Works

I'm not sorry I am older, love - are you?
Over all youth's fuss and flurry,
All its everlasting hurry,
All its solemn self-importance and to-do.
Perhaps we missed the highest reaches of high art;...

Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back, and many times baffled;
Not the path-finder, penetrating inland, weary and long,...

Not they who soar, but they who plod
Their rugged way, unhelped, to God
Are heroes; they who higher fare,
And, flying, fan the upper air,
Miss all the toil that hugs the sod....

Shall I not give this world my heart, and well?
If for naught else, for many a miracle
Of the impassioned spring, the rose, the snow?
Nay, by the spring that still must come and go...

Why should we covet much, whenas we know
W'ave more to bear our charge than way to go?

They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying' And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,...

He that will not love must be
My scholar, and learn this of me:
There be in love as many fears
As the summer's corn has ears:
Sighs, and sobs, and sorrows more
Than the sand that makes the shore:...

To A. C.



Not to the staring Day,
For all the importunate questionings he pursues
In his big, violent voice,
Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,
The Trees - God's sentinels...

Tumultuous rushing o'er the outstretched plains;
A wildered maze of comets and of suns;
The blood of changeless God that ever runs
With quick diastole up the immortal veins;...

When the Academy of Arts demanded freedom
Of artistic expression from narrow-minded bureaucrats
There was a howl and a clamour in its immediate vicinity
But roaring above everything...

Not with a club the heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it.
I've known

To lash the magic creature
Till it fell,
Yet that whip's name too noble...

Let me not see your grief!
O, let not any see
That grief,
Nor how your heart still rocks
Like a temple with long earthquake shocks.
Let me not see
Your grief.
...

"Go thy way, and when I have a more convenient season I will call for thee."

* * * * *

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."...

Aye! many a rhyme my pen has flown,
In oblivion, all unknown;
Still many more, perchance, I say,
Float on in one unbroken lay -
But ask me naught of where or when,
Long as they ring in hearts of men!...

Not youth pertains to me,
Nor delicatesse - I cannot beguile the time with talk;
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant;...

There once was a Shah had a second son
Who was very unlike his elder one,
For he went about on his own affairs,
And scorned the mosque and the daily prayers;...

I

The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims...

The world is tired, the year is old,
The fading leaves are glad to die,
The wind goes shivering with cold
Where the brown reeds are dry.

Our love is dying like the grass,...

As I walk the misty hill
All is languid, fogged, and still;
Not a note of any bird
Nor any motion's hint is heard,
Save from soaking thickets round
Trickle or water's rushing sound,...

The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,...