Works

Behold! I cover up this trail of tears
A moment's weakness left upon my cheek,
And hush my heart a little ere I speak
Lest the false note ring true on other ears;
The music rises and the empty cheers...

(Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.)


Once more upon the ocean's heaving breast
He lays his head, not like the lover bold...

As one, a poet of a fairy's train,
Might sit beside a violet's stem and view
Its opening petals, watch the wondrous blue
Thrill through their fibers, and their secret gain...

I came your way in the years gone by,
In the summers that now are old,
And then there was light in your beaming eye,
And love was living and hopes were high
At the Sign of the Heart of Gold.
...

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day,
The day has finished the year that dies with a century's birth;
Eastward the morning stars sing as they go their way:...

Down at the end of the iron lane
I see the sunset's glare,
And the red bars lie across the sky
Like steps of a wondrous stair.

Below, the throng, with unlifted eye,...

Life to her was a perfect flower,
And every petal a jeweled hour,
Till all at once--we know not why--
God sent a frost from His clear blue sky.

Life to her was a fairy rune;...

(Written on the ter-centenary of John Milton, December 9, 1908.)


Immortal singer, in whose glorious brain
Unearthly melodies were born to make
A nocturn for the blessed Master's sake,...

St. George, I learned to love thee in my youth
When of thy deeds I read in deathless song;
And now, when I behold the dragon Wrong
Hard by the castle-gates of Love and Truth,...

(Oscar Wilde.)


I gazed upon thee desolate and heard
Thine anguished cry when fell the iron gin
That all but broke thy soul, yet gave thy word
The strength to ask forgiveness of thy sin.
...