I have two friends—two glorious friends—two better could not be,
And every night when midnight tolls they meet to laugh with me.
The first was shot by Carlist thieves—ten years ago in Spain.
The second drowned near Alicante—while I alive remain.
I love to see their dim white forms come floating through the night,
And grieve to see them fade away in...
Now the frosty stars are gone:
I have watched them one by one,
Fading on the shores of Dawn.
Round and full the glorious sun
Walks with level step the spray,
Through this vestibule of Day,
While the wolves that late did howl
Slink to dens and converts foul,
Guarded by the demon owl,
Who, last night, with mocking croon,...
Daughter of Egypt, veil thine eyes!
I cannot bear their fire;
Nor will I touch with sacrifice
Those altars of desire.
For they are flames that shun the day,
And their unholy light
Is fed from natures gone astray
In passion and in night.
The stars of Beauty and of Sin,
They burn amid the dark,
Like...
From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And...
foreseen in the vision of sages,
Foretold when martyrs bled,
She was born of the longing of ages,
By the truth of the noble dead
And the faith of the living fed!
No blood in her lightest veins
Frets at remembered chains,
Nor shame of bondage has bowed her head.
In her form and features still...
Thee finds me in the garden, Hannah,—come in! ’T is kind of thee
To wait until the Friends were gone, who came to comfort me.
The still and quiet company a peace may give, indeed,
But blessed is the single heart that comes to us at need.
Come, sit thee down! Here is the bench where Benjamin would sit
On First-day afternoons in spring, and watch the...
“give us a song!” the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.
The dark Redan, in silent scoff,
Lay, grim and threatening, under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.
There was a pause. A guardsman said,
“We...
Ah, moment not to be purchased,
Not to be won by prayer,
Not by toil to be conquered,
But given, lest one despair,
By the Gods in wayward kindness,
Stay—thou art all too fair!
Hour of the dancing measures,
Sylph of the dew and rainbow,
Let us clutch thy shining hair!
For the mist is blown from the mind,
For the...
Though thy constant love I share,
Yet its gift is rarer;
In my youth I thought thee fair:
Thou art older and fairer!
Full of more than young delight
Now day and night are;
For the presence, then so bright,
Is closer, brighter.
In the haste of youth we miss
Its best of blisses:
Sweeter than the stolen...
The sun comes up and the sun goes down;
The night mist shroudeth the sleeping town;
But if it be dark or if it be day,
If the tempests beat or the breezes play,
Still here on this upland slope I lie,
Looking up to the changeful sky.
Naught am I but a fallow field;
Never a crop my acres yield.
Over the wall at my right hand...
