Works

I.

There's a boy that you must know,
Always ragged, dirty too;
Just a wretched sight and show
Worst boy that I ever knew;
Always hitting other boys
Smaller than himself. Annoys...

Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain
Went wild with wind; and every briery lane
Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black,
Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back,...

I hear the hoofs of horses
Galloping over the hill,
Galloping on and galloping on,
When all the night is shrill
With wind and rain that beats the pane,
And my soul with awe is still.
...

When on the leaves the rain persists,
And every gust brings showers down;
When all the woodland smokes with mists,
I take the old road out of town
Into the hills through which it twists.
...

The locust builds its are of sound
And tops it with a spire;
The roadside leaves pant to the ground
With dust from hoof and tire.

The insects, day and night, make din,...

I


Yea, why I love thee let my heart repeat:
I look upon thy face and then divine
How men could die for beauty, such as thine,--
Deeming it sweet
To lay my life and manhood at thy feet,...

Listen, dearest! you must love me more,
More than you did before!
Hark, what a beating here of wings!
Never at rest,
Dear, in your breast!
Is it your heart with its flutterings,...

I.

When April comes, and pelts with buds
And apple-blooms each orchard space,
And takes the dog-wood-whitened woods
With rain and sunshine of her moods,
Like your fair face, like your fair face:...

High in the place of outraged liberty,
He ruled the world, an emperor and god
His iron armies swept the land and sea,
And conquered nations trembled at his nod.
...

I.

I shall not soon forget her and her eyes,
The haunts of hate, where suffering seemed to write
Its own dark name, whose syllables are sighs,
In strange and starless night.
...

Here in the dusk I see her face again
As then I knew it, ere she fell asleep;
Renunciation glorifying pain
Of her soul's inmost deep.

I shall not see its like again! the brow...

I

No more for him, where hills look down,
Shall Morning crown
Her rainy brow with blossom bands! -
The Morning Hours, whose rosy hands
Drop wildflowers of the breaking skies...

The roses mourn for her who sleeps
Within the tomb;
For her each lily-flower weeps
Dew and perfume.

In each neglected flower-bed
Each blossom droops its lovely head,...

There is a music of immaculate love,
That beats within the virgin veins of Spring,
And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling
To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,...

Under the brindled beech,
Deep in the mottled shade,
Where the rocks hang in reach
Flower and ferny blade,
Let him be laid.

Here will the brooks, that rove
Under the mossy trees,...

Dear heart and love! what happiness to sit
And watch the firelight's varying shade and shine
On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine--
As through glad windows--mark fair fancies flit...

A sense of sadness in the golden air;
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,...

At moonset when ghost speaks with ghost,
And spirits meet where once they sinned,
Between the bournes of found and lost,
My soul met her soul on the wind,
My late-lost Evalind.
...

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,
What walls of Pariah, whiter than a rose,
What towers of crystal, for the eyes of thought,
Hast builded on far Islands of Repose?...

It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the old mill-bridge we parted at last year.
...