Works

Two knights rode forth at early dawn
A-seeking maids to wed,
Said one, "My lady must be fair,
With gold hair on her head."

Then spake the other knight-at-arms:
"I care not for her face,...

Across the dimly lighted room
The violin drew wefts of sound,
Airily they wove and wound
And glimmered gold against the gloom.

I watched the music turn to light,
But at the pausing of the bow,...

The princess has her lovers,
A score of knights has she,
And each can sing a madrigal,
And praise her gracefully.

But Love that is so bitter
Hath put within her heart...

Infinite gentleness, infinite irony
Are in this face with fast-sealed eyes,
And round this mouth that learned in loneliness
How useless their wisdom is to the wise.
...

Supper comes at five o'clock,
At six, the evening star,
My lover comes at eight o'clock
But eight o'clock is far.

How could I bear my pain all day
Unless I watched to see...

(February 23, 1821)

At midnight when the moonlit cypress trees
Have woven round his grave a magic shade,
Still weeping the unfinished hymn he made,
There moves fresh Maia like a morning breeze...

(To the maiden with the hidden face in Abbey's painting)

The other maidens raised their eyes to him
Who stumbled in before them when the fight
Had left him victor, with a victor's right....

Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn
The flames' red wings soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she...

You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.

The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Are far too full of happiness...

The dearest child in all the world,
Should have the dearest songs,
And that is why this little book
To David-Boy belongs.

I. Spirit's House

From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled...

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.
...

In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new;
It was ghostly waking
All night through.

Dear things, kind things,
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed....

Oh day of fire and sun,
Pure as a naked flame,
Blue sea, blue sky and dun
Sands where he spoke my name;

Laughter and hearts so high
That the spirit flew off free,
Lifting into the sky...

Oh you are coming, coming, coming,
How will hungry Time put by the hours till then?,
But why does it anger my heart to long so
For one man out of the world of men?

Oh I would live in myself only...

As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,
Float in the garden when no wind blows,
Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;

So the old tunes float in my mind,...

Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind
That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,
Making a key-board of the earth to strike
From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,
...

Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.

Only in sleep Time is forgotten,...

He trod the earth but yesterday,
And now he treads the stars.
He left us in the April time
He praised so often in his rhyme,
He left the singing and the lyre and went his way.
...

If there is any life when death is over,
These tawny beaches will know much of me,
I shall come back, as constant and as changeful
As the unchanging, many-colored sea.
...