Works

The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city,
Over the pale grey tumbled towers,
And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls.
Along damp sinuous streets it crawls,...

Well, it was two days after my husband died,
Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number four, the room with the red wall-paper,...

Now, when the moon slid under the cloud
And the cold clear dark of starlight fell,
He heard in his blood the well-known bell
Tolling slowly in heaves of sound,
Slowly beating, slowly beating,...

The half-shut doors through which we heard that music
Are softly closed. Horns mutter down to silence.
The stars whirl out, the night grows deep.
Darkness settles upon us. A vague refrain...

I've been to the old farm-house, good-wife,
Where you and I were wed;
Where the love was born to our two hearts
That now lies cold and dead.
Where a long-kept secret to you I told,...

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute...

?

I am any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past....

Here is one picture of the human world:
An unreaped field and Death, the harvester,
Taking his rest beside a gathered sheaf
Of poppy and white lilies. At his side...

I.

My Lord, I know your noble ear
Woe ne'er assails in vain;
Embolden'd thus, I beg you'll hear
Your humble slave complain,
How saucy Phoebus' scorching beams
In flaming summer-pride,...

[1]

A man that loved, - and loved his wife, -
Still led an almost joyless life.
No tender look, nor gracious word,
Nor smile, that, coming from a bride,
Its object would have deified,...

Woman in everything yields to man; but in that which is highest,
Even the manliest man yields to the woman most weak.
But that highest, what is it? The gentle radiance of triumph...

War
I abhor,
And yet how sweet
The sound along the marching street
Of drum and fife, and I forget
Wet eyes of widows, and forget
Broken old mothers, and the whole
Dark butchery without a soul....

"To the farthest star of all,
Go, make a moment's raid.
To the west - escape the earth
Before your pennons fade!
West! west! o'ertake the night
That flees the morning sun....

These, the Wings of the Morning,
An Indian Maiden wove,
Intertwining subtilely
Wands from a willow grove
Beside the Sangamon -
Rude stream of Dreamland Town.
She bound them to my shoulders...

Here in the velvet stillness
The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,
Sleeping in starlight....


A year ago we walked in the jangling city
Together.... forgetful....

A gaunt and relentless wolf, possessed
Of a quite insatiable thirst,
Once paused at a stream to drink and rest,
And found that, bound on a similar quest,
A lamb had arrived there first.
...

In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal,
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel;
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old,...

The verdant ivy clings around
Yon moss be-mantled wall,
As if it sought to hide the stones,
That crumbling soon must fall:
That relic of a bygone age
Now tottering to decay,...

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.
...

Tune - "Maggy Lauder."


I.

I married with a scolding wife
The fourteenth of November;
She made me weary of my life,
By one unruly member.
Long did I bear the heavy yoke,...