Works

Why do ye call the poet lonely,
Because he dreams in lonely places?
He is not desolate, but only
Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.

Why fades a dream?
An iridescent ray
Flecked in between the tryst
Of night and day.
Why fades a dream?--
Of consciousness the shade
Wrought out by lack of light and made
Upon life's stream....

Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow? -
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew:...

Why is the nameless sorrowing look
So often thought a whim?
God-willed, the willow shades the brook,
The gray owl sings a hymn;

Sadly the winds change, and the rain
Comes where the sunlight fell:...

"Why sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;...

I

That was a great night we spied upon
See-sawing home,
Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars
Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze...
Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river......

That love of letters which is as the light
Of deathless verse, intense, ineffable,
Hath made this scholar's nature like the white,
Pure Roman soul of whom the poets tell.
...

Not squirrels in the park alone
His love and winter-kindness own.
When Literary Fledglings try
Their wings, in first attempt to fly,
They flutter down to Franklin Square,...

To Coroner Merival, greetings, but a voice
Dissentient from much that goes the rounds,
Concerning Elenor Murray. Here's my word:
Give men and women freedom, save the land...

In the parlour of the shanty where the lives have all gone wrong,
When a singer or reciter gives a story or a song,
Where the poet's heart is speaking to their hearts in every line,...

Air - "The Sutor's Dochter."




I.

Wilt thou be my dearie?
When sorrow wrings thy gentle heart,
Wilt thou let me cheer thee?
By the treasure of my soul,...

O harass not a driven leaf,
Nor stubble dry in wrath pursue;
A life so brief load not with grief,
Nor with thine arrow pierce me through.

The fragile leaf, by tempest tost,...

From The Young Astronomer's Poem

I.

AMBITION

Another clouded night; the stars are hid,
The orb that waits my search is hid with them.
Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year,...

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw;
While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,...

Green star Sirius
Dribbling over the lake;
The stars have gone so far on their road,
Yet we're awake!

Without a sound
The new young year comes in
And is half-way over the lake....

"These winter days," my father says,
"When mornings blow and bite and freeze,
And hens sit cackling in the straw,
Stiff with the frost as gates that wheeze,
Remind me of my youth when, raw,...

Oh wind-swept towers,
Oh endlessly blossoming trees,
White clouds and lucid eyes,
And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant
With who knows what of subtlety
And magical curves and limbs--...

Dark frost was in the air without,
The dusk was still with cold and gloom,
When less than even a shadow came
And stood within the room.

But of the three around the fire,...

The prospect is bare and white,
And the air is crisp and chill;
While the ebon wings of night
Are spread on the distant hill.

The roar of the stormy sea
Seem the dirges shrill and sharp...

I watch the great clear twilight
Veiling the ice-bowed trees;
Their branches tinkle faintly
With crystal melodies.
The larches bend their silver
Over the hush of snow;...