Works

I.

The rainy smell of a ferny dell,
Whose shadow no sunray flaws,
When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds
Telling her beads
Of haws.


II.
...

What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?

One word to whisper of
Low in his ear;...

At midnight in the trysting wood
I wandered by the waterside,
When, soft as mist, before me stood
My sweetheart who had died.

But so unchanged was she, meseemed
That I had only dreamed her dead;...

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers;
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the air, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with the twilight, the Hours,...

Written for my friend Walter S. Mathews.


There was a princess once, who loved the slave
Of an Assyrian king, her father; known
At Nineveh as Hadria; o'er whose grave...

What is there left for us to say,
Now it has come to say good-by?
And all our dreams of yesterday
Have vanished in the sunset sky -
What is there left for us to say,
Now different ways before us lie?...

A friend for you and a friend for me,
A friend to understand;
To cheer the way and help the day
With heart as well as hand:
With heart as well as hand, my dear,
And share the things we 've planned...

Into the sunset's turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas
To faeryland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.

Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,...

To Don Odora says Donna De Vine:
"I yield to thy long endeavor!
At my balcony be on the stroke of nine,
And, Signor, am thine forever!"

This beauty but once had the Don descried...

This is the truth as I see it, my dear,
Out in the wind and the rain:
They who have nothing have little to fear,
Nothing to lose or to gain.

Here by the road at the end o' the year,...

One bright star in the firmament,
One wild rose in the dew,
And a girl, like the sparkling two,
Following the cows that went
Through roses wet with dew,
Roses, two by two.
...

Oh, dim and wan came in the dawn,
And gloomy closed the day;
The killdee whistled among the weeds,
The heron flapped in the river reeds,
And the snipe piped far away.
...

I.

No more to strip the roses from
The rose-boughs of her porch's place!
I dreamed last night that I was home
Beside a rose her face.

I must have smiled in sleep who knows?...

It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below
But the things of this world are a fleeting show.

The postchaise Time that all must take
Is old with clay and dust;...

Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,
Over the stile the stars a-winking;
He thought it was Mary, 't was Mary's sister
And love hath a way of thinking.
...

I Saw the daughters of the Dawn come dancing o'er the hills;
The winds of Morn danced with them, oh, and all the sylphs of air:
I saw their ribboned roses blow, their gowns, of daffodils,...

The rosy hills of her high breasts,
Whereon, like misty morning, rests
The breathing lace; her auburn hair,
Wherein, a star point sparkling there,
One jewel burns; her eyes, that keep...

High up in the organ-story
A girl stands slim and fair;
And touched with the casement's glory
Gleams out her radiant hair.

The young priest kneels at the altar,
Then lifts the Host above;...

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed;...

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;...