Silence was envious of the only voice
That mightier seemed than she. So, cloaked as Death,
With potion borrowed from Oblivion,
Yet with slow step and tear-averted look,
She sealed his lips, closed his extinguished eyes,
And, veiling him with darkness, deemed him dead.
But no!—There ’s something vital in the great
That blunts the edge of...
-
-
as a bell in a chime
Sets its twin-note a-ringing,
As one poet’s rhyme
Wakes another to singing,
So, once she has smiled,
All your thoughts are beguiled,
And flowers and song from your childhood are bringing.Though moving through sorrow
As the star through the night,
She needs... -
What is there wanting in the Spring?
The air is soft as yesteryear;
The happy-nested green is here,
And half the world is on the wing.
The morning beckons, and like balm
Are westward waters blue and calm.
Yet something’s wanting in the Spring.What is it wanting in the Spring?
O April, lover to us all,
What... -
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,—the tearless mad,
That live nor die in dreary... -
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 peerless Loves! O tranquil scene!
Who... -
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... -
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 blown
A blast of tempest, now had... -
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 its poise, and each unanchored star...