I know it must be winter (though I sleep)—
I know it must be winter, for I dream
I dip my bare feet in the running stream,
And flowers are many, and the grass grows deep.
I know I must be old (how age deceives!)—
I know I must be old, for, all unseen,
My heart grows young, as autumn fields grow green,
When late rains patter on...
When in THE FIRST GREAT HOUR
WHEN in the first great hour of sleep supreme
I saw my Dearest fair and tranquil lie,
Swift ran through all my soul this wonder-cry:
“How hast thou met and vanquished hate extreme!”
For by thy faint white smiling thou didst seem,
Sweet Magnanimity! to half defy,
Half pity, those ill things thou hadst put by,...
He was six years old, just six that day,
And I saw he had something important to say
As he held in his hand a broken toy.
He looked in my face for an instant, and then
He said, with a sigh, and a downcast eye,
“If I could live my life over again,
I think I could be a better boy!”
How small a tooth hath mined the season’s heart!
How cold a touch hath set the wood on fire,
Until it blazes like a costly pyre
Built for some Ganges emperor, old and swart,
Soul-sped on clouds of incense! Whose the art
That webs the streams, each morn, with silver wire,
Delicate as the tension of a lyre,—
Whose falchion pries the...
I.
a Horse-shoe nailed, for luck, upon a mast;
That mast, wave-bleached, upon the shore was cast!
I saw, and thence no fetich I revered,
But safe, through tempest, to my haven steered.
II.
The place with rose and myrtle was o’ergrown,
Yet Fear and Sorrow held it for their own.
A garden then I sowed without one fear,—
Sowed...
