Works

Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
With lively greenness the new-springing day
Attemper'd, eager now to roam, and search
Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank,...

Soon as the polar light, which never knows
Setting nor rising, nor the shadowy veil
Of other cloud than sin, fair ornament
Of the first heav'n, to duty each one there
Safely convoying, as that lower doth...

"O Thou!" her words she thus without delay
Resuming, turn'd their point on me, to whom
They but with lateral edge seem'd harsh before,
"Say thou, who stand'st beyond the holy stream,...

Mine eyes with such an eager coveting,
Were bent to rid them of their ten years' thirst,
No other sense was waking: and e'en they
Were fenc'd on either side from heed of aught;...

"The heathen, Lord! are come!" responsive thus,
The trinal now, and now the virgin band
Quaternion, their sweet psalmody began,
Weeping; and Beatrice listen'd, sad
And sighing, to the song', in such a mood,...

A dog and cat, messmates for life,
Were often falling into strife,
Which came to scratching, growls, and snaps,
And spitting in the face, perhaps.
A neighbour dog once chanced to call...

Our eyes are not made proof against the fair,
Nor hands against the touch of gold.
Fidelity is sadly rare,
And has been from the days of old.
Well taught his appetite to check,...

Our hands are no more proof against gold than our eyes are proof against beauty. There are but few who guard their treasures with care enough.


...

'What have I done, I'd like to know,
To make my master maim me so?
A pretty figure I shall cut!
From other dogs I'll keep, in kennel shut.
Ye kings of beasts, or rather tyrants, ho!...

"What have I done to be treated in this way? Mutilated by my own master! A nice state to be in! Dare I present myself before other dogs? O ye kings over the animals, or rather tyrants of them, would any creature do the same to ...

I.

I say! hey! cousin there! I mustn't call you brother!
Yet you have a tail behind, and I have another!
You pull, and I pull, though we don't pull together:...

From out the house I crept,
The house which long had caged my homeless life:
The mighty City in vast silence slept,
Dreaming away its tumult, toil, and strife:...

The Lord Said, "What hast thou done?"



Oh, erring Cain,
What hast thou done? Upon the blighted earth
I hear a melancholy wail resounding;
Among the blades of grass where flowers have birth...

A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly spiritual, where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue....

I imagine stars at the dragon's tail,
eyelids ringing with butter.

I want to brush palms as
lightly as two sparks.
take the wand of your waist
in two plush hands
with the pitiless gesture...

There is a place (I know it well)
Where beech trees crowd into a gloom,
And where a twinkling woodland well
Flings from a rock a rippling plume,
And, like a Faun beneath a spell,...

I saw her twins of eyelids listless swoon
Mesmeric eyes,
Like the mild lapsing of a lulling tune
On wide surprise,
While slow the graceful presence of a moon
Mellowed the purple skies.
...

The children awoke in their dreaming
While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
To the heart-light of the hill.

Its sounds and sights were forsaking...

I saw in a vision once, our mother-sphere
The world, her fixed foredoom'd oval tracing,
Rolling and rolling on and resting never,
While like a phantom fell, behind her pacing...

A little child stood moaning
At the hour of midnight lone,
And no human ear was list'ning
To the feebly wailing tone;
The cold, keen blast of winter
With funeral wail swept by,...