For I must sing of all I feel and know, Waiting with Memnon passive near the palms, Until the heavenly light doth dawn and grow And thrill my silence into mystic psalms;...
From the midst of the fire I fling These arrows of fire to you: If they sing, and burn, and sting, You feel how I burn too; But if they reach you there Speed-spent, charred black and cold,...
That one long dirge-moan sad and deep, Low, muffled by the solemn stress Of such emotion as doth steep The soul in brooding quietness, Befits our anguished time too well,...
The fire that filled my heart of old Gave luster while it burned; Now only ashes gray and cold Are in its silence urned. Ah! better was the furious flame, The splendor with the smart;...
Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul, Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt, Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;...
When one is forty years and seven, Is seven and forty sad years old, He looks not onward for his Heaven, The future is too blank and cold, Its pale flowers smell of graveyard mould;...