Works

There came a crowder to the Mermaid Inn,
One dark May night,
Fiddling a tune that quelled our motley din,
With quaint delight,
It haunts me yet, as old lost airs will do,
A phantom strain:...

He rode adown the autumn wood,
A man dark-eyed and brown;
A mountain girl before him stood
Clad in a homespun gown.

'To ride this road is death for you!
My father waits you there;...

There was a damned successful Poet;
There was a Woman like the Sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.
They did not know their time was done.
They did not know his hymns...

I

From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright...

Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,
The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long,[1]
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song!...

Dear heart, why will you use me so?
Dear eyes that gently me upbraid,
Still are you beautiful, but O,
How is your beauty raimented!

Through the clear mirror of your eyes,...

"I have loved thee with an everlasting love."

Dear is the lost wife to a lone man's heart,
When in a dream he meets her at his door,
And, waked for joy, doth know she dwells apart,...

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer'd change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,...

Our Motherland, dear Motherland,
The source of beauty and of Art,
Who but thy children understand
The love which permeates each heart!
We see, through rainbow-tints of tears,...

Dear songs of my country! How sweetly thy measures
Come stealthily stealing o'er mountain and wave,
To sweeten the riches of liberty's treasures
And thrill with their numbers the hearts of the brave!...

(Written on the day of President McKinley's death)



In the midst of sunny waters, lo! the mighty Ship of State
Staggers, bruised and torn and wounded by a derelict of fate,...

He stood up in the house to speak,
With calm unruffled brow,
And never were his burning words
More eloquent than now

Fresh from the greatest victory
That mortal man can win...

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

Go 'way, go 'way, don't ring no more, ole bell of Saint Michel,
For if you do, I can't stay here, you know dat very well,
No matter how I close ma ear, I can't shut out de soun',...

Most high and mighty Czar of all flesh, ceaseless reducer of empires, unfathomable glutton in the whole realms of nature.
...

Take, since you bade it should bear,
These, of the seed of your sowing,
Blossom or berry or weed.
Sweet though they be not, or fair,
That the dew of your word kept growing,
Sweet at least was the seed....

I, who of lighter love wrote many a verse,
Made public never words inspired by thee,
Lest strangers' lips should carelessly rehearse
Things that were sacred and too dear to me.
...

Let me cradle myself back
Into the darkness
Of the half shapes...
Of the cauled beginnings...
Let me stir the attar of unused air,
Elusive... ironically fragrant
As a dead queen's kerchief......

Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs,
For, old or new,
All that is good in them belongs
Only to you;

And, singing as when all was young,
They will recall
Those others, lived but left unsung -...