Works

The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandaled feet
Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart...

He dreamed of hills so deep with woods
Storm-barriers on the summer sky
Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods
Down rocks of sullen dye.

Flat ways were his where sparsely grew...

Leaves fall and flowers fade,
Days come and go:
Now is sweet Summer laid
Low in her leafy glade,
Low like a fragrant maid,
Low, low, ah, low.

Tears fall and eyelids ache,...

In evening as the sun goes down
She twists and dances mindlessly
Life, in her brash effrontery.
But also, when above the town

The night has risen, charming, vast,...

A dream that waketh,
Bubble that breaketh,
Song whose burden sigheth,
A passing breath,
Smoke that vanisheth, -
Such is life that dieth.

A flower that fadeth,
Fruit the tree sheddeth,...

The day came slow, till five o'clock,
Then sprang before the hills
Like hindered rubies, or the light
A sudden musket spills.

The purple could not keep the east,
The sunrise shook from fold,...

When primroses are out in Spring,
And small, blue violets come between;
When merry birds sing on boughs green,
And rills, as soon as born, must sing;

When butterflies will make side-leaps,...

The breezes waved the silver grass,
Waist-high along the siding,
And to the creek we ne'er could pass
Three boys on bare-back riding;
Beneath the sheoaks in the bend
The waterhole was brimming,...

Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,
And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies....

I've been watchin' of 'em, parson,
An' I'm sorry fur to say
'At my mind is not contented
With the loose an' keerless way
'At the young folks treat the music;
'T ain't the proper sort o' choir....

I belonged to the church,
And to the party of prohibition;
And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.
In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,
For every noon for thirty years,...

A knock is at her door, but she is weak;
Strange dews have washed the paint streaks from her cheek;
She does not rise, but, ah, this friend is known,
And knows that he will find her all alone....

There's something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!
It wears a sprig upon its breast,
And will not tell its name.

Some touch it and some kiss it,
Some chafe its idle hand;...

I

I wot well o' his going
To think in flowers fair; -
His a right kind heart, my dear,
To give the grass such hair.


II.

I wot well o' his lying...

Ah! changed and cold, how changed and very cold,
With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes:
Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise;
This was the promise of the days of old!...

Out of it all but this remains:
I was with one who crossed wide chains
Of the Cordilleras, whose peaks
Lock in the wilds of Yucatan,
Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks
And then a city that no man...

An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But Elemental Cow on earth)
Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood...

(Macmillan's Magazine, May 1868.)


Hope new born one pleasant morn
Died at even;
Hope dead lives nevermore.
No, not in heaven.

If his shroud were but a cloud
To weep itself away;...

DIED - Early morning of September 5, 1876, and
in the gleaming dawn of "name and fame,"
Hamilton J. Dunbar.

Dead! Dead! Dead!
We thought him ours alone;
And were so proud to see him tread...

His footprints have failed us,
Where berries are red,
And madro'os are rankest,
The hunter is dead!

The grizzly may pass
By his half-open door;
May pass and repass...