Works

1.
The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower...

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit...

A broken tale of endless things,
Take, lady: thou art not of those
Who in what vale a fountain springs
Would have its journey close.

Countless beginnings, fair first parts,...

To me, like hauntings of a vagrant breath
From some far forest which I once have known,
The perfume of this flower of verse is blown.
Tho' seemingly soul-blossoms faint to death,...

I dare not ask a kiss,
I dare not beg a smile;
Lest having that, or this,
I might grow proud the while.

No, no, the utmost share
Of my desire shall be,
Only to kiss that air...

More white than whitest lilies far,
Or snow, or whitest swans you are:
More white than are the whitest creams,
Or moonlight tinselling the streams:
More white than pearls, or Juno's thigh,...

Love love begets, then never be
Unsoft to him who's smooth to thee.
Tigers and bears, I've heard some say,
For proffer'd love will love repay:
None are so harsh, but if they find...

Oh beauty that is filled so full of tears,
Where every passing anguish left its trace,
I pray you grant to me this depth of grace:
That I may see before it disappears,...

Your beauty lives in mystic melodies,
And all the light about you breathes a song.
Your voice awakes the dreaming airs that throng
Within our music-haunted memories....

Were you a Greek when all the world was young,
Before the weary years that pass and pass,
Had scattered all the temples on the grass,
Before the moss to marble columns clung?...

Elia, thy reveries and visioned themes
To care's lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove;
Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams,
Soft as the anguish of remembered love:...

1.

Eliza! [1] what fools are the Mussulman sect,
Who, to woman, deny the soul's future existence;
Could they see thee, Eliza! they'd own their defect,...

First of women, best of friends
Take what a village rhymer sends,
A tear wet trifle sent to tell
The giver must bid thee farewell!
And shall I then when o'er the sea
Forget thee? No, it cannot be...

I dare not spoil this spotless page
With any feeble verse of mine;
The Poet's fire has lost its rage,
Around his lyre no myrtles twine.

The voice of fame cannot recal...

And Ellen, when the graybeard years
Have brought us to life's evening hour,
And all the crowded Past appears
A tiny scene of sun and shower,

Then, if I read the page aright...

The green grass is bowing,
The morning wind is in it;
'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
Though it change every minute.

'T is a tune of the Spring;
Every year plays it over...

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Pene'an pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,...

We thank you for a noble work well done.
There is a kindness - ('tis the truer one;
The better part the simpler heart doth know),
The care to give the day a brighter sun
...

Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.

No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,...

I would enshrine in silvern song
The charm that bore our souls along,
As in the sun-flushed days of summer
We felt the pulsings of nature's throng;

When flecks of foam of flying spray...