To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, Came the report of one - a woman crowned...
Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:...
A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see, A wonder more to be adored than wooed, On whom the grace of conscious womanhood...
Like as a dryad, from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal...
I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the multitude Faustine. My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,...
Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you....
It may be for the world of weeds and tares And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows One from the train of Love's true courtiers...
Above the ruin of God's holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food, Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace,...
Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day....
Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold, Thou wert sometime the garden of a king. The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing. The flowers are few. It was not so of old....
We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. ...
Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways,...
I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a space on either hand And fed by many an olive-darkened lane The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band...
Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows...
The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied. ...
There was a boy - not above childish fears - With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill...
Another prospect pleased the builder's eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by,...
He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour. Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower, Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell....
My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face, As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright; As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace, To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite. ...