Works

Time and I pass to and fro,
Hardly greeting as we go, -
Go askant, like crossing wings
Of sea-gulls where the brave sea sings.

Time, the messenger of Fate!
Cunning master of debate,...

Sorrow, my friend,
When shall you come again?
The wind is slow, and the bent willows send
Their silvery motions wearily down the plain.
The bird is dead
That sang this morning through the summer rain!...

[In Memory: 1877.]


What shall I say, my friend, my own heart healing,
When for my love you cannot answer me?
This earth would quake, alas! might I but see...

Somewhere, somewhere in this heart
There lies a jewel from the sea,
Or from a rock, or from the sand,
Or dropped from heaven wondrously.

Oh, burn, my jewel, in my glance!...

Ill-wrought life we look at as we die!
Mistaken, selfish, meagre, and unmeet;
So graven on the hearts that cruelly
We have deprived of many an hour sweet:
O ill-wrought life we look at as we die!
...

My graveyard holds no once-loved human forms,
Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone,
But every agony my heart has known, -
The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms.
...

At purple eyes beside the grain,
Our loves on altars we had burned,
And mixed our tribute with the dew,
Our tears, when rosy dawn returned.

Our voices we had joined with song...

Come, brothers, let us sing a dirge, -
A dirge for myriad chances dead;
In grief your mournful accents merge:
Sing, sing the girls we might have wed!

Sweet lips were those we never pressed...

We see the sky, - we love it day by day;
We feel the wind of Spring, from blossoms winging;
We meet with souls tender as tints in May:
For these large ecstasies what are we bringing?
...