If God compel thee to this destiny, To die alone, with none beside thy bed To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,...
"To-day thou girdest up thy loins thyself And goest where thou wouldest: presently Others shall gird thee," said the Lord, "to go Where thou wouldst not." He spoke to Peter thus,...
Times followed one another. Came a morn I stood upon the brink of twenty years, And looked before and after, as I stood Woman and artist, either incomplete, Both credulous of completion. There I held...
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'...
I think we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint To muse upon eternity's constraint...
God, God! With a child's voice I cry, Weak, sad, confidingly, God, God! Thou knowest, eyelids, raised not always up Unto Thy love (as none of ours are), droop As ours, o'er many a tear!...
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....
'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 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...
I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, As once Electra her sepulchral urn, And, looking in thine eyes, I over-turn The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,...
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand...
The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink...
What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the wall...
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:...
And therefore if to love can be desert, I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale As these you see, and trembling knees that fail To bear the burden of a heavy heart, This weary minstrel-life that once was girt...
Indeed this very love which is my boast, And which, when rising up from breast to brow, Doth crown me with a ruby large enow To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,...