Works

I.


As the blind Milton's memory of light,
The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone,
Wrought joys for them surpassing all things known
In our restricted sphere of sound and sight, -...

'T is not alone that black and yawning void
That makes her heart ache with this hungry pain,
But the glad sense of life hath been destroyed,
The lost delight may never come again....

O strange, dim other-world revealed to us,
Beginning there where ends reality,
Lying 'twixt life and death, and populous


With souls from either sphere! now enter we...

An Apologue.


("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.")


No man had ever heard a nightingale,...

1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent.

2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe,
...

"Conquer the gloomy night of thy sorrow, for the morning greets
thee with laughter.
Rise and clothe thyself with noble pride,
Break loose from the tyranny of grief.
Thou standest alone among men,...

1856.


Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
And martial strains, the full-voiced paean swells....

(From the German of Heine)


In the evening through her garden
Wanders the Alcalde's daughter,
Festal sounds of drum and trumpet
Ring out hither from the Castle.

...

Not a lad in Saragossa
Nobler-featured, haughtier-tempered,
Than the Alcalde's youthful grandson,
Donna Clara's boy Pedrillo.


Handsome as the Prince of Evil,
And devout as St. Ignatius....

"I would not have," he said,
"Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
Round me when I am dead.


"Music and flowers and light,...

Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope,
The freshness of the elder lays, the might
Of manly, modern passion shall alight
Upon my Muse's lips, nor may I cope...

Rest, beauty, stillness: not a waif of a cloud
From gray-blue east sheer to the yellow west -
No film of mist the utmost slopes to shroud.


The earth lies grace, by quiet airs caressed,...

I.


The shadow of the houses leave behind,
In the cool boscage of the grove reclined,
The wine of friendship from love's goblet drink,
And entertain with cheerful speech the mind.

...

From the oped lattice glance once more abroad
While the ethereal moontide bathes with light
Hill, stream, and garden, and white-winding road.


All gracious myths born of the shadowy night...

She feels outwearied, as though o'er her head
A storm of mighty billows broke and passed.
Whose hand upheld her? Who her footsteps led
To this green haven of sweet rest at last?...

The ceaseless whirr of crickets fills the ear
From underneath each hedge and bush and tree,
Deep in the dew-drenched grasses everywhere.


The simple sound dispels the fantasy...

Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
Behind thy pearly veil's
Opaque, mysterious woof?


Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long...

I never see, after nocturnal rain,
The wandering stars move through the air serene,
And flame forth 'twixt the dew-fall and the rime,
But I behold her radiant eyes wherein...

My friend spoke with insinuating tongue:
"Drink wine, and thy flesh shall be made whole. Look how
it hisses in the leathern bottle like a captured serpent."
Oh fool! can the sun be forged into a cask stopped with...

I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight,
How now by force and now by stealth he steals,
How he will threaten now, anon will smite,
And how unstable are his chariot wheels....