Works

That painter has not with a careless smutch
Accomplished his despair?--one touch revealing
All he had put of life, thought, vigor, feeling,
Into the canvas that without that touch...

You hearken, fellows? Turned aside
Into the road-house of the past!
The prince of vagabonds is gone
To house among his peers at last.

The stainless gallant gentleman,...

Browning, old fellow,
Your leaves grow yellow,
Beginning to mellow
As seasons pass.
Your cover is wrinkled,
And stained and sprinkled,
And warped and crinkled
From sleep on the grass.
...

Thought is a garden wide and old
For airy creatures to explore,
Where grow the great fantastic flowers
With truth for honey at the core.

There like a wild marauding bee...

Heart to heart!
And the stillness of night and the moonlight, like hushed breathing
Silently, stealthily moving across thy hair!

O womanly face!
Tender and strong and lucent with infinite feeling,...

Oh, but life went gayly, gayly,
In the house of Idiedaily!

There were always throats to sing
Down the river-banks with spring,

When the stir of heart's desire...

Once I met a soncy maid,
Soncy maid, soncy maid,
Once I met a soncy maid
In the Wayland willows.

All her hair was goldy brown,
Goldy brown, goldy brown,
In the sun a single braid...

The play is Life; and this round earth,
The narrow stage whereon
We act before an audience
Of actors dead and gone.

There is a figure in the wings
That never goes away,...

Once in the Workshop, ages ago,
The clay was wet and the fire was low.

And He who was bent on fashioning man
Moulded a shape from a clod,
And put the loyal heart therein;...

In her body's perfect sweet
Suppleness and languor meet,--
Arms that move like lapsing billows,
Breasts that Love would make his pillows,
Eyes where vision melts in bliss,
Lips that ripen to a kiss.

The scent of honeysuckle,
Drugging the twilight
With its sweet opiate of lovers' dreams!
The last red glow of the setting sun
On the red brick wall
Of the neighboring house,...

I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night.
Her nightingales were singing in the trees
Beside the castled river; and the wind
Fell like a woman's fingers on my cheek....

The blue night, like an angel, came into the room,--
Came through the open window from the silent sky
Down trellised stairs of moonlight into the dear room
As if a whisper breathed of some divine one nigh....

The sunburnt face in the willow shade
To the face in the water-mirror said,

"O deep mysterious face in the stream,
Art thou myself or am I thy dream?"

And the face deep down in the water's side...

There is rumor in Dark Harbor,
And the folk are all astir;
For a stranger in the offing
Draws them down to gaze at her,

In the gray of early morning,
Black against the orange streak,...

It was June, and I was twenty.
All my wisdom, poor but plenty,
Never learned Festina lente.
Youth is gone, but whither went he?

Madeline came down the orchard
With a mischief in her eye,...