Works

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted,
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated...

Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world a world how lovely then!
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!...

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,...

[1]

For Monseigneur The Duke Du Maine.

To Jupiter was born a son,[2]
Who, conscious of his origin,
A godlike spirit had within.
To love, such age is little prone;
Yet this celestial boy...

Jupiter had a son, who, sensible of his lofty origin, showed always a god-like spirit. Childhood is not much concerned with loving; yet to the childhood of this young god, loving and wishing to be loved was the chief concern. I...

(R.B.)


He's gone.
I do not understand.
I only know
That as he turned to go
And waved his hand,
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone,
And I was dazzled with a sunset glow,...

Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow...

(November 2, 1899)



I

O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -
Light in their loving as soldiers can be -
First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them...

Double flutes and horns resound
As they dance the idol round;
Jacob's daughters, madly reeling,
Whirl about the golden calf.
Hear them laugh!
Kettledrums and laughter pealing.
...

Great is the Golden Cat who treads
The Blue Roof Garden o'er our heads,
The never tired smiling One
That Human People call the Sun.

He stretches forth his paw at dawn...

Out beyond the sunset could I but find the way,
Is a sleepy blue laguna which widens to a bay,
And there's the Blessed City, so the sailors say,
The Golden City of St. Mary.
...

Through every minute of this day,
Be with me, Lord!
Through every day of all this week,
Be with me, Lord!
Through every week of all this year,
Be with me, Lord!...

In midnight dreams the Wizard came,
And beckoned me away
With tempting hopes of wealth and fame,
He cheered my lonely way.
He led me o'er a dusky heath,
And there a river swept,...

A golden Egg, one every day,
That simpleton's Goose used to lay;
So he killed the poor thing,
Swifter fortune to bring,
And dined off his fortune that day.

Greed Overeaches Itself

When Advent dawns with lessening days,
While earth awaits the angels' hymn;
When bare as branching coral sways
In whistling winds each leafless limb;
When spring is but a spendthrift's dream,...

Gold-haired she stood among the golden-rod,
A girl, embodying all the Golden Age,
Who made that autumn day a glorious page
Out of a book of gold inspired of God
And made for Him by priests and worshippers...

I.

She comes, the dreamy daughter
Of day and night, a girl,
Who o'er the western water
Lifts up her moon of pearl:
Like some Rebecca at the well,
Who fills her jar of crystal shell,...

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,...

From off the earth the vapours curled,
Went up to meet their joy;
The boy awoke, and all the world
Was waiting for the boy!

The sky, the water, the wide earth
Was full of windy play--...

Leafless are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,...