Blue flower waving in the wind,
    Say whose blue eyes
Lift up your swaying fragile stem
    To the blue skies.

Is she a queen that lies asleep
    In a green hill,
With all her silver ornaments
    Around her still?

Or is she but a simple girl,
    Whose boy was drowned,
In some cold sea, some stormy morn,
    On some blue sound?

But don't you know it, my dear,
Don't you know it,
That this day of the year
(What rainbow-rays embow it!)
We met, strangers confessed,
But parted - blest?

Though at this query, my dear,
There in your frame
Unmoved you still appear,
You must be thinking the same,
But keep that look demure
Just to allure.

And now at length a trace
I surely vision
Upon that wistful face
Of old-time recognition,
Smiling forth, "Yes, as you say,
It is the day."

For this one phase of you
Now left on earth
This great date must endue
With pulsings of rebirth? -
I see them vitalize
Those two deep eyes!

But if this face I con
Does not declare
Consciousness living on
Still in it, little I care
To live my...

A Poem In Twelve Books


Stop playing, poet! may a brother speak?
’Tis you speak, that’s your error. Song’s our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sighs and sounds.
True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?
Stark-naked thought is in request enough,
Speak prose and holloa it till Europe hears!
The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
Which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp to Alp,
Exchange our harp for that, who hinders you?

But here’s your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
Thought’s what they me...

Ah what avails the sceptred race,
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

I would not that my memory all should die,
And pass away with every common lot:
I would not that my humble dust should lie
In quite a strange and unfrequented spot,
By all unheeded and by all forgot,
With nothing save the heedless winds to sigh,
And nothing but the dewy morn to weep
About my grave, far hid from the world's eye:
I fain would have some friend to wander nigh
And find a path to where my ashes sleep--
Not the cold heart that merely passes by,
To read who lies beneath, but such as keep
Past memories warm with deeds of other years,
And pay to friendship some few friendly tears.

Go, then--'tis vain to hover
    Thus round a hope that's dead;
At length my dream is over;
    'Twas sweet--'twas false--'tis fled!
Farewell! since naught it moves thee,
    Such truth as mine to see--
Some one, who far less loves thee,
    Perhaps more blest will be.

Farewell, sweet eyes, whose brightness
    New life around me shed;
Farewell, false heart, whose lightness
    Now leaves me death instead.
Go, now, those charms surrender
    To some new lover's sigh--
One who, tho' far less tender,
    May be more blest than I.

Credulo il proprio amor.


Self-love fools man with false opinion
        That earth, air, water, fire, the stars we see,
        Though stronger and more beautiful than we,
        Feel nought, love not, but move for us alone.
Then all the tribes of earth except his own
        Seem to him senseless, rude--God lets them be:
        To kith and kin next shrinks his sympathy,
        Till in the end loves only self each one.
Learning he shuns that he may live at ease;
        And since the world is little to his mind,
        God and God's ruling Forethought he denies.
Craft he calls wisdom; and, perversely blind,
        Seeking to reign, erects new deities:
        At last 'I make the Universe!' he cries.

    A man weeps at your ankles,
    climbs the stairs to peek-a-boo
    panties, with finger clasps,
    a Rapunzel lowering your hair,
    the long-matted braids
    a skilful weaver turns to gold.

    An ivy forest in
    a castle impregnated with doors,
    the prince overhears the code
    "let down your hair" and,
    with perilous grasp,
    mounts the stirrup wall,
    foot to clasp,
    searching cloud grey &
    storm blasts for billowy mists
    green within this empress queen.

    Walking plasticine ledge
    in the shower with a mermaid
    soaping her perfumed treasure trove,
    at an intersection within that woman,
    her tulip trees explode -
    faeryland syrupy,
    tasting of apricot and sugar c...

Your paths were all unknown to us:
We were so far away from you,
We mixed in thought your spirit thus--
With whiteness, stars of gold, and dew.

The mighty mother nourished you:
Her breath blew from her mystic bowers:
Their elfin glimmer floated through
The pureness of your shadowy hours.

The mighty mother made you wise;
Gave love that clears the hidden ways:
Her glooms were glory to your eyes;
Her darkness but the Fount of Days.

She made all gentleness in you,
And beauty radiant as the morn's:
She made our joy in yours, then threw
Upon your head a crown of thorns.

Your eyes are filled with tender light,
For those whose eyes are dim with tears;
They see your brow is crowned and bright,
But not its ring of wounding spears.

O Summer sun, O moving trees!
O cheerful human noise, O busy glittering street!
What hour shall Fate in all the future find,
Or what delights, ever to equal these:
Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind,
Only to be alive, and feel that life is sweet?

In his arms thy silly lamb,
Lo, he gathers to his breast!
See, thou sadly bleating dam,
See him lift thy silly lamb!
Hear it cry, "How blest I am!
Here is love, and love is rest!"
In his arms thy silly lamb
See him gather to his breast!

Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn
Beside her sea-blown shore;
Her well beloved, her noblest born,
Is hers in life no more!

No lapse of years can render less
Her memory's sacred claim;
No fountain of forgetfulness
Can wet the lips of Fame.

A grief alike to wound and heal,
A thought to soothe and pain,
The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel
To her must still remain.

Good men and true she has not lacked,
And brave men yet shall be;
The perfect flower, the crowning fact,
Of all her years was he!

As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage,
What worthier knight was found
To grace in Arthur's golden age
The fabled Table Round?

A voice, the battle's trumpet-note,
To welcome and restore;
A hand, that all unwilling smote,

Sweet Love and I had oft communed;
We were, indeed, great friends,
And oft I sought his office, near
Where Courtship Alley ends.

I used to sit with him, and smoke,
And talk of your blue eyes,
And argue how I best might act
To make your heart my prize.

He always seemed to have much time
To hear me tell my joy,
So that I came to deem him but
An idle, lazy boy.

But on St. Valentine his day,
I found him hard at work,
As if he had a mighty task
And did not dare to shirk;

And o’er his head there hung a card
That made me haste away;
It bore these words,
Please make it short.
This is my busy day!

And so, Sweet maiden; if I send
No valentine, you see
The reason here; Love could not waste
His precious...

    Thomas and Annis met in the dark.
        "Good morning," said Thomas.
        "Good morning," said Annis.
    And so they began to talk.

    "I'll give you," says Thomas,
    "Give me," said Annis;
        "I prithee, love, tell me what?"
    "Some nuts," said Thomas.
    "Some nuts," said Annis;
        "Nuts are good to crack."

    "I love you," said Thomas.
    "Love me!" said Annis;
        "I prithee love tell me where?"
    "In my heart," said Thomas.
    "In your heart!" said Annis;
        "How came you to love me there?"

    "I'll marry you," said Thomas.
    "Marry me!" said Annis;
        "I prithee, love, tell me when?"
    "Next Sunday," said Thomas.
    "Next Sunday," said Annis;
        "I wish nex...

Oh thou cruel deadly-lovely maiden,
Tell me what great sin have I committed,
That thou keep'st me to the rack thus fasten'd,
That thou hast thy solemn promise broken?

'Twas but yestere'en that thou with fondness
Press'd my hand, and these sweet accents murmured:
"Yes, I'll come, I'll come when morn approacheth,
Come, my friend, full surely to thy chamber."

On the latch I left my doors, unfasten'd,
Having first with care tried all the hinges,
And rejoic'd right well to find they creak'd not.

What a night of expectation pass'd I!
For I watch'd, and ev'ry chime I number'd;
If perchance I slept a few short moments,
Still my heart remain'd awake forever,
And awoke me from my gentle slumbers.

Yes, then bless'd I night's o'erhanging darkness,<...

He told a story to her,
A story old yet new
And was it of the Faëry Folk
That dance along the dew?

The night was hung with silence
As a room is hung with cloth,
And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush,
Swooned dim the down-white moth.

Along the east a shimmer,
A tenuous breath of flame,
From which, as from a bath of light,
Nymph-like, the girl-moon came.

And pendent in the purple
Of heaven, like fireflies,
Bubbles of gold the great stars blew
From windows of the skies.

He told a story to her,
A story full of dreams
And was it of the Elfin things
That haunt the thin moonbeams?

Upon the hill a thorn-tree,
Crooked and gnarled and gray,
Against the moon seemed some crutch'd hag
Dragging a child aw...

Even as a dragon's eye that feels the stress
Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp
Suddenly glaring through sepulchral damp,
So burns yon Taper 'mid a black recess
Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless:
The lake below reflects it not; the sky,
Muffled in clouds, affords no company
To mitigate and cheer its loneliness.
Yet, round the body of that joyless Thing
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated in domestic ring
A gay society with faces bright,
Conversing, reading, laughing; or they sing,
While hearts and voices in the song unite.

Ever before my face there went
Betwixt earth's buds and me
A beauty beyond earth's content,
A hope - half memory:
Till in the woods one evening -
Ah! eyes as dark as they,
Fastened on mine unwontedly,
Grey, and dear heart, how grey!