If i lay waste and wither up with doubt
The blessed fields of heaven where once my faith
Possessed itself serenely safe from death;
If I deny the things past finding out;
Or if I orphan my own soul of One
That seemed a Father, and make void the place
Within me where He dwelt in power and grace,
What do I gain by that I have undone?
-
-
Betrayal
the sun has kissed the violet sea,
And burned the violet to a rose.
O Sea! wouldst thou not better be
Mere violet still? Who knows? Who knows?
Well hides the violet in the wood:
The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood,
And winter’s ill is violet ’s good;
But the bold glory of the rose,
It quickly... -
The innocent, sweet Day is dead.
Dark Night hath slain her in her bed.
O’ Moors are as fierce to kill as to wed!
—Put out the light, said he.A sweeter light than ever rayed
From star of heaven or eye of maid
Has vanished in the unknown Shade.
—She ’s dead, she ’s dead, said he.Now, in a wild, sad after-mood
The... -
Death, thou ’rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.David to thy distillage went,
Keats, and Gotama excellent,
Omar Khayyám, and Chaucer bright,
And Shakespeare for a king-delight.Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt:
Hand me the... -
out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the... -
Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,—
Emerald twilights,—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet... -
Superb and sole, upon a plumëd spray
That o’er the general leafage boldly grew,
He summ’d the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,
And all birds’ passion-plays that sprinkle dew
At morn in brake or bosky avenue.
Whate’er birds did or dreamed, this bird could... -
Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found,
Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep,
Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap
Upon my spirit’s stage. Then Sight and Sound,
Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound,
And all familiar Forms that firmly keep
Man’s reason in the road, change faces, peep
Betwixt the legs... -
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little gray leaves were kind to Him
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.... -
In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,
Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting,
Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,
Came to the...