Thou ever young! Persephone but gazes
Upon thy face, and shows thee back thine own;
And every flock that on thy hillsides grazes,
And every breeze from thy fair rivers blown,
And all the nestlings from thy branches flown,
Are eloquent in thy praises,
Demeter, mother of truth.
Thy seasons of grief, thy winters white with...
What though the green leaf grow?
’T will last a month and day;
In all sweet flowers that blow
Lurks Death, his slave Decay.
But if my lady smile
There is no Death at all;
The world is fair the while,—
What though the red leaf fall?
Sweet wooded way in life, forgetful Sleep!
Dim, drowsy realm where restful shadows fall,
And where the world’s glare enters not at all,
Or in soft glimmer making rest more deep;
Where sound comes not, or else like brooks that keep
The world’s noise out, as by a slumberous wall
Of gentlest murmur; where still whispers call
To smileless...
Lofty against our Western dawn uprises Achilles:
He among heroes alone singeth or toucheth the lyre.
Few, and dimmed by grief, are the days that to him are appointed!
Love he shall know but to lose, life but to cast it away.
Dreaming of peace and a bride, he sees not the foes at the portal:
Paris, a traitor to love; Phœbus, accorder of song!
The imperial boy had fallen in his pride
Before the gates of golden Babylon.
The host, who deemed that priceless treasure won,
For many a day since then had wandered wide,
By famine thinned, by savage hordes defied.
In a deep vale, beneath the setting sun,
They saw at last a swift black river run,
While shouting spearmen thronged...
I ’ve borne full many a sorrow, I ’ve suffered many a loss—
But now, with a strange, new anguish, I carry this last dread cross;
For of this be sure, my dearest, whatever thy life befall,
The cross that our own hands fashion is the heaviest cross of all.
Heavy and hard I made it in the days of my fair strong youth,
Veiling mine eyes from the blessed...
He might have won the highest guerdon that heaven to earth can give,
For whoso falleth for justice—dying, he yet shall live.
He might have left us his memory to flame as a beacon light,
When clouds of the false world’s raising shut the stars of heaven from sight.
He might have left us his name to ring in our triumph song
When we stand, as we ’ll...
Go ’way, fiddle! folks is tired o’ hearin’ you a-squawkin’.
Keep silence fur yo’ betters!—don’t you heah de banjo talkin’?
About de ’possum’s tail she ’s gwine to lecter—ladies, listen!—
About de ha’r whut is n’t dar, an’ why de ha’r is missin’:
“Dar’s gwine to be a’ oberflow,” said Noah, lookin’ solemn—
Fur Noah tuk the “Herald,” an’ he read de ribber...
Now england lessens on my sight;
The bastioned front of Wales,
Discolored and indefinite,
There like a cloud-wreath sails:
A league, and all those thronging hills
Must sink beneath the sea;
But while one touch of Memory thrills,
They yet shall stay with me.
I claim no birthright in yon sod,
Though thence my...
Soul unto SOUL GLOOMS DARKLING
DISGUISE upon disguise, and then disguise,
Equivocations at the rose’s heart,
Life’s surest pay a poet’s forgeries,
The gossamer gold coinage of our art.
Why hope for truth? Thy very being slips,
Lost from thee, in thy crowd of masking moods.
Why hope for love? Between quick-kissing lips
Is room and...
