I've dropped my Brain — My Soul is numb —
The Veins that used to run
Stop palsied — 'tis Paralysis
Done perfecter on stone
Vitality is Carved and cool.
My nerve in Marble lies —
A Breathing Woman
Yesterday — Endowed with Paradise.
Not dumb — I had a sort that moved —...
I've got an arrow here.
Loving the hand that sent it
I the dart revere.
Fell, they will say, in "skirmish"!
Vanquished, my soul will know
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow.
I've heard an Organ talk, sometimes
In a Cathedral Aisle,
And understood no word it said —
Yet held my breath, the while —
And risen up — and gone away,
A more Berdardine Girl —
Yet — know not what was done to me
In that old Chapel Aisle.
I've known a Heaven, like a Tent —
To wrap its shining Yards —
Pluck up its stakes, and disappear —
Without the sound of Boards
Or Rip of Nail — Or Carpenter —
But just the miles of Stare —
That signalize a Show's Retreat —
In North America —
No Trace — no Figment of the...
I've none to tell me to but Thee
So when Thou failest, nobody.
It was a little tie —
It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary —
If things were opposite — and Me
And Me it were — that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering...
I've nothing else — to bring, You know —
So I keep bringing These —
Just as the Night keeps fetching Stars
To our familiar eyes —
Maybe, we shouldn't mind them —
Unless they didn't come —
Then — maybe, it would puzzle us
To find our way Home —
I've seen a dying eye
Run round and round a room
In search of something, as it seemed,
Then cloudier become ;
And then, obscure with fog,
And then be soldered down,
Without disclosing what it be,
'T were blessed...
"How the shadow the Ideal throws before it
darkens the actual." -- Zanoni
"La vie est un sommeil, l'amour en est le rêve;."
A sad, sweet dream; it fell upon my soul
When song and thought first woke their echoes there,
Swaying my...
I've met thee, whom I dared not hope to meet,
Save in the enchanted land of my day-dreams:
Yes, in this common world, this waking state,
Thy living presence on my vision beams --
Life's dream embodied in reality,
And in thine eyes I read indifference to me!...
Ideals are the Fairly Oil
With which we help the Wheel
But when the Vital Axle turns
The Eye rejects the Oil.