The time is come to speak, I think:
For on the square I met
My beauteous widow, fresh and pink,
Her black gown touched at every brink
With tender violet;
And at her throat the white crêpe lisse
Spoke, in a fluffy bow,
Of woe that should perhaps ne’er cease—
(Peace to thy shade, Golightly, peace!)
Yet mitigated...
How shall we tell an angel
From another guest?
How, from the common worldly herd,
One of the blest?
Hint of suppressed halo,
Rustle of hidden wings,
Wafture of heavenly frankincense,—
Which of these things?
The old Sphinx smiles so subtly:
“I give no golden rule,—
Yet would I warn thee, World: treat...
It settles softly on your things,
Impalpable, fine, light, dull, gray:
Her dingy dust-clout Betty brings,
And singing brushes it away:
And it ’s a queen’s robe, once so proud,
And it ’s the moths fed in its fold,
It ’s leaves, and roses, and the shroud
Wherein an ancient saint was rolled.
And it is Beauty’s golden hair...
The sun looked from his everlasting skies,
He laughed into my daily-dying eyes;
He said to me, the brutal shining Sun:
“Poor, fretful, hot, rebellious, little one!
“Thou shalt not find it, yet there shall be truth;
Thou shalt grow old, but yet there shall be youth;
Thou shalt not do, yet great deeds shall be done,—
Believe me, child, I...
Handsome? i hardly know. Her profile ’s fine—
Delightful, intellectual, aquiline.
Her keen eyes light it; keen, yet often kind;
Her fair hair crowns it to an artist’s mind.
Fine figure and fine manners, without doubt,
Determine half her charm, and bear me out.
Learned? Well, rather. See them for yourself—
Mill, Spencer, Darwin, on...
Soft on the sunset sky
Bright daylight closes,
Leaving, when light doth die,
Pale hues that mingling lie,—
Ashes of roses.
When love’s warm sun is set,
Love’s brightness closes;
Eyes with hot tears are wet,
In hearts there linger yet
Ashes of roses.
Dimpled and flushed and dewy pink he lies,
Crumpled and tossed and lapt in snowy bands;
Aimlessly reaching with his tiny hands,
Lifting in wondering gaze his great blue eyes.
Sweet pouting lips, parted by breathing sighs;
Soft cheeks, warm-tinted as from tropic lands;
Framed with brown hair in shining silken strands,—
All fair, all pure,...
I tripped along a narrow way,
Plucking the same flowers, day by day;
The sun which round about me lay
Had never seemed to sink.
But now at once the path divides;
I see new flowers bloom on all sides;
I stop, while doubt the sun half hides:
I have begun to think.
“and you, Sir Poet, shall you make, I pray,
This child a poet with that insight rare
They tell me poets have, that everywhere
He sees new beauties lost to common clay?”
“Nay,” said the poet, “rather lend the boy
Your scarf of gauze, to veil his questioning eye,
Lest in his pleasure he should aught descry
But what is fair; so...
Do not waste your pity, friend,
When you see me weep as now;
Keep it to some better end.
When dry-eyed I went about
With a leaden heart locked in
By a silent tongue, ah! then
Had you brought it, it had been
Sweet indeed to me; but now
When the depths of my despair
Are upheaved and through the portals
Of...
