All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit. ...
Down the strait vistas where a city street Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances, Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less And the sky reddens round the day's retreat....
Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze....
There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, - In cloud and far horizon to desire....
Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town's tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame:...
If I was drawn here from a distant place, 'Twas not to pray nor hear our friend's address, But, gazing once more on your winsome face, To worship there Ideal Loveliness....
Amid the florid multitude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part When Spring shines in the world and in the heart....
A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay....
Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs, The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram, A garret and a glimpse across the roofs Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame,...
To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, Came the report of one - a woman crowned...
Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:...
A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see, A wonder more to be adored than wooed, On whom the grace of conscious womanhood...
Like as a dryad, from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal...
I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the multitude Faustine. My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,...
Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you....
It may be for the world of weeds and tares And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows One from the train of Love's true courtiers...
Above the ruin of God's holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food, Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace,...
Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day....
Another prospect pleased the builder's eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by,...