We build with strength the deep tower-wall
    That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
    But how fair--this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.

We know, we know how all too bright
    The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;--
    We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,

And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
    And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
    With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.

O days, we ponder, left alone,
    Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
    As seeds the colour of the flower....

The dead white on the fields' dead white
Turned the peace to misery.
Tall bony trees their wild arms thrust
Into the cold breast of the night.
Brightly the stars shone in their dust.
The hard wind's gust
Scratched like a bird the frozen snow.

Against the dead light grew the gold,
Lifting its beam to that high dust;
The lamp within the hut's small pane
Called the world to life again.
Arms of the trees atremble thrust
Defiance at the cold
Night of narrow shrouding snow.

A human beam, small spear of light,
Lifting its beauty to that high
Indifference of starry dust.
The aching trees were comforted,
And their brave arms more deeply thrust
Into the sky.
Earth's warm light fingered the dead snow.

He stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled seas;
That Time can never mar a lover's vows
Under that woven changeless roof of boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new ease.
He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and fears,
And he had known at last some prudent years
Before they heaped his grave under the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy place,
A lug-worm with its grey and muddy mouth
Sang tha...

Not all my treasure hath the bandit Time
    Locked in his glimmering caverns of the Past:
Fair women dead and friendships of old rhyme,
    And noble dreams that had to end at last: -
Ah! these indeed; and from youth's sacristy
    Full many a holy relic hath he torn,
Vessels of mystic faith God filled for me,
    Holding them up to Him in life's young morn.

All these are mine no more - Time hath them all,
    Time and his adamantine gaoler Death:
Despoilure vast - yet seemeth it but small,
    When unto thee I turn, thy bloom and breath
Filling with light and incense the last shrine,
    Innermost, inaccessible, - yea, thine.

Turn to thy window in the silver hour
That day comes stepping down the hills of night,
Infolded as the leaves infold a flower
By all her rose-leaf robes of misty light.

Then, like a joy born out of blackest sorrow,
The miracle of morning seems to say,
"There is no night without its dear to-morrow,
No lonely dark that does not find the day."

All night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow;
The wild Sierra overhead,
The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark,
The gray bear from his den,
Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,
Glared on the mountain men.
Still upward turned, with anxious strain,
Their leader's sleepless eye,
Where splinters of the mountain chain
Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow: at last, a glow,
A gleam of sudden fire,
Shot up behind the walls of snow,
And tipped each icy spire.
"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone,
To-day, please God, we'll pass,
And look from Winter's frozen throne
On Summer's flowers and grass!"
They set their faces to the blast,
They trod the eternal snow,
And faint, worn, bleeding, hai...

    I

    I took the clock down from the shelf;
    "At eight," said I, "I shoot myself."
    It lacked a MINUTE of the hour,
    And as I waited all a-cower,
    A skinful of black, boding pain,
    Bits of my life came back again. . . .

    "Mother, there's nothing more to eat -
    Why don't you go out on the street?
    Always you sit and cry and cry;
    Here at my play I wonder why.
    Mother, when you dress up at night,
    Red are your cheeks, your eyes are bright;
    Twining a ribband in your hair,
    Kissing good-bye you go down-stair.
    Then I'm as lonely as can be.
    Oh, how I wish you were with me!
    Yet when you go out on the street,
    Mother, there's always lots to eat. . . ."


    I...

An ancient Chronicle has told
That, in the famous days of old,
    In Antioch under ground
    The self-same lance was found -
    Unbitten by corrosive rust -
The lance the Roman soldier thrust
    In CHRIST'S bare side upon the Tree;
    And that it brought
    A mighty spell
    To those who fought
    The Infidel
    And mighty victory.

    And so this day
    To you I say -
Speaking for millions of true Southern men -
    In words that have no undertow -
    I say, and say agen:
    Come weal, or woe,
    Should this Republic ever fight,
    By land, or sea,
For present law, or ancient right
    The South will be
    As was that lance,
    Albeit not found
    Hid under ground
But in the forefront of the ...

Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune
I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,
A host in the sunshine, an army in June,
The people God sends us to set our heart free.

The bobolinks rallied them up from the dell,
The orioles whistled them out of the wood;
And all of their singing was, "Earth, it is well!"
And all of their dancing was, "Life, thou art good!"

Slow boiling up, on the horizon's brim,
Huge clouds arise, mountainous, dark and grim,
Sluggish and slow upon the air they ride,
As pitch-black ships o'er the blue ocean glide;
Curling and hovering o'er the gloomy south,
As curls the sulphur from the cannon's mouth.
More grizly in the sun the tempest comes,
And through the wood with threatened vengeance hums,
Hissing more loud and loud among the trees:--
The frighted wild-wind trembles to a breeze,
Just turns the leaf in terrifying sighs,
Bows to the spirit of the storm, and dies.
In wild pulsations beats the heart of fear,
At the low rumbling thunder creeping near.
The poplar leaf now resteth on its tree;
And the mill-sail, once twirling rapidly,
Lagging and lagging till each breeze had dropt,
Abruptly n...

Against the cold pale sky
The elm tree company rose high.
All the fine hues of day
That flowered so bold had died away.
Only chill blue, faint green,
And deepening dark blue were seen.

There swinging on a bough
That hung or floated broad and low.
The lamp of evening, bright
With more than planetary light,
Was beautiful and free--
A white bird swaying on the tree.

You watched and I watched,
Our eyes and hearts so surely matched.
We saw the white bird leap, leap
Shining in his journey steep
Through that vast cold sky.
Our hearts knew his unuttered cry--

A cry of free delight
Spreading over the clustering night.
Pole Hill grave and stark
Stared at the valley's tidal dark,
The Darent glimmered wan;
But that eage...

i.

Again, O Love! again I make lament,
    And, Arab-like, I pitch my summer-tent
Outside the gateways of the Lord of Song.
I weep and wait, contented all day long
To be the proud possessor of a grief.
It comforts me. It gives me more relief
    Than pleasures give; and, spirit-like in air,
It re-invokes the peace that was so brief.


ii.

It speaks of thee. It keeps me from the lake
    Which else might tempt me; and for thy sweet sake
I shun all evil. I am calmer now
Than when I wooed thee, calmer than the vow
Which made me thine, and yet so fond withal
I start and tremble at the wind's footfall.
    Is it the wind? Or is it mine own past
Come back to life to lure me to its thrall?


iii.

I long to rise and...

To fair Fidele’s grassy tomb
Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing Spring.

No wailing ghost shall dare appear
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove;
But shepherd lads assemble here,
And melting virgins own their love.

No wither’d witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew.

The redbreast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gather’d flowers,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.

When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake the sylvan cell;
Or ’midst the chase, on every plain,
The tender thought on thee shall dwel...

EMMA AND EGINHARD

When Alcuin taught the sons of Charlemagne,
In the free schools of Aix, how kings should reign,
And with them taught the children of the poor
How subjects should be patient and endure,
He touched the lips of some, as best befit,
With honey from the hives of Holy Writ;
Others intoxicated with the wine
Of ancient history, sweet but less divine;
Some with the wholesome fruits of grammar fed;
Others with mysteries of the stars o'er-head,
That hang suspended in the vaulted sky
Like lamps in some fair palace vast and high.

In sooth, it was a pleasant sight to see
That Saxon monk, with hood and rosary,
With inkhorn at his belt, and pen and book,
And mingled lore and reverence in his look,
Or hear the cloister and the court repeat

The less our sorrows here and suff'rings cease,
The more our crowns of glory there increase.

Gypsying, gypsying, through the world together,
Never mind the way we go, never mind what port.
Follow trails, or fashion sails, start in any weather:
While we journey hand in hand, everything is sport.

Gypsying, gypsying, leaving care and worry:
Never mind the 'if' and 'but' (words for coward lips).
Put them out with 'fear' and 'doubt,' in the pack with 'hurry,'
While we stroll like vagabonds forth to trails, or ships.

Gypsying, gypsying, just where fancy calls us;
Never mind what others say, or what others do.
Everywhere or foul or fair, liking what befalls us:
While you have me at your side, and while I have you.

Gypsying, gypsying, camp by hill or hollow;
Never mind the why of it, since it suits our mood.
Go or stay, and pay our way, and let those ...

(An Anthem Heard In Canterbury Cathedral)

[The Organ]

O Lord our God, we are strangers before Thee, and sojourners, as were
all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is
none abiding.

O Lord God of our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of
the thoughts of Thy people, and prepare their heart unto Thee.

And give unto Solomon my son a perfect heart to keep Thy commandments,
and to build the palace for the which I have made provision.

[Boys' voices.]

O come to the Palace of Life,
Let us build it again.
It was founded on terror and strife,
It was laid in the curse of the womb,
And pillared on toil and pain,
And hung with veils of doom,
And vaulted with the darkness of the tomb.

[Men's...

After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
And with a silent, gliding step they move
Over the footlights, in familiar glare,
Panther-like in the Tango whirl of love,
He fawning close on her with idiot stare.
Swiftly they cross the stage. O lyric ease!
The drunken music follows the sure feet,
The swaying elbows, intergliding knees,
Moving with slow precision on the beat.
She was a waitress in a restaurant,
He picked her up and taught her how to dance.
She feels his arms, lifts an appealing glance,
But knows he spent last evening with Zudora;
And knows that certain changes are before her.
The brilliant spotlight circles them ...