Yes, i know what you say:
Since it cannot be soul to soul,
Be it flesh to flesh, as it may;
But is Earth the whole?
Shall a man betray the Past
For all Earth gives?
“But the Past is dead?” At last
It is all that lives.
Which were the nobler goal,—
To snatch at the moment’s bliss
Or to swear I will...
The stars know a secret
They do not tell;
And morn brings a message
Hidden well.
There ’s a blush on the apple,
A tint on the wing,
And the bright wind whistles,
And the pulses sting.
Perish dark memories!
There ’s light ahead;
This world’s for the living,
Not for the dead.
In the...
O god, our Father, if we had but truth!
Lost truth—which thou perchance
Didst let man lose, lest all his wayward youth
He waste in song and dance;
That he might gain, in searching, mightier powers
For manlier use in those foreshadowed hours.
If, blindly groping, he shall oft mistake,
And follow twinkling motes
Thinking...
The wintry blast goes wailing by,
The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry’s tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.
Dim forms go flitting through the gloom;
The soldiers cluster round the blaze
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.
My sabre swinging overhead
...
I picture her there in the quaint old room,
Where the fading fire-light starts and falls,
Alone in the twilight’s tender gloom
With the shadows that dance on the dim-lit walls.
Alone, while those faces look silently down
From their antique frames in a grim repose—
Slight scholarly Ralph in his Oxford gown,
And stanch Sir Alan,...
Even at their fairest still I love the less
The blossoms of the garden than the blooms
Won by the mountain climber: theirs the tints
And forms that most delight me,—theirs the charm
That lends an aureole to the azure heights
Whereon they flourish, children of the dews
And mountain streamlets.
But in sleep sometimes
...
Olympian sunlight is the Poet’s sphere;
Yet of his rapt unconscious thought at play
The wintry stream gave image but to-day,
When first the frost his magic made appear;
The darkling water dreamed, and mirrored clear,
A thousand miles adown, the clouds’ array,
Nor any gleam or stirring did betray
The secret of the transformation near—...
In the loud waking world I come and go,
And yet the twofold gates of dreams are mine;
I have seen the battle-lightnings round me shine,
And won the stillness of Hawaiian snow;
The votary’s sad surrender do I know;
Joy have I had of passion and of wine;
Nor shines the light of poesy less divine
Though science’s white cressets round me glow...
Has any one seen my Fair,
Has any one seen my Dear?
Could any one tell me where
And whither she went from here?
The road is winding and long,
With many a turn and twist,
And one could easy go wrong,
Or ever one thought or list.
How should one know my Fair,
And how should one know my Dear?
By the dazzle of...
Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man’s heart within.
They were strolling together up the hill,
Where the wind comes blowing merry and chill;
And it blew the curls, a...
