She dwelt within a convent wall
Beside the "blue Moselle,"
And pure and simple was her life
As is the tale I tell.

She never shrank from penance rude,
And was so young and fair,
It was a holy, holy thing,
To see her at her prayer.

Her cheek was very thin and pale;
You would have turned in fear,
If 't were not for the hectic spot
That glowed so soft and clear.

And always, as the evening chime
With measured cadence fell,
Her vespers o'er, she sought alone
A little garden dell.

And when she came to us again,
She moved with lighter air;
We thought the angels ministered
To her while kneeling there.

One eve I followed on her way,
And asked her of her life.
A faint blush mantled cheek and brow,
The sign...

We were two lovers; let me lie by her,
My tomb beside her tomb. On hers inscribe,
“I loved him; but my reason bade prefer
Duty to love, reject the tempter’s bribe
Of rose and lily when each path diverged,
And either I must pace to life’s far end
As love should lead me, or, as duty urged,
Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend.
So, truth turned falsehood: ‘How I loathe a flower,
How prize the pavement!’ still caressed his ear,
The deafish friend’s, through life’s day, hour by hour,
As he laughed (coughing). ‘Ay, it would appear!’
But deep within my heart of hearts there hid
Ever the confidence, amends for all,
That heaven repairs what wrong earth’s journey did,
When love from life-long exile comes at call.
Duty and love, one broad way, were the best,

They told him gently he was made
    Of nicely tempered mud,
That man no lengthened part had played
    Anterior to the Flood.
'Twas all in vain; he heeded not,
    Referring plant and worm,
Fish, reptile, ape, and Hottentot,
    To one primordial germ.

They asked him whether he could bear
    To think his kind allied
To all those brutal forms which were
    In structure Pithecoid;
Whether he thought the apes and us
    Homologous in form;
He said, "Homo and Pithecus
    Came from one common germ."

They called him "atheistical,"
    "Sceptic," and "infidel."
They swore his doctrines without fail
    Would plunge him into hell.
But he with proofs in no way lame,
    Made this deduction firm,
That all organic beings came...

Aw've a treasure yo'd laff if yo saw,
But its mem'ries are dear to mi heart;
For aw've oft seen it stuck in a jaw,
Whear it seem'd to form ommost a part.
Its net worth a hawpny, aw know,
But its given mooar pleasure maybe,
Nor some things at mak far mooar show,
An yo can't guess its vally to me.

Mi fayther wor fond ov his pipe,
An this wor his favorite clay;
An if mi ideas wor ripe,
Awd enshrine it ith' folds ov a lay;
But words allus fail to express
What aw think when aw see its old face;
For aw know th' world holds one friend the less,
An mi hearth has one mooar vacant place.

Ov trubbles his life had its share,
But he kept all his griefs to hissen;
Tho aw've oft seen his brow knit wi care,
Wol he tried to crack jooaks nah an then.<...

Beato in sogno, e di languir contento.

THOUGH SO LONG LOVE'S FAITHFUL SERVANT, HIS ONLY REWARD HAS BEEN TEARS.


    Happy in visions, and content to pine,
Shadows to clasp, to chase the summer gale,
On shoreless and unfathom'd sea to sail,
To build on sand, and in the air design,
The sun to gaze on till these eyes of mine
Abash'd before his noonday splendour fail,
To chase adown some soft and sloping vale,
The wingèd stag with maim'd and heavy kine;
Weary and blind, save my own harm to all,
Which day and night I seek with throbbing heart,
On Love, on Laura, and on Death I call.
Thus twenty years of long and cruel smart,
In tears and sighs I've pass'd, because I took
Under ill stars, alas! both bait and hook.

MACGREGOR.

Zefiro torna, e 'l bel tempo rimena.

RETURNING SPRING BRINGS TO HIM ONLY INCREASE OF GRIEF.


    Zephyr returns; and in his jocund train
Brings verdure, flowers, and days serenely clear;
Brings Progne's twitter, Philomel's lorn strain,
With every bloom that paints the vernal year;
Cloudless the skies, and smiling every plain;
With joyance flush'd, Jove views his daughter dear;
Love's genial power pervades earth, air, and main;
All beings join'd in fond accord appear.
But nought to me returns save sorrowing sighs,
Forced from my inmost heart by her who bore
Those keys which govern'd it unto the skies:
The blossom'd meads, the choristers of air,
Sweet courteous damsels can delight no more;
Each face looks savage, and each prospect drear.
...

When she appears the daylight envies her garment,
The wanton daylight envies her garment
To show it to the jealous sun.

And when she walks,
All women tall and tiny
Want her figure and start crying.

Because of your mouth,
Long life to the Agata valley,
Long life to pearls.

Watchers have discovered paradise in your cheeks,
But I am undecided,
For there is a hint of the tops of flames
In their purple shining.

From the Arabic of Ahmed Bey Chawky (contemporary).

I.

    O bonnie bird, that in the brake, exultant, dost prepare thee -
    As poets do whose thoughts are true, for wings that will upbear thee -
            Oh! tell me, tell me, bonnie bird,
            Canst thou not pipe of hope deferred?
    Or canst thou sing of naught but Spring among the golden meadows?


II.

    Methinks a bard (and thou art one) should suit his song to sorrow,
    And tell of pain, as well as gain, that waits us on the morrow;
            But thou art not a prophet, thou,
            If naught but joy can touch thee now;
    If, in thy heart, thou hast no vow that speaks of Nature's anguish.


III.

    Oh! I have held my sorrows dear, and felt, tho' poor and slighted,
    The songs we love are those we hea...

The world is woven all of dream and error
And but one sureness in our truth may lie--
That when we hold to aught our thinking's mirror
We know it not by knowing it thereby.
For but one side of things the mirror knows,
And knows it colded from its solidness.
A double lie its truth is; what it shows
By true show's false and nowhere by true place.
Thought clouds our life's day-sense with strangeness, yet
Never from strangeness more than that it's strange
Doth buy our perplexed thinking, for we get
But the words' sense from words--knowledge, truth, change.
    We know the world is false, not what is true.
    Yet we think on, knowing we ne'er shall know.

So that's the way you pass your time!
    Indeed your charming, frank confession
Betrays no sort of heinous crime,
    But marks a wonderful digression
From puritanic views, less bold,
That we were early taught to hold.

"Passer le temps," of course, implies
    A little cycle of flirtations,
Wherein the actors never rise
    To sober, serious relations,
But play just for amusement's sake
A harmless game of "give and take."

While moments pass on pinions fleet,
    And youth in beauty effloresces,
The joy that finds itself complete
    In honeyed words and soft caresses,
Alas! an index seems to be
Of perilous inconstancy.

It may be with disdainful smile
    You greet this comment from a stranger,
Your pleasure-...

Come down from heaven to meet me when my breath
Chokes, and through drumming shafts of stifling death
I stumble toward escape, to find the door
Opening on morn where I may breathe once more
Clear cock-crow airs across some valley dim
With whispering trees. While dawn along the rim
Of night's horizon flows in lakes of fire,
Come down from heaven's bright hill, my song's desire.

Belov'd and faithful, teach my soul to wake
In glades deep-ranked with flowers that gleam and shake
And flock your paths with wonder. In your gaze
Show me the vanquished vigil of my days.
Mute in that golden silence hung with green,
Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes
Remembrance of all beauty that has been,
And stillness from the pools of Paradise.

'Tis hard to find God, but to comprehend
Him, as He is, is labour without end.

What man is there so bold that he should say,
"Thus, and thus only, would I have the sea"?
For whether lying calm and beautiful,
Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back
The smile of heaven from waves of amethyst;
Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,
It bears the trade and navies of the world
To ends of use or stern activity;
Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way
To elemental fury, howls and roars
At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust
Of ruin drinks the blood of living things,
And strews its wrecks o'er leagues of desolate shore, -
Always it is the sea, and men bow down
Before its vast and varied majesty.

So all in vain will timorous ones essay
To set the metes and bounds of Liberty.
For Freedom is its own eternal law;
It make...

God, God!
With a child’s voice I cry,
Weak, sad, confidingly,
God, God!
Thou knowest, eyelids, raised not always up
Unto Thy love (as none of ours are), droop
As ours, o’er many a tear!
Thou knowest, though Thy universe is broad,
Two little tears suffice to cover all:
Thou knowest, Thou, who art so prodigal
Of beauty, we are oft but stricken deer
Expiring in the woods, that care for none
Of those delightsome flowers they die upon.

O blissful Mouth which breathed the mournful breath
We name our souls, self-spoilt! by that strong passion
Which paled Thee once with sighs, by that strong death
Which made Thee once unbreathing, from the wrack
Themselves have called around them, call them back,
Back to Thee in continuous aspiration!
For here, O ...

The day has been wild and stormy,
    And full of the wind's unrest,
And I sat down alone by the window,
    While the sunset dyed the West;
And the holy rush of twilight,
    As the day went over the hill,
Like the voice of a spirit seemed speaking
    And saying, 'Peace be still.'

Then I thought with sudden longing,
    That it might be so with my woes;
That the life so wild and restless,
    When it reached the eve's repose,
Might glow with a sudden glory,
    And be crowned with peace and rest;
And the holy calm of twilight
    Might come to my troubled breast.

All of the pain and passion
    That trouble my life's long day
As the winds go down at sunset,
    May suddenly pass away.
And the wild and turbulent billows,
 ...

It is evening, Senlin says, and in the evening
The throbbing of drums has languidly died away.
Forest and sea are still. We breathe in silence
And strive to say the things flesh cannot say.
The soulless wind falls slowly about the earth
And finds no rest.
The lover stares at the setting star, the wakeful lover
Who finds no peace on his lover’s breast.
The snare of desire that bound us in is broken;
Softly, in sorrow, we draw apart, and see,
Far off, the beauty we thought our flesh had captured,
The star we longed to be but could not be.
Come back! We will laugh once more at the words we said!
We say them slowly again, but the words are dead.
Come back beloved! . . . The blue void falls between,
We cry to each other: alone; unknown; unseen.
We are the grains of...

Approach in silence. 'tis no vulgar tale
Which I, the Dryad of this hoary oak,
Pronounce to mortal ears. The second age
Now hasteneth to its period, since I rose
On this fair lawn. The groves of yonder vale
Are, all, my offspring: and each Nymph, who guards
The copses and the furrow'd fields beyond,
Obeys me. Many changes have I seen
In human things, and many awful deeds
Of justice, when the ruling hand of Jove
Against the tyrants of the land, against
The unhallow'd sons of luxury and guile,
Was arm'd for retribution. Thus at length
Expert in laws divine, I know the paths
Of wisdom, and erroneous folly's end
Have oft presag'd: and now well-pleas'd I wait
Each evening till a noble youth, who loves
My shade, awhile releas'd from public cares,
Yon peace...

Era 'l giorno ch' al sol si scoloraro.

HE BLAMES LOVE FOR WOUNDING HIM ON A HOLY DAY (GOOD FRIDAY).


    'Twas on the morn, when heaven its blessed ray
In pity to its suffering master veil'd,
First did I, Lady, to your beauty yield,
Of your victorious eyes th' unguarded prey.
Ah! little reck'd I that, on such a day,
Needed against Love's arrows any shield;
And trod, securely trod, the fatal field:
Whence, with the world's, began my heart's dismay.
On every side Love found his victim bare,
And through mine eyes transfix'd my throbbing heart;
Those eyes, which now with constant sorrows flow:
But poor the triumph of his boasted art,
Who thus could pierce a naked youth, nor dare
To you in armour mail'd even to display his bow!

WRANGHA...