To the sea-shell’s spiral round
’T is your heart that brings the sound:
The soft sea-murmurs that you hear
Within, are captured from your ear.
You do poets and their song
A grievous wrong,
If your own soul does not bring
To their high imagining
As much beauty as they sing.
Though gifts like thine the fates gave not to me,
One thing, O Hafiz, we both hold in fee—
Nay, it holds us; for when the June wind blows
We both are slaves and lovers to the rose.
In vain the pale Circassian lily shows
Her face at her green lattice, and in vain
The violet beckons, with unveilëd face—
The bosom’s white, the lip’s light...
when the Sultan Shah-Zaman
Goes to the city Ispahan,
Even before he gets so far
As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,
At the last of the thirty palace-gates,
The flower of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,
Orders a feast in his favorite room—
Glittering squares of colored ice,
Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,...
Good-night! i have to say good-night
To such a host of peerless things!
Good-night unto the slender hand
All queenly with its weight of rings;
Good-night to fond, uplifted eyes,
Good-night to chestnut braids of hair,
Good-night unto the perfect mouth,
And all the sweetness nestled there—
The snowy hand detains me, then...
A soldier of the Cromwell stamp,
With sword and psalm-book by his side,
At home alike in church and camp:
Austere he lived, and smileless died.
But she, a creature soft and fine—
From Spain, some say, some say from France;
Within her veins leapt blood like wine—
She led her Roundhead lord a dance!
In Grantham church they lie...
Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—
In Twilight-land—in No-man’s-land—
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.
“And who are you?” cried one a-gape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
“I know not,” said the second Shape,
“I only died last night!”
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds, North, South, East, and West;
Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,
Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,
Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past
The Arab’s date-palm and the Norseman’s pine—
A realm wherein are fruits of...
The folk who lived in Shakespeare’s day
And saw that gentle figure pass
By London Bridge, his frequent way—
They little knew what man he was.
The pointed beard, the courteous mien,
The equal port to high and low,
All this they saw or might have seen—
But not the light behind the brow!
The doublet ’s modest gray or brown,...
That face which no man ever saw
And from his memory banished quite,
With eyes in which are Hamlet ’s awe
And Cardinal Richelieu’s subtle light
Looks from this frame. A master’s hand
Has set the master-player here,
In the fair temple that he planned
Not for himself. To us most dear
This image of him! “It was thus
He looked...
Shakespeare and Milton—what third blazoned name
Shall lips of after-ages link to these?
His who, beside the wild encircling sea
Was England’s voice, her voice with one acclaim,
For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame,
Whose scorn gave pause to man’s iniquities.
What strain was his in that Crimean war?
A bugle-call in...
