Works

Prologue

I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said "Write!
Write a Nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea."

I faltered, taking up the word:
"Not so, my lord!...

Even thus. I pause to write it out at length,
The letter of the Lady Waldemar.


"I prayed your cousin Leigh to take you this:
He says he'll do it. After years of love,...

The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'...

'O dreary life,' we cry, 'O dreary life!'
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife...

I
"Now give us lands where the olives grow,"
Cried the North to the South,
"Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow
Blow bubbles of grapes down a vineyard-row!"
Cried the North to the South.
...