Works

Feet of the flying, and fierce
Tops of the sharp-headed spear,
Hard by the thickets that pierce,
Lo! they are nimble and near.

Women are we, and the wives
Strong Arrawatta hath won;...

The hut was built of bark and shrunken slabs,
That wore the marks of many rains, and showed
Dry flaws wherein had crept and nestled rot.
Moreover, round the bases of the bark...

At dusk, like flowers that shun the day,
Shy thoughts from dim recesses break,
And plead for words I dare not say
For your sweet sake.

My early love! my first, my last!...

The leaders of millions, the lords of the lands,
Who sway the wide world with their will
And shake the great globe with the strength of their hands,
Flash past us unnoticed by Bill.
...

Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old...

When lost Francesca sobbed her broken tale
Of love and sin and boundless agony,
While that wan spirit by her side did wail
And bite his lips for utter misery...

Daphne! Ladon's daughter, Daphne! Set thyself in silver light,
Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into words of white
Weave the rhyme of rose-lipped Daphne, nymph of wooded stream and shade,...

To her who, cast with me in trying days,
Stood in the place of health and power and praise;
Who, when I thought all light was out, became
A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame;...

Just when the western light
Flickered out dim,
Flushing the mountain-side,
Summit and rim,
A last, low, lingering gleam
Fell on a yellow stream,
And then there came a dream
Shining to him....

Spirit of Loveliness! Heart of my heart!
Flying so far from me, Heart of my heart!
Above the eastern hill, I know the red leaves thrill,
But thou art distant still, Heart of my heart!
...

A brother wandered forth with me,
Beside a barren beach:
He harped on things beyond the sea,
And out of reach.

He hinted once of unknown skies,
And then I would not hark,...

Gloomy cliffs, so worn and wasted with the washing of the waves,
Are ye not like giant tombstones round those lonely ocean graves?
Are ye not the sad memorials, telling of a mighty grief...

Here, pent about by office walls
And barren eyes all day,
'Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!

I would not ask you, friends, to brook
An old, old truth from me,...

In the roar of the storm, in the wild bitter voice of the tempest-whipped sea,
The cry of my darling, my child, comes ever and ever to me;
And I stand where the haggard-faced wood stares down on a sinister shore,...

Two years had the tiger, whose shape was that of a sinister man,
Been out since the night of escape two years under horror and ban.
In a time full of thunder and rain, when hurricanes hackled the tree,...

Shall he, on whom the fair lord, Delphicus,
Turned gracious eyes and countenance of shine,
Be left to lie without a wreath from us,
To sleep without a flower upon his shrine?
...

In the depths of a Forest secluded and wild,
The night voices whisper in passionate numbers;
And I'm leaning again, as I did when a child,
O'er the grave where my father so quietly slumbers.
...

The song that is last of the many
Whose music is full of thy name,
Is weaker, O father! than any,
Is fainter than flickering flame.
But far in the folds of the mountains
Whose bases are hoary with sea,...

Chaotic crags are huddled east and west
Dark, heavy crags, against a straitened sea
That cometh, like a troubled soul in quest
Of voiceless rest where never dwelleth rest,...

'There were but two, and we were forty! Yet,'
The Captain wrote, 'that dauntless couple throve,
And faced our wildering faces; and I said
'Lie to awhile!' I did not choose to let...