I made a song for my dear love’s delight;
I wrought with all sweet words my heart could lend
To longing lips, and thrilled with joy to send
The message only love could read aright.
He came; and while I trembled in his sight,
He kissed my hands and said, “To what sweet end,
Unknowing, hast thou wrought, O gentle friend?
Singing thy song, I...
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Beneath thy spell, O radiant summer sea,—
Lulled by thy voice, rocked on thy shining breast,
Fanned by thy soft breath, by thy touch caressed,—
Let all thy treacheries forgotten be.
Let me still dream the ships I gave to thee
All golden-freighted in fair harbors rest;
Let me believe each sparkling wave’s white crest
Bears from thy depths... -
Two shall be born the whole wide world apart;
And speak in different tongues, and have no thought
Each of the other’s being, and no heed;
And these o’er unknown seas to unknown lands
Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death,
And all unconsciously shape every act
And bend each wandering step to this one end,—
That, one day, out of... -
They tell you that Death ’s at the turn of the road,
That under the shade of a cypress you ’ll find him,
And, struggling on wearily, lashed by the goad
Of pain, you will enter the black mist behind him.I can walk with you up to the ridge of the hill,
And we ’ll talk of the way we have come through the valley;
Down below there a bird... -
Young to the end through sympathy with youth,
Gray man of learning,—champion of truth!
Direct in rugged speech, alert in mind,
He felt his kinship with all humankind,
And never feared to trace development
Of high from low,—assured and full content
That man paid homage to the Mind above,
Uplifted by the “Royal Law of Love.”The...
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En garde, Messieurs, too long have I endured,
Too long with patience borne the world’s rebuff;
Now he who shoulders me shall find me rough;
The weakness of an easy soul is cured.I ’ve shouted, leathern-lunged, when fame or gold
Were won by others, turned to aid my friend;—
Dull-pated ever,—but such follies end;
Only a fool’s content,... -
Give me a race that is run in a breath,
Straight from the start to the “tape;”
Distance hath charms, but a “Ding Dong” means death,
Death without flowers and crape.“On your mark,” “Set,”—for a moment we strain,
Held by a leash all unseen;
“P’ff,” we are off, from the pistol we gain
Yards, if the starter’s not keen....
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I served in a great cause:
Long had I doubted the call I heard, wantoning the seasons dead;
The opportune days were deserts, the sunlight fell on a waste,
But the dawn brought me face to face with itself, with the opening flowers:
I looked upon my sea casting its wrecks down the shore in the storm,
The wrecks, my useless volitions, disordered, missent,... -
If all the voices of men called out warning you, and you could not join your voice with their voices,
If all the faces of men were turned one way and you met them face to face, you going another,—
You still must not be persuaded to capitulation; you will remember that the road runs east as well as west. -
Like to the leaf that falls,
Like to the rose that fades,
Thou art—and still art not!
We whom this thought enthralls,
We whom this mystery shades,
Are bared before our lot!Like to the light gone out,
Like to the sun gone down,
Thou art—and yet we feel
That something more than doubt,
And more...