Days of my youth,
Ye have glided away;
Hairs of my youth,
Ye are frosted and gray;
Eyes of my youth,
Your keen sight is no more;
Cheeks of my youth,
Ye are furrowed all o’er;
Strength of my youth,
All your vigor is gone;
Thoughts of my youth,
Your gay visions are flown.
...
Often i think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”...
There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pain:
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.
We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood’s sterner reign:
Still we feel that something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will...
Lofty against our Western dawn uprises Achilles:
He among heroes alone singeth or toucheth the lyre.
Few, and dimmed by grief, are the days that to him are appointed!
Love he shall know but to lose, life but to cast it away.
Dreaming of peace and a bride, he sees not the foes at the portal:
Paris, a traitor to love; Phœbus, accorder of song!
Out of the heart there flew a little singing bird,
Past the dawn and the dew, where leaves of morning stirred,
And the heart, which followed on, said: “Though the bird be flown
Which sang in the dew and the dawn, the song is still my own.”
Over the foot-worn track, over the rock and thorn,
The tired heart looked back to the olive leaves of morn,...
I would unto my fair restore
A simple thing:
The flushing cheek she had before!
Out-velveting
No more, no more,
By Severn shore,
The carmine grape, the moth’s auroral wing.
Ah, say how winds in flooding grass
Unmoor the rose;
Or guileful ways the salmon pass
To sea, disclose;
For so, alas,
With...
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!
If I must die,
The earth is inarticulate to sing
The dirge I crave:
The sorrow of the murmur-laden wave,
The sea-born wind complaining ’neath the sky,
And round my head the waters’ silver ring.
If I must live,
And feel the ashes of oblivion
About my soul,
Let life be fearful, let me feel the whole,
Despair, and...
From “Festus”
SAY gray-beards what they please,
The heart of age is like an emptied wine-cup;
Its life lies in a heel-tap: how can age judge?
’T were a waste of time to ask how they wasted theirs;
But while the blood is bright, breath sweet, skin smooth,
And limbs all made to minister delight;
Ere yet we have shed our locks, like...
Where art thou gone, light-ankled Youth?
With wing at either shoulder,
And smile that never left thy mouth
Until the Hours grew colder:
Then some one seemed to whisper near
That thou and I must part;
I doubted it; I felt no fear,
No weight upon the heart.
If aught befell it, Love was by
And rolled it off...
