Between the falling leaf and rose-bud’s breath;
The bird’s forsaken nest and her new song
(And this is all the time there is for Death);
The worm and butterfly—it is not long!
-
-
The general dashed along the road
Amid the pelting rain;
How joyously his bold face glowed
To hear our cheers’ refrain!His blue blouse flapped in wind and wet,
His boots were splashed with mire,
But round his lips a smile was set,
And in his eyes a fire.A laughing word, a gesture kind,—
We did not ask for... -
Father! whose hard and cruel law
Is part of thy compassion’s plan,
Thy works presumptuously we scan
For what the prophets say they saw.Unbidden still, the awful slope
Walling us in, we climb to gain
Assurance of the shining plain
That faith has certified to hope.In vain: beyond the circling hill
... -
He caught his chisel, hastened to his bench,
And, kneeling on one knee before one more
Pale page of uncarved marble, murmured fast,
“Here will I ask it! here in marble! here
Will I carve well the restless, patient sphinx,
With eyes that burn, though prisoned all the while
In dull, cold stone: what is Life for? what for?”
And he wrought... -
O lifted face of mute appeal!
Poor tongueless pantomime of prayer!
O sullen sea, whose deeps conceal
The children of despair!
O heart that will not look above!
Poor staggering feet that seek the wave!
I would come quick, if I were Love,
And I had power to save.O sinking sunset loneliness
Aflame in hot,... -
I died; they wrapped me in a shroud,
With hollow mourning, far too loud,
And sighs that were but empty sound,
And laid me low within the ground.
I felt her tears through all the rest;
Past sheet and shroud they reached my breast;
They warmed to life the frozen clay,
And I began to smile and say:
At last thou lov’st me,... -
such is the death the soldier dies:
He falls,—the column speeds away;
Upon the dabbled grass he lies,
His brave heart following, still, the fray.The smoke-wraiths drift among the trees,
The battle storms along the hill;
The glint of distant arms he sees;
He hears his comrades shouting still.A glimpse of far-borne...
-
When i forth fare beyond this narrow earth,
With all its metes and bounds of now and here,
And brooding clouds of ignorance and fear
That overhung me on my day of birth,
Wherethrough the jocund sun’s perennial mirth
Has shone more inly bright each coming year
With some new glory of that outer sphere
Where length and breadth and height are... -
“little haly! Little Haly!” cheeps the robin in the tree;
“Little Haly!” sighs the clover, “Little Haly!” moans the bee;
“Little Haly! Little Haly!” calls the kill-deer at twilight;
And the katydids and crickets hollers “Haly!” all the night.The sunflowers and the hollyhawks droops over the garden fence;
The old path down the garden-walks still holds... -
Just ere the darkness is withdrawn,
In seasons of cold or heat,
Close to the boundary line of Dawn
These mystical brothers meet.They clasp their weird and shadowy hands,
As they listen each to each,
But never a mortal understands
Their strange immortal speech.