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Alas! he's cold!
Cold as the marble which his fingers wrought -
Cold, but not dead; for each embodied thought
Of his, which he from the Ideal brought
To live in stone,
Assures him immortality of fame....

Familiar with thy melody,
We go debating of its power,
As churls, who hear it hour by hour,
Contemn the skylark's minstrelsy--

As shepherds on a Highland lea
Think lightly of the heather flower...

Golden-hair'd Ally whose name is one with mine,
Crazy with laughter and babble and earth's new wine,
Now that the flower of a year and a half is thine,
O little blossom, O mine, and mine of mine,...

All ’round us sand. A chain of barracks,
Surrounded on all sides by barbed wire.
We’re just like beetles delving in our dunghills.
This is our lodging. This is where we’re mired....

I.

Dear little one with eyes so blue,
And silken ringlets of flaxen hair!
Oh, may life have in store for you
Something better than anguish and care!
Oh, may thy footsteps guided be...

E ach wish, my fairest child, I pen,
F or thee I write with earnest heart;
F or who shall say, that ere, again,
I shall behold thee; when we part
E 'en now the time is near, I start.
...

Come with me, little maid,
Nay, shrink not, thus afraid
I'll harm thee not!
Fly not, my love, from me
I have a home for thee
A fairy grot,
Where mortal eye
Can rarely pry,...

Into the world you came, and I was dumb,
Because "God did it," so the wise ones said;
I wonder sometimes "Did you really come?"
And "Are you truly . . . DEAD?"
...

I could wish you all who love,
That ye could your thoughts remove
From your mistresses, and be
Wisely wanton, like to me,
I could wish you dispossessed
Of that fiend that mars your rest,...

INSCRIBED IN "TALES OF THE OCEAN"

This first book that I ever knew
Was read aloud to me by you -
Friend of my boyhood, therefore take
It back from me, for old times' sake -...

Thy hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright
As in that well-remember'd night
When first thy mystic braid was wove,
And first my Agnes whisper'd love.

Since then how often hast thou prest...

Thee for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm, even as now the snow the winter-day declining;
Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive;...

I cannot look upon thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
A spirit, though afar,...

I seek no more to bridge the gulf that lies
Betwixt our separate ways;
For vainly my heart prays,
Hope droops her head and dies;
I see the sad, tired answer in your eyes.
...

Thou art not dead, O sweet lost melody,
Sung beyond memory,
When golden to the winds this world of ours
Waved wild with boundless flowers;
Sung in some past when wildernesses were,-...

Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie!
Your impudence protects you sairly:
I canna say by ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho' faith, I fear, ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.
...

Madonna, mistress, I would build for thee
An altar deep in the sad soul of me;
And in the darkest corner of my heart,
From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart,
Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine...

You say, you love me! that I thus must prove:
It that you lie, then I will swear you love.

Missal of the Gothic age,
Missal with the blazoned page,
Whence, O Missal, hither come,
From what dim scriptorium?

Whose the name that wrought thee thus,
Ambrose or Theophilus,...

Are the sports of our youth so displeasing?
Is love but the folly you say?
Benumbed with the winter, and freezing,
You scold at the revels of May.

For you once a nymph had her charms,...