i.

Dearest and best of maidens, whom the Fates
    have dower'd with beauty, whom the glory-gates
Have shown so splendid in my waking sight,
Is't well, thou syren! thus to haunt the night
And grant no mercy, none from week to week
All through the year? Is't well my soul to seek
    And shun my body? Is't throughout ordain'd
That thou shouldst spurn a love so tender-meek?


ii.

It is my joy to serve thee, 'tis my pride
    To own my follies, though anew denied
The chance of wisdom, and for this, who knows?
I shall be counted, ere the season's close,
A time-perverter. Yes! I shall be shamed,
And frown'd upon, and day by day proclaim'd
    A foe to virtue, though, in seeking thee
I seek the goal that Virtue's self hath named.

Amor, se vuoi ch' i' torni al giogo antico.

UNLESS LOVE CAN RESTORE HER TO LIFE, HE WILL NEVER AGAIN BE HIS SLAVE.


    If thou wouldst have me, Love, thy slave again,
One other proof, miraculous and new,
Must yet be wrought by you,
Ere, conquer'd, I resume my ancient chain--
Lift my dear love from earth which hides her now,
For whose sad loss thus beggar'd I remain;
Once more with warmth endow
That wise chaste heart where wont my life to dwell;
And if as some divine, thy influence so,
From highest heaven unto the depths of hell,
Prevail in sooth--for what its scope below,
'Mid us of common race,
Methinks each gentle breast may answer well--
Rob Death of his late triumph, and replace
Thy conquering ensign in her lovely face!

...

If Heaven would hear my prayer,
    My dearest wish would be,
Thy sorrows not to share,
    But take them all on me;
If Heaven would hear my prayer.

I'd beg with prayers and sighs
    That never a tear might flow
From out thy lovely eyes,
    If Heaven might grant it so;
Mine be the tears and sighs.

No cloud thy brow should cover,
    But smiles each other chase
From lips to eyes all over
    Thy sweet and sunny face;
The clouds my heart should cover.

That all thy path be light
    Let darkness fall on me;
If all thy days be bright,
    Mine black as night could be.
My love would light my night.

For thou art more than life,
    And if our fate should set
Life and my love at strife,
    How could I then...

        1.

        ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!
        Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away.
        I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,
        My consciousness the blackness all astir.
        No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer--
        For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,
        Who dwellest only in the living day?

        2.

        It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,
        Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent--
        Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
        Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
        Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
        The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?--
        My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream....

    It was the morning; through the shutters closed,
    Along the balcony, the earliest rays
    Of sunlight my dark room were entering;
    When, at the time that sleep upon our eyes
    Its softest and most grateful shadows casts,
    There stood beside me, looking in my face,
    The image dear of her, who taught me first
    To love, then left me to lament her loss.
    To me she seemed not dead, but sad, with such
    A countenance as the unhappy wear.
    Her right hand near my head she sighing placed;
    "Dost thou still live," she said to me, "and dost
    Thou still remember what we were and are?"
    And I replied: "Whence comest thou, and how,
    Beloved and beautiful? Oh how, how I
    Have grieved, still grieve for thee! Nor did I think
...

Oh Life! I breathe thee in the breeze,
I feel thee bounding in my veins,
I see thee in these stretching trees,
These flowers, this still rock's mossy stains.

This stream of odours flowing by
From clover-field and clumps of pine,
This music, thrilling all the sky,
From all the morning birds, are thine.

Thou fill'st with joy this little one,
That leaps and shouts beside me here,
Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run
Through the dark woods like frighted deer.

Ah! must thy mighty breath, that wakes
Insect and bird, and flower and tree,
From the low trodden dust, and makes
Their daily gladness, pass from me,

Pass, pulse by pulse, till o'er the ground
These limbs, now strong, shall creep with pain,
And this fair world of sight and so...

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,
It shall be, I said, for eternity
'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love's web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
What do...

In this old garden, fair, I walk to-day
Heart-charmed with all the beauty of the scene:
The rich, luxuriant grasses' cooling green,
The wall's environ, ivy-decked and gray,
The waving branches with the wind at play,
The slight and tremulous blooms that show between,
Sweet all: and yet my yearning heart doth lean
Toward Love's Egyptian fleshpots far away.

Beside the wall, the slim Laburnum grows
And flings its golden flow'rs to every breeze.
But e'en among such soothing sights as these,
I pant and nurse my soul-devouring woes.
Of all the longings that our hearts wot of,
There is no hunger like the want of love!

Ah, ye gods! ye great immortals
In the spacious heavens above us!
Would ye on this earth but give us
Steadfast minds and dauntless courage
We, oh kindly ones, would leave you
All your spacious heavens above us!

In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.
From heaven it came on angel's wing
To bloom on earth, eternal spring;
In falsehood's enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die.

Twas born upon an angel's breast.
The softest dreams, the sweetest rest,
The brightest sun, the bluest sky,
Are love's own home and canopy.
The thought that cheers this heart of mine
Is that of love; love so divine
They sin who say in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.

The sweetest voice that lips contain,
The sweetest thought that leaves the brain,
The sweetest feeling of the heart--
There's pleasure in its very smart.
The scent of rose and cinna...

I

THE RIVER

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
Silent the swans beside us float
None speaks, none heeds, ah, turn thy head.

Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland:
Ah, let them rest, those eyes, on mine;
On mine let rest that lovely hand.

My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid:
Ah, let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head.

Before I die, before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again:

Before this teas’d o’erlabour’d heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes o...

He made him a love o' dreams--
He raised for his heart's delight--
(As the heart of June a crescent moon)
A frail, fair spirit of light.

He gave her the gift of joy--
The gift of the dancing feet--
He made her a thing of very Spring--
Virginal--wild and sweet.

But when he would draw her near
To his eager heart's content,
As a sunbeam slips from the finger-tips
She slipped from his hold and went.

Virginal--wild--and sweet--
So she eludes him still--
The love that he made of dawn and shade
Of dominant want and will.

For ever the dream of man
Is more than the dreamer is;
Though he form it whole of his inmost soul,
Yet never 'tis wholly his.

Only is given to him
The right to follow and yearn
The lovelines...

O Love! the mischief thou hast done!
Thou god of pleasure and of pain!--
None can escape thee--yes there's one--
All others find the effort vain:
Thou cause of all my smiles and tears!
Thou blight and bloom of all my years!

Love bathes him in the morning dews,
Reclines him in the lily bells,
Reposes in the rainbow hues,
And sparkles in the crystal wells,
Or hies him to the coral-caves,
Where sea-nymphs sport beneath the waves.

Love vibrates in the wind-harp's tune--
With fays and oreads lingers he--
Gleams in th' ring of the watery moon,
Or treads the pebbles of the sea.
Love rules "the court, the camp, the grove"--
Oh, everywhere we meet thee, Love!

And everywhere he welcome finds,
From cottage-door to palace-porch--
Love...

The South-wind brings
Life, sunshine and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire;
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs;
And he, the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,--
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,--
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Re...

For you, I could forget the gay
Delirium of merriment,
And let my laughter die away
In endless silence of content.
    I could forget, for your dear sake,
    The utter emptiness and ache
    Of every loss I ever knew. -
    What could I not forget for you?

I could forget the just deserts
Of mine own sins, and so erase
The tear that burns, the smile that hurts,
And all that mars or masks my face.
    For your fair sake I could forget
    The bonds of life that chafe and fret,
    Nor care if death were false or true. -
    What could I not forget for you?

What could I not forget? Ah me!
One thing, I know, would still abide
Forever in my memory,
Though all of love were lost beside -
    I yet would feel how first the wine
  ...

Queen of the stars! so gentle, so benign,
That ancient Fable did to thee assign,
When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow
Warned thee these upper regions to forego,
Alternate empire in the shades below
A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea
Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee
With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail
From the close confines of a shadowy vale.
Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene,
Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen
Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face,
And all those attributes of modest grace,
In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear,
Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere,
To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear!

O still beloved (for thine, meek Power, are charms
That...

Through rain, through snow,
Through tempest go!
'Mongst streaming caves,
O'er misty waves,
On, on! still on!
Peace, rest have flown!

Sooner through sadness

I'd wish to be slain,
Than all the gladness

Of life to sustain
All the fond yearning

That heart feels for heart,
Only seems burning

To make them both smart.

How shall I fly?
Forestwards hie?
Vain were all strife!
Bright crown of life.
Turbulent bliss,
Love, thou art this!

He heard it first upon the lips of love,
        And loved it for love’s sake;
A faithful word, that knows nor time nor change,
        Nor lone heart-break.

It sung across his heart-strings like a breath
        Of Heaven’s faithfulness, that whispered “Never
To part, to lose, to linger from your gaze.”
        She said, “I love for ever.”

He heard it then upon the lips of death,
        Of things that fade and die;
A word of sorrow never to be stilled,
        An ever echoing sigh.

And loneliness within his soul did dwell,
        And struck upon his heart-strings, crying “Never
To meet, to have, to hold, to see again.”
        She said, “Good-bye for ever.”