Works

I

Small twilight singer
Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger
Of dusk's dim glimmer,
How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer
Vibrate, soft-sighing,...

The year was dying, and the day
Was almost dead;
The West, beneath a sombre gray,
Was sombre red.
The gravestones in the ghostly light,
'Mid trees half bare,...

This is the lesson I have learned of Beauty:
Who gathers flowers finds that flowers fade:
Who sets love in his heart above his duty
Misses the part for which that love was made....

I.

The lake she haunts gleams dreamily
'Twixt sleepy boughs of melody,
Set 'mid the hills beside the sea,
In tangled bush and brier;
Where the ghostly sunsets write...

There's something now that no one knows,
That never seems to mind me
Where is it that my shadow goes
That often walks behind me?
Where does it go when I come home;
For often I'm without it;...

I.

Sometimes, when I'm gone to-bed,
And it's all dark in the room,
Seems I hear somebody tread
Heavy, rustling through the gloom:
And then something there goes "boom,"...

I.

When the lily nods in slumber,
And the roses all are sleeping;
When the night hangs deep and umber,
And the stars their watch are keeping;
When the clematis uncloses...

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reedlike breast,
Makest meridian music, long and loud,
Accentuating summer! - Dost thy best
To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd...

The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met
The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour:
Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet,
Earth shaped the fragrant purity of this flower.

A river binds the lonely land,
A river like a silver band,
To crags and shores of yellow sand.

It is a place where kildees cry,
And endless marshes eastward lie,
Whereon looks down a ghostly sky....

He found the long room as it was of old,
Glimmering with sunset's gold;
That made the tapestries seem full of eyes
Strange with a wild surmise:
Glaring upon a Psyche where she shone...

The black night showed its hungry teeth,
And gnawed with sleet at roof and pane;
Beneath the door I heard it breathe
A beast that growled in vain.

The hunter wind stalked up and down,...

Roses, brier on brier,
Like a hedge of fire,
Walled it from the world and rolled
Crimson 'round it; manifold
Blossoms, 'mid which once of old
Walked my Heart's Desire.

There the golden Hours...

I Have not seen her face, and yet
She is more sweet than any thing
Of Earth than rose or violet
That Mayday winds and sunbeams bring.

Of all we know, past or to come,...

In the woods, not long ago,
Met with Robin Goodfell'w;
First we heard his horse-like laugh
In an ivy-bush near by;
Then we saw him, like a calf,
Or a frisky colt, just fly...

Since Man first lifted up his eyes to hers
And saw her vampire beauty, which is lust,
All else is dust
Within the compass of the universe.
With heart of Jael and with face of Ruth...

What is the gold of mortal-kind
To that men find
Deep in the poet's mind!
That magic purse
Of Dreams from which
God builds His universe!
That makes life rich
With, many a vision;...

I

She was a queen. 'Midst mutes and slaves,
A mameluke, he loved her. - - Waves
Dashed not more hopelessly the paves
Of her high marble palace-stair
Than lashed his love his heart's despair. -...

The woods stretch deep to the mountain side,
And the brush is wild where a man may hide.

They have brought the bloodhounds up again
To the roadside rock where they found the slain.
...

I.

Again, in dreams, the veteran hears
The bugle and the drum;
Again the boom of battle nears,
Again the bullets hum:
Again he mounts, again he cheers,
Again his charge speeds home...