A white rose had a sorrow—
And a strange sorrow!
For her sisters they had none,
As they all sat around her
Each on her feudal throne.
A strange sorrow
For one with no to-morrow,
No yesterday, to call her own,
But only to-day.
A white rose had a sorrow—
And a sweet sorrow!
She had...
Hath not the dark stream closed above thy head,
With envy of thy light, thou shining one?
Hast thou not, murmuring, made thy dreamless bed
Where blooms the asphodel, far from all sun?
But thou—thou dost obtain oblivious ease,
While here we rock and moan—thy funeral trees.
Have we not flung our tresses on the stream?
Hath not thy friend...
When on my soul in nakedness
His swift, avertless hand did press,
Then I stood still, nor cried aloud,
Nor murmured low in ashes bowed;
And, since my woe is utterless,
To supreme quiet I am vowed;
Afar from me be moan and tears,—
I shall go softly all my years.
Whenso my quick, light-sandaled feet
Bring me where Joys and...
I
there was a rover from a western shore,
England! whose eyes the sudden tears did drown,
Beholding the white cliff and sunny down
Of thy good realm, beyond the sea’s uproar.
I, for a moment, dreamed that, long before,
I had beheld them thus, when, with the frown
Of sovereignty, the victor’s palm and crown
Thou from the tilting-...
The wind of Hampstead Heath still burns my cheek
As, home returned, I muse, and see arise
Those rounded hills beneath the low, gray skies,
With gleams of haze-lapped cities far to seek.
These can I picture, but how fitly speak
Of what might not be seen with searching eyes,
And all beyond the listening ear that lies,
Best known to bards...
Bind us the Morning, mother of the stars
And of the winds that usher in the day!
Ere her light fingers slide the eastern bars,
A netted snare before her footsteps lay;
Ere the pale roses of the mist be strown,
Bind us the Morning, and restore our own!
With her have passed all things we held most dear,
Most subtly guarded from her...
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...
The soul IN THE BODY
WHAT if the Soul her real life elsewhere holds,
Her faint reflex Time’s darkling stream enfolds,
And thou and I, though seeming dwellers here,
Live some where yonder in the starlit sphere?
INSOMNIA
A HOUSE of sleepers—I, alone unblest,
Am yet awake and empty vigil keep.
When these, who spend life’s day with...
What! dost thou pray that the outgone tide be rolled back on the strand,
The flame be rekindled that mounted away from the smouldering brand,
The past-summer harvest flow golden through stubble-lands snaked and sere,
The winter-gray woods upgather and quicken the leaves of last year?—
Thy prayers are as clouds in a drouth; regardless, unfruitful, they roll;...
She was so little—little in her grave,
The wide earth all around so hard and cold—
She was so little! therefore did I crave
My arms might still her tender form enfold.
She was so little, and her cry so weak
When she among the heavenly children came—
She was so little—I alone might speak
For her who knew no word nor her own name....
