"Mooar fowk get wed nor what do weel,"
A've heeard mi mother say;
But mooast young lads an lasses too,
Think just th' contrary way.
An lasses mooar nor lads it seems,
To wed seem nivver flaid;
For nowt they seem to dreead as mich
As deein an old maid.
But oft for single life they sigh,
An net withaat a cause,
When wi' ther tongue they've teed a knot,
Ther teeth's too waik to lawse.
Days arn't allus weddin days,
They leearn that to ther sorrow,
When panics come an th' brass gets done,
An they've to try to borrow.
When th' chap at th' strap shop's lukkin glum,
An hardly seems to know yo;
An gooas on sarvin other fowk
As if he nivver saw yo.
An when yo're fain to pile up th' foir,
Wi' bits o' cowks an cinders; -
When poverty says, "h...

I knew it the first of the summer,
    I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
    But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
    Couldn't we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
    To bind us, and nothing more?

There was not a word of folly
    Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
    Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects -
    The moon and the worlds above, -
And our talk was tinctured with science,
    And everything else, save love.

A wholly Platonic friendship
    You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
    The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
    Though both...

I

Oh chimes set high on the sunny tower
Ring on, ring on unendingly,
Make all the hours a single hour,
For when the dusk begins to flower,
The man I love will come to me!...

But no, go slowly as you will,
I should not bid you hasten so,
For while I wait for love to come,
Some other girl is standing dumb,
Fearing her love will go.

II

Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high!
Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free !
Oh sun awake in the covered sky,
For the man I love, loves me I...

Oh drifting steam disperse and die,
Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south,
Fate heard afar my happy cry,
And laid her finger on my mouth.

III

The dusk was blue with blowing mist,
The lights were spangles in...

There's a thing that grows by the fainting flower,
And springs in the shade of the lady's bower;
The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale,
When they feel its breath in the summer gale,
And the tulip curls its leaves in pride,
And the blue-eyed violet starts aside;
But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare,
For what does the honest toadstool care?
She does not glow in a painted vest,
And she never blooms on the maiden's breast;
But she comes, as the saintly sisters do,
In a modest suit of a Quaker hue.
And, when the stars in the evening skies
Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes,
The toad comes out from his hermit cell,
The tale of his faithful love to tell.

Oh, there is light in her lover's glance,
That flies to her heart like a silver lance;<...

We all have hearts that shake alike
Beneath the arias of Fate's hand;
Although the cynics sneering stand,
These too the deathless powers strike.

A trembling lover's infinite trust,
To the last drop of doating blood,
Feels not alone the ocean flood
Of desperate grief, when dreams are dust.

The scornfullest souls, with mourning eyes,
Pant o'er again their ghostly ways; -
Dread night-paths, where were gleaming days
When life was lovelier than the skies!

I.
What am I doing, you say to me, ‘wasting the sweet summer hours’?
Haven’t you eyes? I am dressing the grave of a woman with flowers.

II.
For a woman ruin’d the world, as God’s own scriptures tell,
And a man ruin’d mine, but a woman, God bless her, kept me from Hell.

III.
Love me? O yes, no doubt—how long—till you threw me aside!
Dresses and laces and jewels and never a ring for the bride.

IV.
All very well just now to be calling me darling and sweet,
And after a while would it matter so much if I came on the street?

V.
You when I met you first—when he brought you!—I turn’d away
And the hard blue eyes have it still, that stare of a beast of prey.

VI.
You were his friend—you—you—when he promised to make me his bride,
And you...

They lifted her out of a story
Too sordid and selfish by far,
They left me the innocent glory
Of love that was pure as a star;
They left me all guiltless of “evil”
That would have brought years of distress
When the chance to be man, god or devil,
Was mine, on return from Success.

With a name and a courage uncommon
She had come in the soul striving days,
She had come as a child, girl and woman,
Come only to comfort and praise.
There was never a church that could marry,
For never a court could divorce,
In the season of Hannah and Harry
When the love of my life ran its course.

Her hair was red gold on head Grecian,
But fluffed from the parting away,
And her eyes were the warm grey Venetian
That comes with the dawn of the day.
No Fa...

The evening sky was as green as Jade,
    As Emerald turf by Lotus lake,
Behind the Kafila far she strayed,
    (The Pearls are lost if the Necklace break!)

A lingering freshness touched the air
    From palm-trees, clustered around a Spring,
The great, grim Desert lay vast and bare,
    But Youth is ever a careless thing.

The Raiders threw her upon the sand,
    Men of the Wilderness know no laws,
They tore the Amethysts off her hand,
    And rent the folds of her veiling gauze.

They struck the lips that they might have kissed,
    Pitiless they to her pain and fear,
And wrenched the gold from her broken wrist,
    No use to cry; there were none to hear.

Her scarlet mouth and her onyx eyes,
    Her braided hair in its silken sheen...

O daughter, why do ye laugh and weep,
One with another?
For woe to wake and for will to sleep,
Mother, my mother.
But weep ye winna the day ye wed,
One with another.
For tears are dry when the springs are dead,
Mother, my mother.
Too long have your tears run down like rain,
One with another.
For a long love lost and a sweet love slain,
Mother, my mother.
Too long have your tears dripped down like dew,
One with another.
For a knight that my sire and my brethren slew,
Mother, my mother.
Let past things perish and dead griefs lie,
One with another.
O fain would I weep not, and fain would I die,
Mother, my mother.
Fair gifts we give ye, to laugh and live,
One with another.
But sair and strange are the gifts I give,
Mother, my mot...

I am here myself; as though this heave of effort
At starting other life, fulfilled my own:
Rose-leaves that whirl in colour round a core
Of seed-specks kindled lately and softly blown

By all the blood of the rose-bush into being -
Strange, that the urgent will in me, to set
My mouth on hers in kisses, and so softly
To bring together two strange sparks, beget

Another life from our lives, so should send
The innermost fire of my own dim soul out- spinning
And whirling in blossom of flame and being upon me!
That my completion of manhood should be the beginning

Another life from mine! For so it looks.
The seed is purpose, blossom accident.
The seed is all in all, the blossom lent
To crown the triumph of this new descent.

Is that it, woman? D...

Daughter of my nobler hope
    That dying gave thee birth,
    Sweet Melancholy!
    For memory of the dead,
    In her dear stead,
    'Bide thou with me,
    Sweet Melancholy!
As purple shadows to the tree,
When the last sun-rays sadly slope
Athwart the bare and darkening earth,
    Art thou to me,
    Sweet Melancholy!

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
As whose children we are brethren: one.

And any moment may descend hot death
To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast
Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath
Not less for dying faithful to the last.

O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,
Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,
Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony!
O sudden spasm, release of the dead!

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief o...

Amor che meco al buon tempo ti stavi.

HE VENTS HIS SORROW TO ALL WHO WITNESSED HIS FORMER FELICITY.


    Love, that in happier days wouldst meet me here
Along these meads that nursed our kindred strains;
And that old debt to clear which still remains,
Sweet converse with the stream and me wouldst share:
Ye flowers, leaves, grass, woods, grots, rills, gentle air,
Low valleys, lofty hills, and sunny plains:
The harbour where I stored my love-sick pains,
And all my various chance, my racking care:
Ye playful inmates of the greenwood shade;
Ye nymphs, and ye that in the waves pursue
That life its cool and grassy bottom lends:--
My days were once so fair; now dark and dread
As death that makes them so. Thus the world through
On each as soon as bo...

O ships upon the sea, O shapes of air,
O lands whose names are made of spice and tar,
Old painted empires that are ever fair,
From Cochin-China down to Zanzibar!
O Beauty simple, soul-less, and bizarre!
I would take Danger for my bosom-wife,
And light our bed with some wild tropic star -
O how I long to run away with Life!

To run together, Life and I! What care
Ours if from Duty we may run so far
As to forget the daily mounting stair,
The roaring subway and the clanging car,
The stock that ne'er again shall be at par,
The silly speed, the city's stink and strife,
The faces that to look on leaves a scar:
O how I long to run away with Life!

Fling up the sail - all sail that she can bear,
And out across the little frightened bar
Into the fea...

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,
Flashes his splendor over hill and vale,
Now tramp, tremendous, the loud forest through:
Or now, like mighty runners in a race,
That swing, long pace to pace,
Sweep 'round the hills, fresh as, at dawn's first start,
They swept, dew-dripping, from
The crystal-crimson ruby of her heart,
Shouting the dim world dumb.
And with their passage the gray and green
Of the earth 's washed clean;
And the cleansing breath of their might is wings
And warm aroma, we know as Spring's,
And sap and strength to her bourgeonings.

II.

My brow I bare
To ...

Love starts with a little throb in the heart,
And in the end one dies
Like an ill-treated toy.
Love is born in a look or in four words,
The little spark that burnt the whole house.
Love is at first a look,
And then a smile,
And then a word,
And then a promise,
And then a meeting of two among flowers.

From the Arabic.

We traveled by a mountain's edge,
It was September calm and bright,
Nature had decked its rocky ledge
With flowers of varied hue and height.
It seemed a miracle that they
Should flourish in that meager soil,
As noble spirits oftenest may
Gleam forth through poverty and toil.

Below were rippling, sparkling streams
Through meadows kissed by shadowy hills,
Reflecting autumn's peaceful dreams
Within those swift, translucent rills.
This lesson should these scenes impart
As on the road of life we go,
To do our duty and take heart,
As flowers bloom and streamlets flow.

Perhaps in ages yet to be
May flowers wave here e'en as today,
These streams still rush in merry glee
To cheer and charm who here may stray;
But we upon Time's rapid tid...

[Written after the yellow fever epidemic of 1878.]



Purer than thy own white snow,
Nobler than thy mountains' height;
Deeper than the ocean's flow,
Stronger than thy own proud might;
O Northland! to thy sister land,
Was late thy mercy's generous deed and grand.

Nigh twice ten years the sword was sheathed:
Its mist of green o'er battle plain
For nigh two decades Spring had breathed;
And yet the crimson life-blood stain
From passive swards had never paled,
Nor fields, where all were brave and some had failed.

Between the Northland, bride of snow,
And Southland, brightest sun's fair bride,
Swept, deepening ever in its flow,
The stormy wake, in war's dark tide:
No hand might clasp across the tears
And blood and anguish of fou...