I have been pondering what our teachers call
    The mystery of Pain; and lo! my thought
    After it's half-blind reaching out has caught
This truth and held it fast. We may not fall
    Beyond our mounting; stung by life's annoy,
    Deeper we feel the mystery of Joy.

Sometimes they steal across us like a breath
    Of Eastern perfume in a darkened room,
    These joys of ours; we grope on through the gloom
Seeking some common thing, and from its sheath
    Unloose, unknowing, some bewildering scent
    Of spice-thronged memories of the Orient.

Sometimes they dart across our turbid sky
    Like a quick flash after a heated day.
    A moment, where the sombrous shadows lay
We see a glory. Though it passed us by
    No earthly power can filch that ...

    Her soul is like a wolf that stands
    Where sunlight falls between the trees
    Of a sparse forest's leafless edge,
    When Spring's first magic moveth these.

    Her soul is like a little brook,
    Thin edged with ice against the leaves,
    Where the wolf drinks and is alone,
    And where the woodbine interweaves.

    A bank late covered by the snow,
    But lighted by the frozen North;
    Her soul is like a little plot
    That one white blossom bringeth forth.

    Her soul is slim, like silver slips,
    And straight, like flags beside a stream.
    Her soul is like a shape that moves
    And changes in a wonder dream.

    Who would pursue her clasps a cloud,
    And taketh sorrow for his zeal.
    Memory shall ...

The Comet! He is on his way,
And singing as he flies;
The whizzing planets shrink before
The spectre of the skies;
Ah! well may regal orbs burn blue,
And satellites turn pale,
Ten million cubic miles of head,
Ten billion leagues of tail!

On, on by whistling spheres of light
He flashes and he flames;
He turns not to the left nor right,
He asks them not their names;
One spurn from his demoniac heel, -
Away, away they fly,
Where darkness might be bottled up
And sold for "Tyrian dye."

And what would happen to the land,
And how would look the sea,
If in the bearded devil's path
Our earth should chance to be?
Full hot and high the sea would boil,
Full red the forests gleam;
Methought I saw and heard it all
In a dyspepti...

I halted at the margin of the wood,
For tortuous was the path, and overhead
Low branches hung, and roots and fragments rude
Of rock hindered the tardy foot. I led
My timid horse, that started at our tread
And looked about on every side in fear,
Until, arising from the jocund shed,
The voice of laughter broke upon our ear,
And through the chinks the light shone out as we drew near.

I tied the bridle rain about a tree,
And on the ample flatness of a stone
Awhile I lay. 'Tis very sweet to be
In social mirth's domain, unseen, alone,
Sweet to make others' happiness one's own:
And he who views the dance from still recess,
Or reads a love tale in a meadow, prone,
Secures the joy without the weariness.
And fills with love's delight, nor feels its sore distr...

When from our mortal vision
    Grown men and women go
To sail strange fields Elysian
    And know what spirits know,
I think of them as tourists,
    In some sun-gilded clime,
'Mong happy sights and dear delights
    We all shall find, in time.

But when a child goes yonder
    And leaves its mother here,
Its little feet must wander,
    It seems to me, in fear.
What paths of Eden beauty,
    What scenes of peace and rest,
Can bring content to one who went
    Forth from a mother's breast?

In palace gardens, lonely,
    A little child will roam
And weep for pleasures only
    Found in its humble home.
It is not won by splendour,
    Nor bought by costly toys;
To hide from harm on mother's arm
    Makes all its sum...

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:
’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
A...

The air is dark, the sky is gray,
The misty shadows come and go,
And here within my dusky room
Each chair looks ghostly in the gloom.
Outside the rain falls cold and slow--
Half-stinging drops, half-blinding spray.

Each slightest sound is magnified,
For drowsy quiet holds her reign;
The burnt stick in the fireplace breaks,
The nodding cat with start awakes,
And then to sleep drops off again,
Unheeding Towser at her side.

I look far out across the lawn,
Where huddled stand the silly sheep;
My work lies idle at my hands,
My thoughts fly out like scattered strands
Of thread, and on the verge of sleep--
Still half awake--I dream and yawn.

What spirits rise before my eyes!
How various of kind and form!
Sweet memories of days lo...

I see, as one in dreaming,
A broad, bright, quiet sea;
Beyond it lies a haven
The only home for me.
Some men grow strong with trouble,
But all my strength is past,
And tired and full of sorrow,
I long to sleep at last.
By force of chance and changes
Man’s life is hard at best;
And, seeing rest is voiceless,
The dearest thing is rest.

Beyond the sea behold it,
The home I wish to seek
The refuge of the weary,
The solace of the weak!
Sweet angel fingers beckon,
Sweet angel voices ask
My soul to cross the waters;
And yet I dread the task.
God help the man whose trials
Are tares that he must reap;
He cannot face the future
His only hope is sleep.

Across the main a vision
Of sunset coasts and skies,
And w...

Not bed-time yet! The night-winds blow,
The stars are out, - full well we know
The nurse is on the stair,
With hand of ice and cheek of snow,
And frozen lips that whisper low,
"Come, children, it is time to go
My peaceful couch to share."

No years a wakeful heart can tire;
Not bed-time yet! Come, stir the fire
And warm your dear old hands;
Kind Mother Earth we love so well
Has pleasant stories yet to tell
Before we hear the curfew bell;
Still glow the burning brands.

Not bed-time yet! We long to know
What wonders time has yet to show,
What unborn years shall bring;
What ship the Arctic pole shall reach,
What lessons Science waits to teach,
What sermons there are left to preach.
What poems yet to sing.

What next? we as...

Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.

They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.

And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,
Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,
From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained "the power of words", denied that ever
A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words, two foreign soft dissyllables,
Italian tones, made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions
Than even seraph harper, Israfel,
(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,")
Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear n...

An heritage of hopes and fears
And dreams and memory,
And vices of ten thousand years
God gives to thee.

A house of clay, the home of Fate,
Haunted of Love and Sin,
Where Death stands knocking at the gate
To let him in.

    O woven fabric and bright web of sound,
    Whose threads are magical,
    And with swift weaving thrall
    And hold the spirit bound!
    We may not know whence thy strange sorceries fall -
    Whether they be Earth's voices wild and strong,
    Her high and perfect song.
    Or broken dreams of higher worlds unfound.
    For, lo, thou art as dreams.
    And to thy realm all hidden things belong -
    All fugitive and evanescent gleams
    The soul hath vainly sought;
    All mystic immanence;
    All visions of ungrasped magnificence,
    And great ideals pinnacled in thought;
    All paths with marvel fraught
    That lead to lands obscure:
    For, lo, upon thy road of sound we pass,
    Seeking thy magic lure,
    To vales mist-implica...

She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,
Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
When she visits the rabbit snares,
An appearance floats in the crystal air
Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the summer mornings
When she strips the nets of fish,
The smell of the dripping net-twine
Gives to her heart a wish.

But she cannot learn the meaning
Of the shadows in her soul,
The lights that break and gather,
The clouds that part and roll,

The reek of rock-built cities,
Where her fathers dwelt of yore,
The gleam of loch an...

Through my heart's palace Thoughts unnumbered throng;
And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise,
High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long
Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies,
And pilgrim Dreams, and little beggar Sighs,
Bow to your benediction, go their way.
And the grave jewelled courtier Memories
Worship and love and tend you, all the day.

But when I sleep, and all my thoughts go straying,
When the high session of the day is ended,
And darkness comes; then, with the waning light,
By lilied maidens on your way attended,
Proud from the wonted throne, superbly swaying,
You, like a queen, pass out into the night.

Late, late yestreen I saw the new moon,
With the old moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.

Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.

I

Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Aeolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming-on of rain...

Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high,
In the glowing August sky,
Quenching all her neighbor stars,
Save the steady flame of Mars.
White as silver shines the sea,
Far-off sails like phantoms be,
Gliding o'er that lake of light,
Vanishing in nether night.
Heavy hangs the tasseled corn,
Sighing for the cordial morn;
But the marshy-meadows bare,
Love this spectral-lighted air,
Drink the dews and lift their song,
Chirp of crickets all night long;
Earth and sea enchanted lie
'Neath that moon-usurped sky.


To the faces of our friends
Unfamiliar traits she lends -
Quaint, white witch, who looketh down
With a glamour all her own.
Hushed are laughter, jest, and speech,
Mute and heedless each of each,
In the glory wan we sit,<...

The yellow mother's eye burns up there.
Everywhere night lies like a blue cloth.
There is no question that I am sucking air.
I am only a little picture book.
Houses capture dreams of motley sleepers
As though in nets in the windows.
Autos creep like ladybugs
Up luminous streets.