Remorse.

Sad is the thought of sunniest days
    Of love and rapture perished,
And shine through memory's tearful haze
    The eyes once fondliest cherished.
Reproachful is the ghost of toys
    That charmed while life was wasted.
But saddest is the thought of joys
    That never yet were tasted.

Sad is the vague and tender dream
    Of dead love's lingering kisses,
To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam
    Of unreturning blisses;
Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride
    For the pitiless death that won them, -
But the saddest wail is for lips that died
    With the virgin dew upon them.

John Hay

John Milton Hay was an American statesman and official whose government career stretched over almost half a century. He began as a private secretary to Abraham Lincoln, eventually becoming Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Aside from his political career, Hay was also a poet and writer, remembered for his influence on American literature and foreign policy.

John Hay

In A Graveyard.

John Hay, Simple Poetry

L'Amour Du Mensonge. Translations. After Charles Baudelaire.

John Hay, Simple Poetry

God's Vengeance.

John Hay, Simple Poetry

To The Young. Translations. After Heine.

John Hay, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Lagrimas.

        God send me tears!
Loose the fierce band that binds my tired brain,
Give me the melting heart of other years,
        And let me weep again!

        Before me pass
The shapes of things inexorably true.
Gone is the sparkle of transforming dew
        From every blade of grass.

        In life's high noon
Aimless I stand, my promised task undone,
And raise my hot eyes to the angry sun
        That will go down too soon.

        Turned into gall
Are the sweet joys of childhood's sunny reign;
And memory is a torture, love a chain
        That binds my life in thrall.

        And childhood's pain
Could to me now the purest rapture yield;
I pray for tears as in his parching field
        The husbandman for rain.

John Hay

Regret.

Thin summer rain on grass and bush and hedge,
    Reddening the road and deepening the green
On wide, blurred lawn, and in close-tangled sedge;
    Veiling in gray the landscape stretched between
    These low broad meadows and the pale hills seen
But dimly on the far horizon's edge.


In these transparent-clouded, gentle skies,
    Wherethrough the moist beams of the soft June sun
Might any moment break, no sorrow lies,
    No note of grief in swollen brooks that run,
    No hint of woe in this subdued, calm tone
Of all the prospect unto dreamy eyes.


Only a tender, unnamed half-regret
    For the lost beauty of the gracious morn;
A yearning aspiration, fainter yet,
    For brighter suns in joyous days unborn,
    Now while brief showers ...

Emma Lazarus

Lese-Amour.

    How well my heart remembers
    Beside these camp-fire embers
The eyes that smiled so far away, -
    The joy that was November's.

    Her voice to laughter moving,
    So merrily reproving, -
We wandered through the autumn woods,
    And neither thought of loving.

    The hills with light were glowing,
    The waves in joy were flowing, -
It was not to the clouded sun
    The day's delight was owing.

    Though through the brown leaves straying,
    Our lives seemed gone a-Maying;
We knew not Love was with us there,
    No look nor tone betraying.

    How unbelief still misses
    The best of being's blisses!
Our parting saw the first and last
    Of love's imagined kisses.

    Now 'mid these scenes the dr...

John Hay

Words.

When violets were springing
    And sunshine filled the day,
And happy birds were singing
    The praises of the May,
A word came to me, blighting
    The beauty of the scene,
And in my heart was winter,
    Though all the trees were green.

Now down the blast go sailing
    The dead leaves, brown and sere;
The forests are bewailing
    The dying of the year;
A word comes to me, lighting
    With rapture all the air,
And in my heart is summer,
    Though all the trees are bare.

John Hay

Regardant.

As I lay at your feet that afternoon,
Little we spoke, - you sat and mused,
Humming a sweet old-fashioned tune,

And I worshipped you, with a sense confused
Of the good time gone and the bad on the way,
While my hungry eyes your face perused,

To catch and brand on my soul for aye
The subtle smile which had grown my doom.
Drinking sweet poison hushed I lay

Till the sunset shimmered athwart the room.
I rose to go.    You stood so fair
And dim in the dead day's tender gloom:

All at once, or ever I was aware,
Flashed from you on me a warm strong wave
Of passion and power; in the silence there

I fell on my knees, like a lover, or slave,
With my wild hands clasping your slender waist;
And my lips, with a sudden frenzy brave,

John Hay

A Haunted Room.

In the dim chamber whence but yesterday
    Passed my beloved, filled with awe I stand;
    And haunting Loves fluttering on every hand
Whisper her praises who is far away.
A thousand delicate fancies glance and play
    On every object which her robes have fanned,
    And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expand
In the sweet memory of her beauty's ray.
Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest trace
    Of all the loveliness once mirrored there,
    The clustering glory of the shadowy hair
That framed so well the dear young angel face!
    But no, it shows my own face, full of care,
And my heart is her beauty's dwelling place.

John Hay