Works

At My Fireside

Alone, beneath the darkened sky,
With saddened heart and unstrung lyre,
I heap the spoils of years gone by,
And leave them with a long-drawn sigh,...

Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize,
A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze
Of flaring gas and curious eyes that gaze.

The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide,...

How does the Autumn in her mind conclude
The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes,
Broad on the pages of the days and nights,
In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood?...

Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder...

(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE.)
INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER.


I.
White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white;
Snowdrops that plead for pardon
And pine for fright...

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)


Before the paling of the stars,
Before the winter morn,
Before the earliest cockcrow
Jesus Christ was born:
Born in a stable,
Cradled in a manger,...

Before the rain, low in the obscure east,
Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray;
Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased,
Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay...

Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
Shatters the rainy wind. A myriad leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air.
Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.
...

Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
Shatters the windy rain. A thousand leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air,
Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.
...

I.

All desolate she sate her down
Upon the marble of the temple's stair.
You would have thought her, with her eyes of brown,
Flushed cheeks and hazel hair,
A dryad dreaming there.

II....

The way went under cedared gloom
To moonlight, like a cactus bloom,
Before the entrance of her tomb.

I had an hour of night and thin
Sad starlight; and I set my chin...

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had...

Blacksoil plains were grey soil, grey soil in the drought.
Fifteen years away, and five hundred miles out;
Swag and bag and billy carried all our care
Before we were married, and I wish that I were there.
...

She had a tall man's height or more;
Her face from summer's noontide heat
No bonnet shaded, but she wore
A mantle, to her very feet
Descending with a graceful flow,...

Jacob God's beggar was; and so we wait,
Though ne'er so rich, all beggars at His gate.

'Time to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And make my soul before my pate is bare.'
...

For love's sake, kiss me once again;
I long, and should not beg in vain,
Here's none to spy or see;
Why do you doubt or stay?
I'll taste as lightly as the bee...

If brains be gables & minds, say, the shutters
in a derelict New England Mansion
then intuition is in the
eaves & casements
the well-springs seeping into turrets & cupolas
of all other nether spaces....

How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals;)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to any--What a paradox appears their age;...

Hard are the two first stairs unto a crown:
Which got, the third bids him a king come down.