Where all the winds were tranquil, And all the odors sweet, And rings of tumbling upland Sloped down to kiss your feet: There, in a nest of verdure, You grew from bud to bough; You heard the song at mid-day,— At eve the plighted vow. But fate that gives a guerdon Takes back a double fee: She hewed you from your homestead And set you in the sea. And every bowling billow Bends down your barren head To hearken if the whisper Of what you knew is dead.
Hope, is this thy hand Lies warm as life in mine? Is this thy sign Of peace none understand? What! art thou not steadfast? From off the blue air’s beach Wilt lean and reach The price of pity past? I know not if I may Believe thee, Hope, or doubt: With pretty pout Wilt...
He was in love with Truth and knew her near— Her comrade, not her suppliant on the knee: She gave him wild melodious words to be Made music that should haunt the atmosphere. She drew him to her bosom, day-long dear, And pointed to the stars and to the sea, And taught him miracles and mystery,...
Swept by the hot wind, stark, untrackable, The stony desert stretches to the sky. Deep-printed shadows at the tent-door lie, And camels slumber by the burning well. One weeps within, wrinkled and dusk of face, White-haired and lordly, o’er the new-brought dead: Mohammed over Seid, who loved and...
Where all the winds were tranquil, And all the odors sweet, And rings of tumbling upland Sloped down to kiss your feet: There, in a nest of verdure, You grew from bud to bough; You heard the song at mid-day,— At eve the plighted vow. But fate that gives a guerdon Takes back a double...
O dappled throat of white! Shy, hidden bird! Perched in green dimness of the dewy wood, And murmuring, in that lonely, lover mood, Thy heart-ache, softly heard, Sweetened by distance, over land and lake. Why, like a kinsman, do I feel thy voice Awaken voices in me free and sweet? Was...
