holy white,
Unfolding like a morning flower
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.

How thrills once more the lengthening chain
Of memory, at the thought of thee!
Old hopes which long in dust ...

If any God should say,
"I will restore
The world her yesterday
Whole as before
My Judgment blasted it" who would not lift
Heart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?

If any God should will
To wipe from mind
The memory of this ill
Which is Mankind
In soul and substance now, who would not bless
Even to tears His loving-tenderness?

If any God should give
Us leave to fly
These present deaths we live,
And safely die
In those lost lives we lived ere we were born,
What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?

For we are what we are,
So broke to blood
And the strict works of war,
So long subdued
To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
Hardly observance at our busier hands.

Yet we were what we ...

The gyres! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;
Things thought too long can be no longer thought,
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.
What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?
What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,
A-greater, a more gracious time has gone;
For painted forms or boxes of make-up
In ancient tombs I sighed, but not again;
What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,
And all it knows is that one word "Rejoice!'
Conduct and work grow coarse, and coarse the soul,
What matter...

George Fuller

Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth
Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair
Her shapes took color in thy homestead air!
How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth!
Magician! who from commonest elements
Called up divine ideals, clothed upon
By mystic lights soft blending into one
Womanly grace and child-like innocence.
Teacher I thy lesson was not given in vain.
Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin;
Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein
May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane.
If rightly choosing is the painter's test,
Thy choice, O master, ever was the best

I know a land, I, too,
    Where warm keen incense on the sea-wind blows,
And all the winter long the skies are blue,
    And the brown deserts blossom with the rose.

Deserts of all delight,
    Cactus and palm and earth of thirsty gold,
Dark purple blooms round eaves of sun-washed white,
    And that Hesperian fruit men sought of old.

O, to be wandering there,
    Under the palm-trees, on that sunset shore,
Where the waves break in song, and the bright air
    Is crystal clean; and peace is ours, once more.

There Beauty dwells,
    Beauty, re-born in whiteness from the foam;
And Youth returns with all its magic spells,
    And the heart finds its long-forgotten home,--

Home--home! Where is that land?
    For, when I dream it found...

        [Imitated from a pigeon.]

    Curr dhoo, curr dhoo,
    Love me, and I'll love you!

    See, saw, Margery Daw,
    The old hen flew over the malt house,
    She counted her chickens one by one,
    Still she missed the little white one,
    And this is it, this is it, this is it.

They shall see Him in the crimson flush
    Of morning's early light,
In the drapery of sunset,
    Around the couch of night.


When the clouds drop down their fatness,
    In late and early rain,
They shall see His glorious footprints
    On valley, hill and plain.

They shall see Him when the cyclone
    Breathes terror through the land;
They shall see Him 'mid the murmurs
    Of zephyrs soft and bland.

They shall see Him when the lips of health,
    Breath vigor through each nerve,
When pestilence clasps hands with death,
    His purposes to serve.

They shall see Him when the trembling earth
    Is rocking to and fro;
They shall see Him in the order
    The seasons come and go.

They shall see Him when th...

Female Beauty at Venice.--No longer what it was in the time of Titian.-- His mistress.--Various Forms in which he has painted her.--Venus.--Divine and profane Love.--La Fragilita d'Amore--Paul Veronese.--His Women.-- Marriage of Cana.--Character of Italian Beauty.--Raphael's Fornarina.-- Modesty.


Thy brave, thy learned have passed away:
Thy beautiful!--ah, where are they?
The forms, the faces that once shone,
    Models of grace, in Titian's eye,
Where are they now, while flowers live on
    In ruined places, why, oh! why
    Must Beauty thus with Glory die?
That maid whose lips would still have moved,
    Could art have breathed a spirit through them;
Whose varying charms her artist loved
    More fondly every time he drew them,
(So oft beneath his touch they ...

    Snail, snail, shut out your horns;
        Father and mother are dead:
    Brother and sister are in the back yard,
        Begging for barley bread.

    "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
    When a new planet swims within his ken."

I who had sought afar from earth
    The faery land to greet,
Now find content within its girth,
    And wonder nigh my feet.

To-day a nearer love I choose
    And seek no distant sphere,
For aureoled by faery dews
    The dear brown breasts appear.

With rainbow radiance come and go
    The airy breaths of day,
And eve is all a pearly glow
    With moonlit winds a-play.

The lips of twilight burn my brow,
    The arms of night caress:
Glimmer her white eyes drooping now
    With grave old tenderness.

I close mine eyes from dream to be
    The diamond-rayed again,
As in the ancient hours ere we
    Forgot ourselves t...

1.

Oh! did those eyes, instead of fire,
With bright, but mild affection shine:
Though they might kindle less desire,
Love, more than mortal, would be thine.


2.

For thou art form'd so heavenly fair,
Howe'er those orbs may wildly beam,
We must admire, but still despair;
That fatal glance forbids esteem.


3.

When Nature stamp'd thy beauteous birth,
So much perfection in thee shone,
She fear'd that, too divine for earth,
The skies might claim thee for their own.


4.

Therefore, to guard her dearest work,
Lest angels might dispute the prize,
She bade a secret lightning lurk,
Within those once celestial eyes.


5.

These might the boldest Sylph appall,
When gleaming...

Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.

All his leaves
Fall'n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength.

So soft Time's plumage in life's budding spring,
We rarely note the flutter of his wing.
The untutored heart, from pain and sadness free,
Beats high with hope and joy and ecstasy;
And the fond bosoms of confiding youth
Believe their fairy world a world of truth.
The thorn is young upon the rose's stem;
They heed it not, it has no wound for them.

While yet the heart is new to misery,
There is a gloss on everything we see;
There is a freshness, which returns no more
When fades the morn of life that soon is o'er;
A warmth of feeling, ardency of joy,
Delight almost exempt from an alloy,
A zest for pleasure, fearlessness of pain,
That we are destined ne'er to know again.

And what succeeds this era joyous, bright?
Is it a cloudless eve or starless n...

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!

Young ardent soul, graced with fair Nature's truth,
Spring warmth of heart, and fervency of mind,
And still a large late love of all thy kind.
Spite of the world's cold practice and Time's tooth, -
For all these gifts, I know not, in fair sooth,
Whether to give thee joy, or bid thee blind
Thine eyes with tears, - that thou hast not resign'd
The passionate fire and freshness of thy youth:
For as the current of thy life shall flow,
Gilded by shine of sun or shadow-stain'd,
Through flow'ry valley or unwholesome fen,
Thrice blessed in thy joy, or in thy woe
Thrice cursed of thy race, - thou art ordain'd
To share beyond the lot of common men.

Look at the fate of summer flowers,
Which blow at daybreak, droop e'er evensong;
And, grieved for their brief date, confess that ours,
Measured by what we are and ought to be,
Measured by all that, trembling, we foresee,
Is not so long!

If human Life do pass away,
Perishing yet more swiftly than the flower,
If we are creatures of a 'winter's' day;
What space hath Virgin's beauty to disclose
Her sweets, and triumph o'er the breathing rose?
Not even an hour!

The deepest grove whose foliage hid
The happiest lovers Arcady might boast,
Could not the entrance of this thought forbid:
O be thou wise as they, soul-gifted Maid!
Nor rate too high what must so quickly fade,
So soon be lost.

Then shall love teach some virtuous Youth
"To dra...

When leaf and flower are newly made,
And bird and butterfly and bee
Are at their summer posts again;
When all is ready, lo! 'tis she,
Suddenly there after soft rain -
The deep-lashed dryad of the shade.

Shadow! the fairest gift of June,
Gone like the rose the winter through,
Save in the ribbed anatomy
Of ebon line the moonlight drew,
Stark on the snow, of tower or tree,
Like letters of a dead man's rune.

Dew-breathing shade! all summer lies
In the cool hollow of thy breast,
Thou moth-winged creature darkly fair;
The very sun steals down to rest
Within thy swaying tendrilled hair,
And forest-flicker of thine eyes.

Made of all shapes that flit and sway,
And mass, and scatter in the breeze,
And meet and part, open and close;<...