The fields were silent, and the woodland drear,
The moon had set, and clouds hid all the stars;
And blindly, when a footfall met my ear,
I reached across the bars.
And swift as thought this hand was clasped in thine,
Though darkness hung around us and above;
Not guided by uncertain fate to mine,
But by the law of love....
In shining groups, each stem a pearly ray,
Weird flecks of light within the shadowed wood,
They dwell aloof, a spotless sisterhood.
No Angelus, except the wild bird’s lay,
Awakes these forest nuns; yet night and day
Their heads are bent, as if in prayerful mood.
A touch will mar their snow, and tempests rude
Defile; but in the mist fresh...
We wondered why he always turned aside
When mirth and gladness filled the brimming days:
Who else so fit as he for pleasure’s ways?
Men thought him frozen by a selfish pride;
But that his voice was music none denied,
Or that his smile was like the sun’s warm rays.
One day upon the sands he spoke in praise
Of swimmers who were buffeting...
Here lived the soul enchanted
By melody of song;
Here dwelt the spirit haunted
By a demoniac throng;
Here sang the lips elated;
Here grief and death were sated;
Here loved and here unmated
Was he, so frail, so strong.
Here wintry winds and cheerless
The dying firelight blew,
While he whose song was...
I think that we retain of our dead friends
And absent ones no general portraiture;
That perfect memory does not long endure,
But fades and fades until our own life ends.
Unconsciously, forgetfulness attends
That grief for which there is no other cure,
But leaves of each lost one some record sure,—
A look, an act, a tone,—something that...
It was a still autumnal day—
So sadly still and strangely bright—
The hectic glow of quick decay
Tinged everything with lovely light.
It warmly touched the fragrant air
And fields of corn and crumbling vines
Along the golden Yadkin, where
We walked among the whispering pines
Alas, that tender hectic glow
Shone...
When wintry days are dark and drear
And all the forest ways grow still,
When gray snow-laden clouds appear
Along the bleak horizon hill,
When cattle all are snugly penned
And sheep go huddling close together,
When steady streams of smoke ascend
From farm-house chimneys,—in such weather
Give me old Carolina’s own,...
Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then, a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
Whence, o fragrant form of light,
Hast thou drifted through the night,
Swanlike, to a leafy nest,
On the restless waves, at rest?
Art thou from the snowy zone
Of a mountain-summit blown,
Or the blossom of a dream,
Fashioned in the foamy stream?
Nay,—methinks the maiden moon,
When the daylight came too soon,
...
at shelley’s birth,
The Lark, dawn-spirit, with an anthem loud
Rose from the dusky earth
To tell it to the Cloud,
That, like a flower night-folded in the gloom,
Burst into morning bloom.
At Shelley’s death,
The Sea, that deemed him an immortal, saw
A god’s extinguished breath,...
