Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast The breast that fed thee - Death, disguiseless, stern; Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn, The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast...
Now were the Titans gathered round their king, In a waste region slipping tow'rd the verge Of drear extremities that clasp the world - A land half-moulded by the hasty gods,...
What hand is this, that unresisted grips My spirit as with chains, and from the sound And light of dreams, compels me to the bound Where darkness waits with wide, expectant lips?...
Art thou more fair For all the beauty gathered up in thee, As gold and gems within some lightless sea? For light of flowers, and bloom of tinted air, Art thou more fair?
The world upheld their pillars for awhile - Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood, The hot wind sifts across the solitude The sand that once was wall and peristyle,...
What islands marvellous are these, That gem the sunset's tides of light - Opals aglow in saffron seas? How beautiful they lie, and bright, Like some new-found Hesperides! ...
All drear and barren seemed the hours, That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown. The dead leaves fell like brownish notes Within the rain's grey monotone.
Now as the twilight's doubtful interval Closes with night's accomplished certainty, A wizard wind goes crying eerily; And in the glade unsteady shadows crawl, Timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fall...
O fugitive fragrances That tremble heavenward Unceasing, or if ye linger, Halt but as memories On the verge of forgetfulness, Why must ye pass so fleetly On wings that are less than wind,...
I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height, A mountain's utmost eminence of snow, Whence I beheld the plain outstretched below To a far sea-horizon, dim and white. Beneath the sun's expiring, ghastly light,...
What hast thou seen, O wind, Of beauty or of terror Surpassing, denied to us, That with precipitate wings, Mad and ecstatical, Thou spurnest the hollows and trees That offer thee refuge of peace,...
Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb, The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head, Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead From pallid skies more death-like than the gloom....
All night the pool held mysteries, Vague depths of night that lay in dream, Where phantoms of the pale-white stars Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam.
Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world, Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun - Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun Beneath the roof of Night, and torn or furled...
Incumbent seemingly On the jagged points of peaks That end the visible west, The rounded moon yet floods The valleys hitherward With fall of torrential light, Ere from the overmost...