I see the cloud-born squadrons of the gale,
Their lines of rain like glittering spears deprest,
While all the affrighted land grows darkly pale
In flashing charge on earth’s half-shielded breast.
Sounds like the rush of trampling columns float
From that fierce conflict; volleyed thunders peal,
Blent with the maddened wind’s wild buglenote...
She ’s loveliest of the festal throng
In delicate form and Grecian face,—
A beautiful, incarnate song,
A marvel of harmonious grace,
And yet I know the truth I speak:
From those gay groups she stands apart,
A rose upon her tender cheek,
A thorn within her heart.
Though bright her eyes’ bewildering gleams,
...
A little while (my life is almost set!)
I fain would pause along the downward way,
Musing an hour in this sad sunset-ray,
While, Sweet! our eyes with tender tears are wet:
A little hour I fain would linger yet.
A little while I fain would linger yet,
All for love’s sake, for love that cannot tire;
Though fervid youth be dead,...
I think it is over, over,
I think it is over at last:
Voices of foemen and lover,
The sweet and the bitter have passed:
Life, like a tempest of ocean
Hath outblown its ultimate blast:
There ’s but a faint sobbing seaward
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward,
And behold! like the welcoming quiver
Of heart-pulses...
Life
our share of night to bear,
Our share of morning,
Our blank in bliss to fill,
Our blank in scorning.
Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way.
Here a mist, and there a mist,
Afterwards—day!
A BOOK
HE ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he...
Choice
of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;
When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;
When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away,—
...
The waking YEAR
A LADY red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!
The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vail, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?
The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile,—...
Too late
delayed till she had ceased to know,
Delayed till in its vest of snow
Her loving bosom lay:
An hour behind the fleeting breath,
Later by just an hour than death,—
Oh, lagging yesterday!
Could she have guessed that it would be;
Could but a crier of the glee
Have climbed the distant hill;
Had not the...
Shall we meet no more, my love, at the binding of the sheaves,
In the happy harvest-fields, as the sun sinks low,
When the orchard paths are dim with the drift of fallen leaves,
And the reapers sing together, in the mellow, misty eves:
O, happy are the apples when the south winds blow!
Love met us in the orchard, ere the corn had gathered plume,—...
On the road, the lonely road,
Under the cold white moon,
Under the ragged trees he strode;
He whistled and shifted his weary load—
Whistled a foolish tune.
There was a step timed with his own,
A figure that stooped and bowed—
A cold, white blade that gleamed and shone,
Like a splinter of daylight downward thrown—...
