He loves not well whose love is bold!
I would not have thee come too nigh:
The sun’s gold would not seem pure gold
Unless the sun were in the sky;
To take him thence and chain him near
Would make his beauty disappear.
He keeps his state,—keep thou in thine,
And shine upon me from afar!
So shall I bask in light divine,...
He knelt beside her pillow, in the dead watch of the night,
And he heard her gentle breathing, but her face was still and white,
And on her poor, wan cheek a tear told how the heart can weep,
And he said, “My love was weary—God bless her! she ’s asleep.”
He knelt beside her gravestone in the shuddering autumn night,
And he heard the dry grass rustle,...
Beneath the midnight moon of May,
Through dusk on either hand,
One sheet of silver spreads the bay,
One crescent jet the land;
The black ships mirrored in the stream
Their ghostly tresses shake—
When will the dead world cease to dream?
When will the morning break?
Beneath a night no longer May,
Where only cold...
Out in the dark it throbs and glows—
The wide, wild sea, that no man knows!
The wind is chill, the surge is white,
And I must sail that sea to-night.
You shall not sail! The breakers roar
On many a mile of iron shore,
The waves are livid in their wrath,
And no man knows the ocean path.
I must not bide for wind or wave;...
And oh, to think the sun can shine,
The birds can sing, the flowers can bloom,
And she, whose soul was all divine,
Be darkly mouldering in the tomb:
That o’er her head the night-wind sighs,
And the sad cypress droops and moans;
That night has veiled her glorious eyes,
And silence hushed her heavenly tones:
That those...
I
white sail upon the ocean verge,
Just crimsoned by the setting sun,
Thou hast thy port beyond the surge,
Thy happy homeward course to run,
And wingëd hope, with heart of fire,
To gain the bliss of thy desire.
I watch thee till the sombre sky
Has darkly veiled the lucent plain;
My thoughts, like homeless spirits,...
Sweet bell of Stratford, tolling slow,
In summer gloaming’s golden glow,
I hear and feel thy voice divine,
And all my soul responds to thine.
As now I hear thee, even so,
My Shakespeare heard thee long ago,
When lone by Avon’s pensive stream
He wandered, in his haunted dream:
Heard thee—and far his fancy sped
Through...
Fairy spirits of the breeze—
Frailer nothing is than these.
Fancies born we know not where—
In the heart or in the air;
Wandering echoes blown unsought
From far crystal peaks of thought;
Shadows, fading at the dawn,
Ghosts of feeling dead and gone:
Alas! Are all fair things that live
Still lovely and still fugitive?
