Thou half-unfolded flower With fragrance-laden heart, What is the secret power That doth thy petals part? What gave thee most thy hue— The sunshine or the dew? Thou wonder-wakened soul! As Dawn doth steal on Night, On thee soft Love hath stole. Thine eye, that blooms with light, What makes its charm so new— Its sunshine, or its dew?
Go stand at night upon an ocean craft, And watch the folds of its imperial train Catching in fleecy foam a thousand glows— A miracle of fire unquenched by sea. There in bewildering turbulence of change Whirls the whole firmament, till as you gaze, All else unseen, it is as heaven itself Had lost...
For days the peaks wore hoods of cloud, The slopes were veiled in chilly rain; We said: It is the Summer’s shroud, And with the brooks we moaned aloud,— Will sunshine never come again? At last the west wind brought us one Serene, warm, cloudless, crystal day, As though September, having...
Thou half-unfolded flower With fragrance-laden heart, What is the secret power That doth thy petals part? What gave thee most thy hue— The sunshine or the dew? Thou wonder-wakened soul! As Dawn doth steal on Night, On thee soft Love hath stole. Thine eye, that blooms with light, What...
This is the loggia Browning loved, High on the flank of the friendly town; These are the hills that his keen eye roved, The green like a cataract leaping down To the plain that his pen gave new renown. There to the West what a range of blue!— The very background Titian drew To his...
Here in the dark what ghostly figures press!— No phantom of the Past, or grim or sad; No wailing spirit of woe; no spectre, clad In white and wandering cloud, whose dumb distress Is that its crime it never may confess; No shape from the strewn sea; nor they that add The link of Life and Death,—...
