Love thee, dearest?--Hear me.--Never
Will my fond vows be forgot!
May I perish, and for ever,
When, dear maid, I love thee not!
Turn not from me, dearest!--Listen!
Banish all thy doubts and fears!
Let thine eyes with transport glisten!
What hast thou to do with tears?

Dry them, dearest!--Ah, believe me,
Love's bright flame is burning still!
Though the hollow world deceive thee,
Here's a heart that never will!
Dost thou smile?--A cloud of sorrow
Breaks before Joy's rising sun!
Wilt thou give thy hand?--To-morrow,
Hymen's bond will make us one!

'Twixt what thou art, and what thou wouldst be, let
No "If" arise on which to lay the blame.
Man makes a mountain of that puny word,
But, like a blade of grass before the scythe,
It falls and withers when a human will,
Stirred by creative force, sweeps toward its aim.

Thou wilt be what thou couldst be.    Circumstance
Is but the toy of genius.    When a soul
Burns with a god-like purpose to achieve,
All obstacles between it and its goal
Must vanish as the dew before the sun.

"If" is the motto of the dilettante
And idle dreamer; 'tis the poor excuse
Of mediocrity.    The truly great
Know not the word, or know it but to scorn,
Else had Joan of Arc a peasant died,
Uncrowned by glory and by men unsung.

Confession twofold is, as Austin says,
The first of sin is, and the next of praise.
If ill it goes with thee, thy faults confess:
If well, then chant God's praise with cheerfulness.

    Some lives have themes.
    Goldfish that stubbornly die;
    compatability only with distant lovers
    - flowers (but no sweet-breads)
    that wilt to the touch.

    Waiting. Charcoal-grey cat
    agreeably on a green linoleum table
    with light basking in....
    a tad playful,
    paws up,
    (classic boxer stance)
    but no one notices.
    Others oblique in their transparency,
    are unmindful of even the empty closet
    and greeting cards that smile hello.

    In the dark
    this room shimmers below
    life-raft status;
    chairs are buoys
    bobbing under waves
    of congealed fright.
    In the morning
    the first pigeons
    rifle over rooftops,
    mad flutterings like your eyes

Within us all a universe doth dwell;
And hence each people's usage laudable,
That ev'ry one the Best that meets his eyes
As God, yea e'en his God, doth recognise;
To Him both earth and heaven surrenders he,
Fears Him, and loves Him too, if that may be.

From "Rammon."

Through storms you reach them and from storms are free.
Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew.

But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills--
On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love's cypress tree
Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.

Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here.
Where, strewn in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie
Dimpling in dream--unconscious slumberers mere,
While billows endless round the beaches die.

Aw'm turned o' sixty, nah, old lass,
Yet weel aw mind the time,
When like a young horse turned to grass,
Aw gloried i' mi prime.
Aw'st ne'er forget that bonny face
'At stole mi heart away;
Tho' years have hurried on apace: -
Aw'm sixty, turned, to-day.

We had some jolly pranks an gams,
E'en fifty year ago,
When sportive as a pair o' lambs,
We nivver dreeamed ov woe.
When ivvery morn we left us bed,
Wi' spirits leet an gay, -
But nah, old lass, those days have fled: -
Aw'm sixty, turned, to-day.

Yet we've noa reason to repine,
Or luk back wi' regret;
Those youthful days ov thine an mine,
Live sweet in mem'ry yet.
Thy winnin smile aw still can see,
An tho' thi hair's turned grey;
Tha'rt still as sweet an dear to me,

    You may think, passer-by, that Fate
    Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
    Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
    And wisdom.
    Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,
    As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,
    Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.
    But pass on into life:
    In time you shall see Fate approach you
    In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
    Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
    And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
    And you shall know that guest
    And read the authentic message of his eyes.

O weep not, love! each tear that springs
In those dear eyes of thine,
To me a keener suffering brings
Than if they flowed from mine.

And do not droop! however drear
The fate awaiting thee.
For my sake, combat pain and care,
And cherish life for me!

I do not fear thy love will fail,
Thy faith is true I know;
But O! my love! thy strength is frail
For such a life of woe.

Were't not for this, I well could trace
(Though banished long from thee)
Life's rugged path, and boldly face
The storms that threaten me.

Fear not for me, I've steeled my mind
Sorrow and strife to greet,
Joy with my love I leave behind,
Care with my friends I meet.

A mother's sad reproachful eye,
A father's scowling brow,
But he may frow...

For Life I had never cared greatly,
As worth a man's while;
Peradventures unsought,
Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
Unwon by its style.

In earliest years - why I know not -
I viewed it askance;
Conditions of doubt,
Conditions that leaked slowly out,
May haply have bent me to stand and to show not
Much zest for its dance.

With symphonies soft and sweet colour
It courted me then,
Till evasions seemed wrong,
Till evasions gave in to its song,
And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller
Than life among men.

Anew I found nought to set eyes on,
When, lifting its hand,
It uncloaked a star,
Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar,
And showed its beams burning fr...

Am I waking? Was I sleeping?
Dearest, are you watching yet?
Traces on your cheeks of weeping
Glitter, ’Tis in vain you fret;
Drifting ever! drifting onward!
In the glass the bright sand runs
Steadily and slowly downward;
Hushed are all the Myrmidons.

Has Automedon been banish’d
From his post beside my bed?
Where has Agamemnon vanished?
Where is warlike Diomed?
Where is Nestor? where Ulysses?
Menelaus, where is he?
Call them not, more dear your kisses
Than their prosings are to me.

Daylight fades and night must follow,
Low, where sea and sky combine,
Droops the orb of great Apollo,
Hostile god to me and mine.
Through the tent’s wide entrance streaming,
In a flood of glory rare,
Glides the golden sunset, gleaming
On...

Peace hath an altar there. The sounding feet
Of thunder and the ’wildering wings of rain
Against fire-rifted summits flash and beat,
And through grey upper gorges swoop and strain;
But round that hallowed mountain-spring remain,
Year after year, the days of tender heat,
And gracious nights, whose lips with flowers are sweet,
And filtered lights, and lutes of soft refrain.
A still, bright pool. To men I may not tell
The secret that its heart of water knows,
The story of a loved and lost repose;
Yet this I say to cliff and close-leaved dell:
A fitful spirit haunts yon limpid well,
Whose likeness is the faithless face of Rose.

Wisdom am I when thou art but a fool;
My part the man, when thou hast played the clod;
Hast lost thy garden? When the eve is cool,
Harken!, 'tis I who walk there with thy God!

From publick Noise and factious Strife,
From all the busie Ills of Life,
Take me, My Celia, to Thy Breast;
And lull my wearied Soul to Rest:
For ever, in this humble Cell,
Let Thee and I, my Fair One, dwell;
None enter else, but Love and He
Shall bar the Door, and keep the Key.

To painted Roofs, and shining Spires
(Uneasie Seats of high Desires)
Let the unthinking Many croud,
That dare be Covetous and Proud:
In golden Bondage let Them wait,
And barter Happiness for State:
But Oh! My Celia, when Thy Swain
Desires to see a Court again;
May Heav'n around This destin'd Head
The choicest of it's Curses shed:
To sum up all the Rage of Fate,
In the Two Things I dread and hate;
May'st Thou be False, and I be Great.

Thus, on his Cel...

Hence vain deluding joyes,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toyes;
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that poeple the Sun Beams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose Saintly visage is too bright
To hit the Sense of human sight;
And therefore to our weaker view,
Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue.
Black, but such as in esteem,
Prince Memnons sister might beseem,
Or that starr’d Ethiope Queen that strove
To set her beauties praise above
The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended,
Yet thou art high...

    If I were a monk, and thou wert a nun,
            Pacing it wearily, wearily,
    Twixt chapel and cell till day were done--
            Wearily, wearily--
    How would it fare with these hearts of ours
    That need the sunshine, and smiles, and flowers?

    To prayer, to prayer, at the matins' call,
            Morning foul or fair!--
    Such prayer as from weary lips might fall--
            Words, but hardly prayer--
    The chapel's roof, like the law in stone,
    Caging the lark that up had flown!

    Thou, in the glory of cloudless noon,
            The God-revealing,
    Turning thy face from the boundless boon--
            Painfully kneeling;
    Or, in brown-shadowy solitude,
    Bending thy head o'er the legend rude!
<...

When I had wings, my brother,
Such wings were mine as thine:
Such life my heart remembers
In all as wild Septembers
As this when life seems other,
Though sweet, than once was mine;
When I had wings, my brother,
Such wings were mine as thine.
Such life as thrills and quickens
The silence of thy flight,
Or fills thy note's elation
With lordlier exultation
Than man's, whose faint heart sickens
With hopes and fears that blight
Such life as thrills and quickens
The silence of thy flight.
Thy cry from windward clanging
Makes all the cliffs rejoice;
Though storm clothe seas with sorrow,
Thy call salutes the morrow;
While shades of pain seem hanging
Round earth's most rapturous voice,
Thy cry from windward clanging
Makes all the clif...

"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?"


I stood where ocean lashed the sounding shore
With his unresting waves, and gazed far out
Upon the billowy strife. I saw the deep
Lifting his watery arms to grasp the clouds,
While the black clouds stooped from the sable arch
Of the storm-darkened heavens, and deep to deep
Answered responsive in the ceaseless roar
Of thunders and of floods.

                                                    "Here, then, I am alone,
And this is solitude, "I murmured low,
As in the presence of the risen storm
I bowed my head abashed. "Alone?" -
The echoing concave of the skies replied, -
"Alone?" - the waves responded, and the winds
In hollow murmurs answered back - "Alone?"

"Thou canst not be alone, for God is he...