I. What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river ? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat...
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace....
When I attain to utter forth in verse Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly Along my pulses, yearning to be free And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse...
I have been in the meadows all the day And gathered there the nosegay that you see Singing within myself as bird or bee When such do field-work on a morn of May. But, now I look upon my flowers, decay...
I. Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife,...
A thought ay like a flower upon mine heart, And drew around it other thoughts like bees For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses; Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art...
I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:...
But only three in all God's universe Have heard this word thou hast said, Himself, beside Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse...
Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies. Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as they strike athwart Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art...
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more....
Can it be right to give what I can give? To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years Re-sighing on my lips renunciative...
What's the best thing in the world? June-rose, by May-dew impearled; Sweet south-wind, that means no rain; Truth, not cruel to a friend; Pleasure, not in haste to end; Beauty, not self-decked and curled...