Down a warm alley, early in the year,
    Among the woods, with all the sunshine in
    And all the winds outside it, I begin
To think that something gracious will appear,
If anything of grace inhabit here,
    Or there be friendship in the woods to win.
    Might one but find companions more akin
To trees and grass and happy daylight clear,
And in this wood spend one long hour at home!
    The fairies do not love so bright a place,
And angels to the forest never come,
    But I have dreamed of some harmonious race,
The kindred of the shapes that haunt the shore
Of Music's flow and flow for evermore.

Ere Psyche drank the cup that shed
    Immortal Life into her soul,
Some evil spirit poured, 'tis said,
    One drop of Doubt into the bowl--

Which, mingling darkly with the stream,
    To Psyche's lips--she knew not why--
Made even that blessed nectar seem
    As tho' its sweetness soon would die.

Oft, in the very arms of Love,
    A chill came o'er her heart--a fear
That Death might, even yet, remove
    Her spirit from that happy sphere.

"Those sunny ringlets," she exclaimed.
    Twining them round her snowy fingers;
"That forehead, where a light unnamed,
    "Unknown on earth, for ever lingers;

"Those lips, thro' which I feel the breath
    "Of Heaven itself, whene'er they sever--
"Say, are they mine, beyond all death,

As we rush, as we rush in the Train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back,
But the starry heavens above the plain
Come flying on our track.

All the beautiful stars of the sky,
The silver doves of the forest of Night,
Over the dull earth swarm and fly,
Companions of our flight.

We will rush ever on without fear;
Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!
For we carry the Heavens with us, dear,
While the Earth slips from our feet!

In the winter, flowers are springing;
In the winter, woods are green,
Where our banished birds are singing,
Where our summer sun is seen!
Our cold midnights are coeval
With an evening and a morn
Where the forest-gods hold revel,
And the spring is newly born!

While the earth is full of fighting,
While men rise and curse their day,
While the foolish strong are smiting,
And the foolish weak betray--
The true hearts beyond are growing,
The brave spirits work alone,
Where Love's summer-wind is blowing
In a truth-irradiate zone!

While we cannot shape our living
To the beauty of our skies,
While man wants and earth is giving--
Nature calls and man denies--
How the old worlds round Him gather
Where their Maker is their sun!
Ho...

    There's a voice in my heart that cries and cries for tears.
    It is not a voice, but a pain of many fears.
    It is not a pain, but the rune of far-off spheres.

    It may be a dæmon of pent and high emprise,
    That looks on my soul till my soul hides and cries,
    Loath to rebuke my soul and bid it arise.

    It may be myself as I was in another life,
    Fashioned to lead where strife gives way to strife,
    Pinioned here in failure by knife thrown after knife.

    The child turns o'er in the womb; and perhaps the soul
    Nurtures a dream too strong for the soul's control,
    When the dream hath eyes, and senses its destined goal.

    Deep in darkness the bulb under mould and clod
    Feels the sun in the sky and pushes above the sod;

Her mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and o'er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the earth enfold:
Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height,
And shake in tremors through the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness, as in whispered words,
The wandering God-guided wings of birds
Ruffle the dark. The little lives that lie
Deep hid in grass join in a long-drawn sigh
More softly still; and unheard through the blue
The falling of innumerable dew,
Lifts with grey fingers all the leaves that lay
Burned in the heat of the consuming day.
The lawns and lakes lie in this night of love,
Admitted to the majesty...

1.

But once I dared to lift my eyes -
To lift my eyes to thee;
And since that day, beneath the skies,
No other sight they see.

2.

In vain sleep shuts them in the night -
The night grows day to me;
Presenting idly to my sight
What still a dream must be.

3.

A fatal dream - for many a bar
Divides thy fate from mine;
And still my passions wake and war,
But peace be still with thine.

            [First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1833, vol. 37, p. 308.]

Since first I met thee, Dear, and long before
    I knew myself beloved, save by the sense
    All women have, a shadowy confidence
Half-fear, that feels its bliss nor asks for more,
    I have learned new desires, known Love's distress
    Sounded the deepest depths of loneliness.

I was a child at heart, and lived alone,
    Dreaming my dreams, as children may, at whiles,
    Between their hours of play, and Earth's broad smiles
Allured my heart, and ocean's marvellous tone
    Woke no strange echoes, and the woods' complain
    Made chants sonorous, stirred no thoughts of pain.

And if, sometimes, dear Nature spoke to me
    In tones mysterious, I had learned so much
    Dwelling beside her daily, that her touch
Made me discerning. Though I migh...

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

‘I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces,
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins. . . . ‘
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
    So slowly that no human eye hath power
    To see it move!    Slowly in shine or shower
    The painted ship above it, homeward bound,
Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;
    Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower
    The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,
    A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
    The frontier town and citadel of night!
    The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
    One to the land of promise and of light,
    One to the land of darkness and of dreams!

II

O River of Yesterday, with current swift
    Through chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,

The days go by, the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”

Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms,
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!

Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they,
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?

My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling cons...

In her dark eyes dreams poetize;
The soul sits lost in love:
There is no thing in all the skies,
To gladden all the world I prize,
Like the deep love in her dark eyes,
Or one sweet dream thereof.

In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise,
Her soul's soft moods I see:
Of hope and faith, that make life wise;
And charity, whose food is sighs
Not truer than her own true eyes
Is truth's divinity.

In her dark eyes the knowledge lies
Of an immortal sod,
Her soul once trod in angel-guise,
Nor can forget its heavenly ties,
Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes
Once gazed the eyes of God.

What of our life when this frail flesh lies low
A withered clod, and the free soul has burst
Through the world-fetters? Not of souls accursed
With cherished lusts that mar them, those who sow
Evil and reap the harvest, and who bow
At Mammon's golden shrine, but those who thirst
For Truth, and see not, - spirits deep immersed
In doubt and trouble, - hearts that fain would know?

The soul is satisfied. The spirit trained
For the divine, because the beautiful,
Now with the body gone, free and unstained,
Doubts swept away like clouds of scattering wool
Before a blast, - e'er Heaven's pure paths are trod
Is perfected to understand its God.

(ASLEEP IN THE DAYTIME.)

All rough winds are hushed and silent, golden light the meadow steepeth,
    And the last October roses daily wax more pale and fair;
They have laid a gathered blossom on the breast of one who sleepeth
    With a sunbeam on her hair.

Calm, and draped in snowy raiment she lies still, as one that dreameth,
    And a grave sweet smile hath parted dimpled lips that may not speak;
Slanting down that narrow sunbeam like a ray of glory gleameth
    On the sainted brow and cheek.

There is silence! They who watch her, speak no word of grief or wailing,
    In a strange unwonted calmness they gaze on and cannot cease,
Though the pulse of life beat faintly, thought shrink back, and hope be failing,
    They, like Aaron, "hold their peace."

Sometimes a single hour
Rings thro' a long life-time,
As from a temple tower
There often falls a chime
From blessed bells, that seems
To fold in Heaven's dreams
Our spirits round a shrine;
Hath such an hour been thine?

Sometimes -- who knoweth why?
One minute holds a power
That shadows every hour,
Dialed in life's sky.
A cloud that is a speck
When seen from far away
May be a storm, and wreck
The joys of every day.

Sometimes -- it seems not much,
'Tis scarcely felt at all --
Grace gives a gentle touch
To hearts for once and all,
Which in the spirit's strife
May all unnoticed be.
And yet it rules a life;
Hath this e'er come to thee?

Sometimes one little word,
Whispered sweet and fleet,
That scar...

The poet's song, and the bird's,
    And the waters' that chant as they run
And the waves' that kiss the beach,
    And the wind's--they are but one.
He who may read their words,
And the secret hid in each,
May know the solemn monochords
That breathe in vast still places;
And the voices of myriad races,
    Shy, and far-off from man,
That hide in shadow and sun,
    And are seen but of him who can
To him the awful face is shown
Swathed in a cloud wind-blown
Of Him, who from His secret throne,
In some void, shadowy, and unknown land
Comes forth to lay His mighty hand
On the sounding organ keys,
    That play deep thunder-marches,
Like the rush and the roar of seas,
    And fill the cavernous arches
Of antique wildernesses hoary,
  ...

1854

Oh for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy,
Than reign, a gray-beard king.

Off with the spoils of wrinkled age!
Away with Learning's crown!
Tear out life's Wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame.

My listening angel heard the prayer,
And, calmly smiling, said,
"If I but touch thy silvered hair
Thy hasty wish hath sped.

"But is there nothing in thy track,
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"

"Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee what were life?...

I saw thee once--once only--years ago:
I must not say how many--but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe--
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death--
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee h...