Grey drizzling mists the moorlands drape, Rain whitens the dead sea, From headland dim to sullen cape Grey sails creep wearily. I know not how that merchantman Has found the heart; but 't is her plan...
(After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the 54th Massachusetts.)
A mile behind is Gloucester town Where the fishing fleets put in, A mile ahead the land dips down And the woods and farms begin. Here, where the moors stretch free In the high blue afternoon,...
This string upon my harp was best beloved: I thought I knew its secrets through and through; Till an old man, whose young eyes lightened blue 'Neath his white hair, bent over me and moved...
To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire, And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire, And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire. ...
Nay, move not! Sit just as you are, Under the carved wings of the chair. The hearth-glow sifting through your hair Turns every dim pearl to a star Dawn-drowned in floods of brightening air. ...
I wonder can this be the world it was At sunset? I remember the sky fell Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends, But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs As if to shut the city from God's eyes...
Streets of the roaring town, Hush for him, hush, be still! He comes, who was stricken down Doing the word of our will. Hush! Let him have his state, Give him his soldier's crown....
Leave the early bells at chime, Leave the kindled hearth to blaze, Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time, Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,...
He plays the deuce with my writing time, For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws; He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme, And he leaves me--well, God knows...
The opal heart of afternoon Was clouding on to throbs of storm, Ashen within the ardent west The lips of thunder muttered harm, And as a bubble like to break Hung heaven's trembling amethyst,...
Through his might men work their wills. They have boweled out the hills For food to keep him toiling in the cages they have wrought; And they fling him, hour by hour, Limbs of men to give him power;...
This, then, is she, My mother as she looked at seventeen, When she first met my father. Young incredibly, Younger than spring, without the faintest trace Of disappointment, weariness, or tean...
I sat beside the glassy evening sea, One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre, And all its strings of laughter and desire Crushed in the rank wet grasses heedlessly;...
All day he drowses by the sail With dreams of her, and all night long The broken waters are at song Of how she lingers, wild and pale, When all the temple lights are dumb,...
Thank God my brain is not inclined to cut Such capers every day! I 'm just about Mellow, but then--There goes the tent-flap shut. Rain 's in the wind. I thought so: every snout...