Works

We went by ways of bygone days,
Up mountain heights of story,
Where lost in vague, historic haze,
Tradition, crowned with battle-bays,
Sat 'mid her ruins hoary.

Where wing to wing the eagles cling...

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,...

High up in the organ-story
A girl stands slim and fair;
And touched with the casement's glory
Gleams out her radiant hair.

The young priest kneels at the altar,
Then lifts the Host above;...

My life is grown a witchcraft place
Through gazing on thy form and face.

Now 't is thy Smile's soft sorcery
That makes my soul a melody.

Now 't is thy Frown, that comes and goes,...

I

She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
"O my children, come home!"...

The day, all fierce with carmine, turns
An Indian face towards Earth and dies;
The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns
Its ashes under smouldering skies,
Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams,...

The Summer lightning comes and goes
In one pale cloud above the hill,
As if within its soft repose
A burning heart were never still -
As in my bosom pulses beat
Before the coming of his feet.
...

I

Her violin! - Again begin
The dream-notes of her violin;
And dim and fair, with gold-brown hair,
I seem to see her standing there,
Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:...

Her Vivien eyes, - beware! beware!
Though they be stars, a deadly snare
They set beneath her night of hair.
Regard them not! lest, drawing near
As sages once in old Chaldee...

I came upon a pool that shone,
Clear, emerald-like, among the hills,
That seemed old wizards round a stone
Of magic that a vision thrills.

And as I leaned and looked, it seemed...

It all comes back as the end draws near;
All comes back like a tale of old!
Shall I tell you all? Will you lend an ear?
You, with your face so stern and cold;
You, who have found me dying here ...
...

I had forgot how, in my day
The Sabine fields around me lay
In amaranth and asphodel,
With many a cold Bandusian well
Bright-bubbling by the mountain-way.
In forest dells of Faun and Fay...

1

Her violets in thine eyes
The Springtide stained I know,
Two bits of mystic skies
On which the green turf lies,
Whereon the violets blow.


2

I know the Summer wrought...

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And C'sar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,...

With anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips,
Within the sculptured stoa by the sea,
All day she waited while, like ghostly ships,
Long clouds rolled over Paphos: the wild bee...

Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;...

All night I lay upon the rocks:
And now the dawn comes up this way,
One great star trembling in her locks
Of rosy ray.

I can not tell the things I've seen;
The things I've heard I dare not speak....

I.

I Heard the hylas in the bottomlands
Piping a reed-note in the praise of Spring:
The South-wind brought the music on its wing,
As 't were a hundred strands...

A lily in a twilight place?
A moonflow'r in the lonely night? -
Strange beauty of a woman's face
Of wildflow'r-white!

The rain that hangs a star's green ray
Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness,...

A Saga of Yule.

Far to the South a star,
Bright-shining over all;
And a sound of voices singing,
'Round a Babe in an ox's-stall.

Three Kings a-riding, riding,...