Bend low, O dusky Night,
And give my spirit rest.
Hold me to your deep breast,
And put old cares to flight.
Give back the lost delight
That once my soul possest,
When Love was loveliest.
Bend low, O dusky Night!
Enfold me in your arms—
The sole embrace I crave
Until the embracing grave
Shield...
Beneath the midnight moon of May,
Through dusk on either hand,
One sheet of silver spreads the bay,
One crescent jet the land;
The black ships mirrored in the stream
Their ghostly tresses shake—
When will the dead world cease to dream?
When will the morning break?
Beneath a night no longer May,
Where only cold...
Close on the edge of a midsummer dawn
In troubled dreams I went from land to land,
Each seven-colored like the rainbow’s arc,
Regions where never fancy’s foot had trod
Till then; yet all the strangeness seemed not strange,
At which I wondered, reasoning in my dream
With two-fold sense, well knowing that I slept.
At last I came to this our...
The wintry blast goes wailing by,
The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry’s tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.
Dim forms go flitting through the gloom;
The soldiers cluster round the blaze
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.
My sabre swinging overhead
...
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...
Night after night we dauntlessly embark
On slumber’s stream, in whose deep waves are drowned
Sorrow and care, and with all senses bound
Drift for a while beneath the sombre arc
Of that full circle made of light and dark
Called life, yet have no fear, and know refound
Lost consciousness shall be, even at the sound
Of the first warble of...
The sun is sinking over hill and sea,
Its red light fires a spectral line of shore;
Night droops upon our half-world mistily
With sombre glory and ghost-haunted lore;
The stars show dim and pallid in the sky,
Vague, wraith-white glimmerings of volcanic spheres,
And a slim crescent of the moon appears
Like some young herald in the...
The bearded grass waves in the summer breeze;
The sunlight sleeps along the distant hills;
Faint is the music of the murmuring rills,
And faint the drowsy piping of the bees.
The languid leaves scarce stir upon the trees,
And scarce is heard the clangor of the mills
In the far distance, and the high, sharp trills
Of the cicada die upon...
flower of the moon!
Still white is her brow whom we worshiped on earth long ago;
Yea, purer than pearls in deep seas, and more virgin than snow.
The dull years veil their eyes from her shining, and vanish afraid,
Nor profane her with age—the immortal, nor dim her with shade.
It is we are unworthy, we worldlings, to dwell in her ways;
We...
The moon has left the sky,
The Pleiades are flown,
Midnight is creeping nigh,
And I am still alone.
Ah me! how long, how long
Are all these weary hours!
I hate the night-bird’s song
Among the Lesbian flowers.
I hate the soft, sweet breeze
That comes to kiss my hair
From oleander trees
And waters cool...
