Works

The source of laughter lies so near to tears,
And pain to rapture, that one fountain flows
From forth the two Love's; in whose deeps appears
The image of the Heaven each man knows.

Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake, adream,...

There's a house across the street
That nobody goes into;
Say it's haunted, yes, they do;
Ghosts livethere, they say, or meet:
Saw one in a winding-sheet
At a window once, and took...

Here's the tale my father told,
Walking in the park one night,
When the stars shone big and bright,
And the autumn wind blew cold:
Once a giant lived of old
In a far-off country, far...

As tall as the lily, as tall as the rose,
And almost as tall as the hollyhocks,
Ranked breast to breast in sentinel rows
Stand the gladiola stocks.

And some are red as the humming-bird's blood...

There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold...

How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!...

The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.
...

Gold-haired she stood among the golden-rod,
A girl, embodying all the Golden Age,
Who made that autumn day a glorious page
Out of a book of gold inspired of God
And made for Him by priests and worshippers...

I.

She comes, the dreamy daughter
Of day and night, a girl,
Who o'er the western water
Lifts up her moon of pearl:
Like some Rebecca at the well,
Who fills her jar of crystal shell,...

Here is a tale for spinsters at their sewing:
There was a goose, a little gosling surely,
Who went her goose-girl way and looked demurely
As every goose should when 'tis wise and knowing....

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasising dulness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water...

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water...

What is that which walks by night
In flying tatters of leaves and weeds,
When the clouds rush by like daemon steeds,
And the moon is a jack-o'-lantern light
Low in the pool's dark reeds?...

She stood among the longest ferns
The valley held; and in her hand
One blossom, like the light that burns
Vermilion o'er a sunset land;
And round her hair a twisted band...

I


Globed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellow
As some round apple hung
High in hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellow
The branch-like mists among:...

There a tattered marigold
And dead asters manifold,
Showed him where the garden old
Of time bloomed:
Briar and thistle overgrew
Corners where the rose once blew,
Where the phlox of every hue...

I.

The shadows sit and stand about its door
Like uninvited guests and poor;
And all the long, hot summer day
The grating locust dins its roundelay
In one old sycamore....

Its casements' diamond disks of glass
Stare myriad on a terrace old,
Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,
Foam o'er with frothy cold.
The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;...

Here in the golden darkness
And green night of the woods,
A flitting form I follow,
A shadow that eludes -
Or is it but the phantom
Of former forest moods?

The phantom of some fancy...

On the black road through the wood
As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood;
By the wild pool in the wood,
As I rode.

From the shadow of an oak,
As I rode,...