O far-off darling in the South,
Where grapes are loading down the vine,
And songs are in the throstle’s mouth,
While love’s complaints are here in mine,
Turn from the blue Tyrrhenian Sea!
Come back to me! Come back to me!
Here all the Northern skies are cold,
And in their wintriness they say
(With warnings by the winds...
I see the star-lights quiver,
Like jewels in the river;
The bank is hid with sedge;
What if I slip the edge?
I thought I knew the way
By night as well as day:
But how a lover goes astray!
The place is somewhat lonely—
I mean for just one only;
I brought the boat ashore
An hour ago or more....
I won a noble fame;
But, with a sudden frown,
The people snatched my crown,
And, in the mire, trod down
My lofty name.
I bore a bounteous purse;
And beggars by the way
Then blessed me, day by day;
But I, grown poor as they,
Have now their curse.
I gained what men call friends;
But now...
My little Mädchen found one day
A curious something in her play,
That was not fruit, nor flower, nor seed;
It was not anything that grew,
Or crept, or climbed, or swam, or flew;
Had neither legs nor wings, indeed;
And yet she was not sure, she said,
Whether it was alive or dead.
She brought it in her tiny hand
To see if...
How still the room is! But a while ago
The sound of sobbing voices vexed my ears,
And on my face there fell a rain of tears—
I scarce knew why or whence, but now I know.
For this sweet speaking silence, this surcease
Of the dumb, desperate struggle after breath,
This painless consciousness of perfect peace,
Which fills the place of...
There was a time when Death and I
Came face to face together:
I was but young indeed to die,
And it was summer weather;
One happy year a wedded wife,
And I was slipping out of life.
You knelt beside me, and I heard,
As from some far-off distance,
A bitter cry that dimly stirred
My soul to make resistance...
I broke one day a slender stem,
Thick-set with little golden horns,
Half bud, half blossom, and a gem—
Such as one finds in autumn morns
When all the grass with dew is strung—
On every fairy bugle hung.
Careless, I dropped it, in a place
Where no light shone, and so forgot
Its delicate, dewy, flowering grace,...
The beautiful, which mocked his fond pursuing,
The poet followed long;
With passionate purpose the shy shadow wooing,
And soul-betraying song.
And still the fervor of his fond endeavor
To him seemed poured in vain,
And all in vain, forever and forever,
The sorrow of his strain.
But when at last he perished broken-...
King solomon stood in the house of the Lord,
And the Genii silently wrought around,
Toiling and moiling without a word,
Building the temple without a sound.
Fear and rage were theirs, but naught,
In mien or face, of fear or rage;
For had he guessed their secret thought,
They had pined in hell for many an age.
Closed...
I
among the thousand, thousand spheres that roll,
Wheel within wheel, through never-ending space,
A mighty and interminable race,
Yet held by some invisible control,
And led as to a sure and shining goal,
One star alone, with still, unchanging face,
Looks out from her perpetual dwelling-place,
Of these swift orbs the centre and the...
