Works

A Broken rainbow on the skies of May,
Touching the dripping roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds its scattered glories lost:
So in the sorrow of her soul the ghost
Of one great love, of iridescent ray,...

In samite sark yclad was she;
And that fair glimmerish band of gold
Which crowned long, savage locks of hair
In the moon brent cold.

She with big eyeballs gloomed and glowered,...

Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn,
That life has carved with care and doubt!
So weary waiting, night and morn,
For that which never came about!
Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn,...

I.

Winds that cavern heaven and the clouds
And canyon with cerulean blue,
Great rifts down which the stormy sunlight crowds
Like some bright seraph, who,
Mailed in intensity of silver mail,...

What magic through your snowy crystal gleams!
Your hollow spar, Spring brims with fragrancy;
That, like the cup of Comus, drugs with dreams
This woodland place, so drowsed with mystery....

I.

There be Fairies bright of eye,
Who the wild-flowers warders are;
There be Fairies subtlely
Nourished in a blossom's star;
Fairies tripping merrily
Singing in faint echoes far,...

The locust gyres; the heat intensifies'
The rain-crow croaks from hot-leafed tree to tree:
The butterfly, a flame-fleck, aimlessly
Droops down the air and knows not where it flies....

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light happy moods of alien natures which
Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.
...

I.

To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west; a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:...

I.

They who maintained their rights,
Through storm and stress,
And walked in all the ways
That God made known,
Led by no wandering lights,
And by no guess,
Through dark and desolate days...

Come! look in the shadowy water here,
The stagnant water of Ashly Mere:
Where the stirless depths are dark but clear,
What is the thing that lies there?
A lily-pod half sunk from sight?...

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills,
Waking the crocus and the daffodils....

At midnight in the trysting wood
I wandered by the waterside,
When, soft as mist, before me stood
My sweetheart who had died.

But so unchanged was she, meseemed
That I had only dreamed her dead;...

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers;
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the air, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with the twilight, the Hours,...

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed;...

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;...

TO LITTLE M. E. C. G.


Deep in baby Mary's eyes,
Baby Mary's sweet blue eyes,
Dwell the golden memories
Of the music once her ears
Heard in far-off Paradise;...

I.

There's a bug at night that goes
Drowsily down the garden ways;
Lumberingly above the rose,
And above the jasmine sprays;
Bumping, bungling, buzzing by,
Falling finally, to crawl...

I.

The quickening East climbs to yon star,
That, cradled, rocks herself in morn;
The liquid silver broad'ning far
Dawn drencheth cliff, holt, down and tarn.
The trembling splendors gild the sky,...

(In Memoriam)

There it lies broken, as a shard,
What breathed sweet music yesterday;
The source, all mute, has passed away
With its masked meanings still unmarred.
But melody will never cease!...