Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

This is a valentine for you.
    Mother made it. She's real smart,
I told her that I loved you true
    And you were my sweetheart.

And then she smiled, and then she winked,
    And then she said to father,
"Beginning young!" and then he thinked,
    And then he said, "Well, rather."

Then mother's eyes began to shine,
And then she made this valentine:
"If you love me as I love you,
No knife shall cut our love in two,"
And father laughed and said, "How new!"
And then he said, "It's time for bed."

So, when I'd said my prayers,
Mother came running up the stairs
And told me I might send the rhymes,
And then she kissed me lots of times.
Then I turned over to the wall
And cried about you, and - that's all.

Day gradual fades, in evening gray,
Its last faint beam hath fled,
And sinks the sun's declining ray
In ocean's wavy bed.
So o'er the loves and joys of youth
Thy waves, Indifference, roll;
So mantles round our days of truth
That death-pool of the soul.

Spreads o'er the heavens the shadowy night
Her dim and shapeless form,
So human pleasures, frail and light,
Are lost in passion's storm.
So fades the sunshine of the breast,
So passion's dreamings fall,
So friendship's fervours sink to rest,
Oblivion shrouds them all.

    Do you remember, Leda?


    There are those who love, to whom Love brings
    Great gladness: such thing have not I.
    Love looks and has no mercy, brings
    Long doom to others.    Such was I.
    Heart breaking hand upon the lute,
    Touching one note only ... such were you.
    Who shall play now upon that lute
    Long last made musical by you?
    Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
    Blind frost upon the eyes of flowers.
    Who shall now praise the shrivelled fruit,
    Or raise the eyelids of those flowers?

    I dare not watch that hidden pool,
    Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
    Lifting the wide, brown, shaken pool,
    But round me falls that secret wing,
    And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain

"Dear Grif,
Here is a whiff
Of beautiful spring flowers;
The big red rose
Is for your nose,
As toward the sky it towers.


"Oh, do not frown
Upon this crown
Of green pinks and blue geranium
But think of me
When this you see,
And put it on your cranium."

I had not seen my son's dear face
(He chose the cloister by God's grace)
    Since it had come to full flower-time.
    I hardly guessed at its perfect prime,
That folded flower of his dear face.

Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears
When on a day in many years
    One of his Order came. I thrilled,
    Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled.
I doubted, for my mists of tears.

His blessing be with me for ever!
My hope and doubt were hard to sever.
    -That altered face, those holy weeds.
    I filled his wallet and kissed his beads,
And lost his echoing feet for ever.

If to my son my alms were given
I know not, and I wait for Heaven.
    He did not plead for child of mine,
    But for another Child divine,
And unto Him it was...

The song that lightens the languid way,
        When brows are glowing,
        And faint with rowing,
Is like the spell of Hope's airy lay,
To whose sound thro' life we stray;
The beams that flash on the oar awhile,
    As we row along thro' the waves so clear,
Illume its spray, like the fleeting smile
    That shines o'er sorrow's tear.

Nothing is lost on him who sees
    With an eye that feeling gave;--
For him there's a story in every breeze,
    And a picture in every wave.
Then sing to lighten the languid way;
        When brows are glowing,
        And faint with rowing,
'Tis like the spell of Hope's airy lay,
To whose sound thro' life we stray.

            *            *            *            *            *

'Tis sweet...

    "Once they were lovers," says the world, "with young hearts all aglow;
    They have forgotten," says the world, "forgotten long ago."
    Between ourselves - just whisper it - the old world does not know.

    They walk their lone, divided ways, but ever with them goes
    Remembrance, the subtle breath of love's sweet thorny rose.

    "And when the Summer Heat is great,
    And every hour intense,
    The Moghra, with its subtle flowers,
    Intoxicates the sense."

The Coco palms stood tall and slim, against the golden-glow,
And all their grey and graceful plumes were waving to and fro.

She lay forgetful in the boat, and watched the dying Sun
Sink slowly lakewards, while the stars replaced him, one by one.

She saw the marble Temple walls long white reflections make,
The echoes of their silvery bells were blown across the lake.

The evening air was very sweet; from off the island bowers
Came scents of Moghra trees in bloom, and Oleander flowers.

    "The Moghra flowers that smell so sweet
    When love's young fancies play;
    The acrid Moghra flowers, still sweet

I

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:
This creature like a girl, who smiles
Into my eyes and softly lays
Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
Long miles of haunted forest ways.

II

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
A fragrance that a flower exhaled
And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
A sunbeam making gold the gloom
Of vines that roof some woodland room
Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
Of streams her presence doth assume -
Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

III

Sometimes she seems the light that lies
On foam of w...

Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep.
Put the blossom close to baby kneel with me, my love, and pray;
We must leave the bird we’ve buried say good-bye to her to-day.
In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands,
And the flowers we have fostered will be left to other hands:
Other eyes will watch them growing other feet will softly tread
Where two hearts are nearly breaking, where so many tears are shed.
Bitter is the world we live in: life and love are mixed with pain;
We will never see these daisies never water them again.

Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush alone
Is that we have not been able on her grave to place a stone:
We have been too poor to do it; but, my darling...

    "Unriddle this riddle, my own Jenny love,
    Unriddle this riddle for me,
    And if ye unriddle the riddle aright,
    A kiss your prize shall be,
    And if ye riddle the riddle all wrong,
    Ye're treble the debt to me:

    I'll give thee an apple without any core;
    I'll give thee a cherry where stones never be;
    I'll give thee a palace, without any door,
    And thou shalt unlock it without any key;
    I'll give thee a fortune that kings cannot give,
    Nor any one take from thee."

    "How can there be apples without any core?
    How can there be cherries where stones never be?
    How can there be houses without any door?
    Or doors I may open without any key?
    How can'st thou give fortunes that kings cannot give,
   ...

Oh, not more subtly silence strays
    Amongst the winds, between the voices,
Mingling alike with pensive lays,
    And with the music that rejoices,
Than thou art present in my days.

My silence, life returns to thee
    In all the pauses of her breath.
Hush back to rest the melody
    That out of thee awakeneth;
And thou, wake ever, wake for me.

Full, full is life in hidden places,
    For thou art silence unto me.
Full, full is thought in endless spaces.
    Full is my life. A silent sea
Lies round all shores with long embraces.

Thou art like silence all unvexed
    Though wild words part my soul from thee.
Thou art like silence unperplexed,
    A secret and a mystery
Between one footfall and the next.

Most dear pa...

What will you say tonight, poor lonely soul,
What will you say old withered heart of mine,
To the most beautiful, the best, most dear,
Whose heavenly regard brings back your bloom?

We will assign our pride to sing her praise:
Nothing excels the sweetness of her will;
Her holy body has an angel's scent,
Her eye invests us with a cloak of light.

Whether it be in night and solitude,
Or in the streets among the multitude,
Her ghost before us dances like a torch.

It speaks out: 'I am lovely and command
That you will love only the Beautiful;
I am your Guardian, Madonna, Muse!'

    Is there anything prettier than that -
    to stare into your manifold spaces
    toward the hook & vine
    of cathedral leaps,
    the vaults & crypts
    as go-betweens of an earthy worship,
    the supine female form?

    By quiet pools,
    thrush in the thicket
    with red berry behind its eye,
    miniature sun
    proceeding by the branch
    to undress the bark
    with leaves as
    passionate culprits
    kissing dark.

    Clasped hands
    upward lies the sky
    my masterpiece angel,
    I bite lush meadows,
    tread spongy brooks,
    endear daring small of back,
    crevice taste nape and neck,
    a beatific pilgrim nearing
    a fleshy way-station,
    first charting his co...

Dear Heart, this is my book of boyish song,
The changing story of the wandering quest
That found at last its ending in thy breast -
The love it sought and sang astray so long
With wild young heart and happy eager tongue.
Much meant it all to me to seek and sing,
Ah, Love, but how much more to-day to bring
This 'rhyme that first of all he made when young.'

Take it and love it, 'tis the prophecy
For whose poor silver thou hast given me gold;
Yea! those old faces for an hour seemed fair
Only because some hints of Thee they were:
Judge then, if I so loved weak types of old,
How good, dear Heart, the perfect gift of Thee.

Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time's bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.

What is the love of shadowy lips
That know not what they seek or press,
From whom the lure for ever slips
And fails their phantom tenderness?

The mystery and light of eyes
That near to mine grow dim and cold;
They move afar in ancient skies
Mid flame and mystic darkness rolled.

O, beauty, as thy heart o'erflows
In tender yielding unto me,
A vast desire awakes and grows
Unto forgetfulness of thee.