Oh, Mignon's mouth is like a rose, A red, red rose, that half uncurls Sweet petals o'er a crimson bee: Or like a shell, that, opening, shows Within its rosy curve white pearls, White rows of pearls,...
Through leafy windows of the trees The full moon shows a wrinkled face, And, trailing dim her draperies Of mist from place to place, The Twilight leads the breeze. ...
There lives a goddess in the West, An island in death-lonesome seas; No towered towns are hers confessed, No castled forts and palaces. Hers, simple worshipers at best, The buds, the birds, the bees....
White clouds and buds and birds and bees, Low wind-notes piped from southern seas, Brought thee a rose-white offering, A flower-like baby with the Spring.
In classic beauty, cold, immaculate, A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands, Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate, That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.
When by the wall the tiger-flower swings A head of sultry slumber and aroma; And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a...
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain; Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain: Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose. The day was dim; now eve comes on again,...
The moon, a circle of gold, O'er the crowded housetops rolled, And peeped in an attic, where, 'Mid sordid things and bare, A sick child lay and gazed At a road to the far-away,...
How long we had hid there and listened, Where the trees let in winks o' the sun, 'Fore their Winchesters glittered and glistened In the gully below by the run, I never kep' count. It wuz mornin',...
Where rise the brakes of bramble there, Wrapped with the trailing rose; Through cane where waters ramble, there Where deep the sword-grass grows, Who knows? Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,...
Oh, I am going home again, Back to the old house in the lane, And mother! who still sits and sews, With cheeks, each one, a winter rose, A-watching for her boy, you know, Who left so many years ago,...
Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells I know her tricks--These are not moths at all, Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles Whose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.
O voice of ecstasy and lyric pain, Divinely throated and divinely heard Among old England's songsters! Sprite or bird, Haunting the woods of song with raptured strain!...
For the mountains' hoarse greetings came hollow From stormy wind-chasms and caves, And I heard their wild cataracts wallow Huge bulks in long spasms of waves, And that Demon said, "Lo! you must follow!...
Thou, oh, thou! Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum! thou Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow! Music, who by the plangent waves, Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves,...
These have a life that hath no part in death; These circumscribe the soul and make it strong; Between the breathing of a dream and song, Building a world of beauty in a breath....