I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.
Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea,
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow...
Framed in the cavernous fire-place sits a boy,
Watching the embers from his grandsire’s knee:
One sees red castles rise, and laughs with joy;
The other marks them crumble, silently.
Sonnet Xxx.
when to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And...
I Thought our love at full, but I did err;
Joy’s wreath drooped o’er mine eyes; I could not see
That sorrow in our happy world must be
Love’s deepest spokesman and interpreter.
But, as a mother feels her child first stir
Under her heart, so felt I instantly
Deep in my soul another bond to thee
Thrill with that life we saw depart from her...
What if some morning, when the stars were paling,
And the dawn whitened, and the east was clear,
Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence
Of a benignant spirit standing near;
And I should tell him, as he stood beside me:—
“This is our earth—most friendly earth, and fair;
Daily its sea and shore through sun and shadow
...
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
We are spirits clad in veils;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.
Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet...
Before you thought of Spring
Except as a Surmise
You see — God bless his suddenness —
A Fellow in the Skies
Of independent Hues
A little weather worn
Inspiriting habiliments
Of Indigo and Brown —
With specimens of Song
As if for you to choose —
Discretion...
I found the words to every thought
I ever had — but One —
And that — defies me —
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun
To Races — nurtured in the Dark —
How would your own — begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal —
Or Noon — in Mazarin?
I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away —
As Wrecked Men — deem they sight the Land —
At Centre of the Sea —
And struggle slacker — but to prove
As hopelessly as I —
How many the fictitious Shores —
Before the Harbor be —
