Works

Here is a tale for maidens and for mothers:
There was an ape, a very prince of monkeys,
Who capered in the world of fools and flunkies,
The envy of his set and of all others....

In story books, when I was very young,
I knew you first, one of the Fairy Race;
And then it was your picture took its place,
Framed in with love's deep gold, and draped and hung...

Here is a tale for artists and for writers:
There was an ass, in other words, a critic,
Who brayed and balked and kicked most analytic,
And waved long ears above his brother smiters....

Night and the sea, and heaven overhead
Cloudless and vast, as 'twere of hollowed spar,
Wherein the facets gleamed of many a star,
And the half-moon a crystal radiance shed....

God made that night of pearl and ivory,
Perfect and holy as a holy thought
Born of perfection, dreams, and ecstasy,
In love and silence wrought.

And she, who lay where, through the casement failing,...

Here is a tale for poets and for players:
There was a bagpipe once, that wheezed and whistled,
And droned vile discords, notes that fairly bristled,
Nasal and harsh, outbraying all the brayers....

Booted and spurred he rode toward the west,
A rose, from the woman who loved him best,
Lay warm with her kisses there in his breast,
And the battle beacons were burning.
...

Black clouds hung low and heavy,
Above the sunset glare;
And in the garden dimly
We wandered here and there.
So full of strife, of trouble
The night was dark, afraid,
Like our own love, so merely...

Here is a tale for sportsmen when at table:
There was a boar, like that Atalanta hunted,
Who gorged and snored and, unmolested, grunted,
His fat way through the world as such able....

MORN.

Down silver precipices drawn
The red-wine cataracts of dawn
Pour soundless torrents wide and far,
Deluging each warm, floating star.
A sound of winds and brooks and wings,...

With soul self-blind
Do n't struggle on merely at last to find
The best of life, the dream, is left behind.

Why desperately!
Struggle and strive? after long years to see...

Her life was bound to crutches: pale and bent,
But smiling ever, she would go and come:
For of her soul GOD made an instrument
Of strength and comfort to an humble home.
...

Had a birthday yesterday.
First one for, I think, a year.
Won't have one again, they say,
Till another year is here.
Funny, don't you think so? I
Can't just understand now why.
...

I had not found the road too short,
As once I had in days of youth,
In that old forest of long ruth,
Where my young knighthood broke its heart,
Ere love and it had come to part,...

I know not if she be unkind,
If she have faults I do not care;
Search through the world - where will you find
A face like hers, a form, a mind?
I love her to despair.

If she be cruel, cruelty...

And thus it came my feet were led
To wizard walls that hairy hung
Old as their rock the moss made dead;
And, like a ditch of fire flung
Around it, uncouth flowers red
Thrust spur and fang and tongue....

From morn till noon upon the window-pane
The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails,
And all the afternoon the blustering gales
Beat at the door with furious feet of rain....

This is the path he used to take,
That ended at a rose-porched door:
He takes it now for oldtime's sake;
And love of yore.

The blue mertensia, by the stone,...

And he had mused on lands each bird,
That winged from realms of Falerina,
O'er seas of the Enchanted Sword,
In romance sang him, till he heard
Vague foam on Islands of Alcina.
...

Sodden and shivering, in mud and rain,
Half in the light that serves but to reveal
The blackness of an alley and the reel
Homeward of wretchedness in tattered train,...