They chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone;
The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own;
The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone.
Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her,
Ye left her there alone!
My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain;
The night...
The love of man and woman is as fire,
To warm, to light, but surely to consume
And self-consuming die. There is no room
For constancy and passionate desire.
We stand at last beside a wasted pyre,
Touch its dead embers, groping in the gloom;
And where an altar stood, erect a tomb,
And sing a requiem to a broken lyre.
But comrade-...
We summoned not the Silent Guest,
And no man spake his name;
By lips unseen our Cup was pressed,
And mid the merry song and jest,
The Uninvited came.
Wise were they in the days of old,
Who gave the Stranger place;
And when the joyous catch was trolled,
And toasts were quaffed and tales were told,
They looked him...
He caught his chisel, hastened to his bench,
And, kneeling on one knee before one more
Pale page of uncarved marble, murmured fast,
“Here will I ask it! here in marble! here
Will I carve well the restless, patient sphinx,
With eyes that burn, though prisoned all the while
In dull, cold stone: what is Life for? what for?”
And he wrought...
Many things thou hast given me, dear heart;
But one thing thou hast taken: that high dream
Of heaven as of a country that should seem
Beyond all glory that divinest art
Has pictured:—with this I have had to part
Since knowing thee;—how long, love, will the gleam
Of each day’s sunlight on my pathway stream,
Richer than what seemed richest...
On softest pillows my dim eyes unclose;
No pain,—delicious weariness instead;
Sweet silence broods around the quiet bed,
And round me breathes the fragrance of the rose.
The moonlight leans against the pane, and shows
The little leaves outside in watchful dread
Keeping their guard; while with swift, noiseless tread
Love in its lovelier...
who are ye, spirits, that stand
In the outer gloom,
Each with a blazing heart in hand,
Which lighteth the dark beyond the tomb?
“Oh, we be souls that loved
Too well, too well!
Yet, for that love, though sore reproved,
(Oh, sore reproved!) have we ’scaped hell.
“’Scaped hell, but gained not heaven....
I
my foe was dark, and stern, and grim,
I lived my life in fear of him.
I passed no secret, darkened nook
Without a shuddering, furtive look,
Lest he should take me unawares
In some one of his subtle snares.
Even in broad noon the thought of him
Turned all the blessed sunlight dim,
Stole the rich color from the rose,...
The promise of these fragrant flowers,
The fruit that ’neath these blossoms lies
Once hung, they say, in Eden’s bowers,
And tempted Eve in Paradise.
O fairest daughter of Eve’s blood,
Lest her misprision thine should be,
I ’ve nipped temptation in the bud
And send this snowy spray to thee.
Sullen and dull, in the September day,
On the bank of the river,
They waited the boat that should bear them away
From their poor homes forever.
For progress strides on, and the order had gone
To these wards of the nation:
“Give us land and more room,” was the cry, “and move on
To the next reservation.”
With her babe, she...
