Works

O great heart of God,
Once vague and lost to me,
Why do I throb with your throb to-night,
In this land, eternity?

O little heart of God,
Sweet intruding stranger,...

Here where the season turns the land to gold,
Among the fields our feet have known of old,
When we were children who would laugh and run,
Glad little playmates of the wind and sun,...

And when I come to the dim trail-end,
I who have been Life's rover,
This is all I would ask, my friend,
Over and over and over:

A little space on a stony hill
With never another near me,...

Two pictures, strangely beautiful, I hold
In Mem'ry's chambers, stored with loving care
Among the precious things I prized of old,
And hid away with tender tear and prayer...

(Athenaeum, October 21, 1848)


I did not chide him, though I knew
That he was false to me.
Chide the exhaling of the dew,
The ebbing of the sea,
The fading of a rosy hue, -...

There is a flower I wish to wear,
But not until first worn by you,
Heartsease of all earth's flowers most rare;
Bring it; and bring enough for two.

To Isabel Swinburne.

The far green westward heavens are bland,
The far green Wiltshire downs are clear
As these deep meadows hard at hand:
The sight knows hardly far from near,...

Nor time nor all his minions
Of sorrow or of pain,
Shall dash with vulture pinions
The cup she fills again
Within the dream-dominions
Of life where she doth reign.
...

Her moods are like the fountain's, changing ever,
That spouts aloft a sudden, watery dome,
Only to fall again in shattering foam,
Just where the wedded jets themselves dissever,...

O Exiled Hearts--for you, for you--
Love still can find the way!
Hear the voices of the women on the road!
O Shadowed Lives--for you, for you--
Hope hath not lost her ray!...

It is hard for a man to tell
The hidden thought in his friend's heart,
And the thought in a man's own heart
Is a thing darker.

If you have seen a woman's heart
Bare to your eyes,...

To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire,
And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire,
And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire.
...

Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;...

I.

Now is it as if Spring had never been,
And Winter but a memory and dream,
Here where the Summer stands, her lap of green
Heaped high with bloom and beam,
...

The fickle sun that had the earth caress'd
And quickened all her amorous desire,
And brought fresh roses to adorn her breast,
Now spurned her in the madness of his ire;...

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half way, or it may be...

Ye little flowrets, wild an free,
Yo're welcome, aye as onny!
Ther's but few seets 'at meet mi ee
'At ivver seem as bonny.
Th' furst gift 'at Lizzie gave to me,
Wor a bunch o' bloomin heather,...

Here, where the great hills fall away
To bays of silver sea,
I hold within my hand to-day
A wild thing, strange to me.

Behind me is the deep green dell
Where lives familiar light;...

There was a curious quiet for a space
Directly following: and in the face
Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow
Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw...

for J.G.F.

I'll strike you without rage or hate
The way a butcher strikes his block,
The way that Moses smote the rock!
So that your eyes may irrigate

My dry Sahara, I'll allow...