Teach me the secret of thy loveliness, That, being made wise, I may aspire to be As beautiful in thought, and so express Immortal truths to earth’s mortality; Though to my soul ability be less Than ’t is to thee, O sweet anemone. Teach me the secret of thy innocence, That in simplicity I may grow wise, Asking from Art no other recompense Than the approval of her own just eyes; So may I rise to some fair eminence, Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies. Teach me these things, through whose high knowledge, I,— When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins, And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie In that vast house, common to serfs and Thanes,— I shall not die, I shall not utterly die, For beauty born of beauty—that remains.
To a Wind-Flower
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From “Myth and Romance” THERE is no rhyme that is half so sweet As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat; There is no metre that ’s half so fine As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine; And the loveliest lyric I ever heard Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.— If the wind and the...
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What shall her silence keep Under the sun? Here, where the willows weep And waters run; Here, where she lies asleep, And all is done. Lights, when the tree-top swings; Scents that are sown; Sounds of the wood-bird’s wings; And the bee’s drone: These be her comfortings Under the stone. What shall...
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The song-birds? are they flown away? The song-birds of the summer-time, That sang their souls into the day, And set the laughing days to rhyme?— No catbird scatters through the hush The sparkling crystals of its song; Within the woods no hermit-thrush Trails an enchanted flute along, A...
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With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning’s face, then turns away With schoolboy feet, all wet with dew, Out for a holiday. The hill brook sings, incessant stars, Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast; And where he wades its water-bars Its song is happiest. A comrade of the chinquapin, He...
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The wind IN THE PINES WHEN winds go organing through the pines On hill and headland, darkly gleaming, Meseems I hear sonorous lines Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming. OPPORTUNITY BEHOLD a hag whom Life denies a kiss As he rides questward in knight-errant-wise; Only when he hath passed her is...