If spirits walk, love, when the night climbs slow
The slant footpath where we were wont to go,
Be sure that I shall take the selfsame way
To the hill-crest, and shoreward, down the gray,
Sheer, gravelled slope, where vetches straggling grow.
Look for me not when gusts of winter blow,
When at thy pane beat hands of sleet and snow;
...
The water sings along our keel,
The wind falls to a whispering breath;
I look into your eyes and feel
No fear of life or death;
So near is love, so far away
The losing strife of yesterday.
We watch the swallow skim and dip;
Some magic bids the world be still;
Life stands with finger upon lip;
Love hath his gentle...
Thy face I have seen as one seeth
A face in a dream,
Soft drifting before me as drifteth
A leaf on the stream:
A face such as evermore fleeth
From following feet,
A face such as hideth and shifteth
Evasive and sweet.
Thy voice I have heard as one heareth,
Afar and apart,
The wood-thrush that rapturous...
The gray waves rock against the gray skyline,
And break complaining on the long gray sand,
Here where I sit, who cannot understand
Their voice of pain, nor this dumb pain of mine;
For I, who thought to fare till my days end,
Armed sorrow-proof in sorrow, having known
How hearts bleed slow when brave lips make no moan,
How Life...
Quiet as are the quiet skies
He watches where the city lies
Floating in vision clear or dim
Through sun or rain beneath his eyes;
Her songs, her laughter, and her cries
Hour after hour drift up to him.
Her days of glory or disgrace
He watches with unchanging face;
He knows what midnight crimes are done,
What horrors...
O little buds, break not so fast!
The spring’s but new.
The skies will yet be brighter blue,
And sunny too.
I would you might thus sweetly last
Till this glad season’s overpast,
Nor hasten through.
It is so exquisite to feel
The light warm sun;
To merely know the winter done,
And life begun;...
The cactus towers, straight and tall,
Through fallow fields of chapparal;
And here and there, in paths apart,
A dusky peon guides his cart,
And yokes of oxen journey slow,
In Mexico.
And oft some distant thinkling tells
Of muleteers, with wagon bells
That jangle sweet across the maize,
And green...
Not lips of mine have ever said:
“Would God that I were dead!”
Nay, cruel griefs! ye cannot break
My love of life; nor can ye make
Oblivion blest in any wise,
Nor death seem sweet for sorrow’s sake.
Life! life! my every pulse outcries
For life, and love, and quickened breath,
O God,—not not for death!
Dear marshes, by no hand of man
Laboriously sown,
My river clasps you in its arms
And claims you for its own!
It laughs, and laughs, and twinkles on
Across the reedy soil,
That heed of harvest vexes not,
Nor need of any toil.
And in my heart I joy to know
That safe within this spot
Sweet...
The sudden thrust of speech is no mean test
Of man or woman. Caesar, with his cry
Of anguish,—Pilate, putting justice by,—
Into three words a human soul compressed;
Three broke from Galileo’s brooding breast;
And Desdemona, instant to reply
“Nobody—I myself,” is by that lie
In all her purity made manifest.
But Tito, Tito, standing...
