He knows the sweet vexation in the strife
Of Love with Time, this bard who fain would stray
To fairer place beyond the storms of life,
With astral faces near him day by day.
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow
Which best he loves; for there the echoes, rife
With rich suggestions of his long ago,
Astarte, pass with thee! And, far away,
Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low
In tasselled corn, alternate come and go,
While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh
With vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,
Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.

I.

Here where a tree and its wild liana,
Leaning over the streamlet, grow,
Once a nymph, like the moon'd Diana,
Sat in the ages long ago.
Sat with a mortal. with whom she had mated,
Sat and laughed with a mortal youth,
Ere he of the forest, the god who hated,
Saw and changed to a form uncouth....

II.

Once in the woods she had heard a shepherd,
Heard a reed in a golden glade;
Followed, and clad in the skin of a leopard,
Found him fluting within the shade.
Found him sitting with bare brown shoulder,
Lithe and strong as a sapling oak,
And leaning over a mossy boulder,
Love in her wildwood heart awoke.

III.

White she was as a dogwood flower,
Pinkly white as a wild-crab bloom,
Sweetly white as a hawtree bower

There's no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There's such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one's heart:

There's such a thing as dwelling
On the thought ourselves have nursed,
And with scorn and courage telling
The world to do its worst.

We'll not let its follies grieve us,
We'll just take them as they come;
And then every day will leave us
A merry laugh for home.

When we've left each friend and brother,
When we're parted wide and far,
We will think of one another,
As even better than we are.

Every glorious sight above us,
Every pleasant sight beneath,
We'll connect with those that love us,
Whom we truly love till death!

In the evening, when we're sitting
By the fire, perchance alone,

I.

A woman, fair to look upon,
Where waters whiten with the moon;
While down the glimmer of the lawn
The white moths swoon.

A mouth of music; eyes of love;
And hands of blended snow and scent,
That touch the pearl-pale shadow of
An instrument.

And low and sweet that song of sleep
After the song of love is hushed;
While all the longing, here, to weep,
Is held and crushed.

Then leafy silence, that is musk
With breath of the magnolia-tree,
While dwindles, moon-white, through the dusk
Her drapery.

Let me remember how a heart,
Romantic, wrote upon that night!
My soul still helps me read each part
Of it aright.

And like a dead leaf shut between
A book's dull chapters, stained and dark,
That page,...

The mystery of Life, the mystery
Of Death, I see
Darkly as in a glass;
Their shadows pass,
And talk with me.

As the flush of a Morning Sky,
As a Morning Sky colorless -
Each yields its measure of light
To a wet world or a dry;
Each fares through day to night
With equal pace,
And then each one
Is done.

As the Sun with glory and grace
In his face,
Benignantly hot,
Graciously radiant and keen,
Ready to rise and to run, -
Not without spot,
Not even the Sun.

As the Moon
On the wax, on the wane,
With night for her noon;
Vanishing soon,
To appear again.

As Roses that droop
Half warm, half chill, in the languid May,
And breathe out a scent
Sweet and faint;
Till the wind gives one ...

With kindly thoughts full oft we've met,
And bow'd at Friendship's sacred shrine;
Oh, may we ne'er those thoughts forget,
But may they still our hearts entwine.

May both retain those feelings long,
Which prompt the words of friendly tongue,
May I not fail to think of thee,
Nor you to think of T. F. Young.

I knew an old man at a Fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To clamber on a cider cask
And cry to all the yokels there:,

"Lovers to-day and for all time
    Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
    Love is not kindly nor yet grim
    But does to you as you to him.

"Whistle, and Love will come to you,
    Hiss, and he fades without a word,
    Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
    Speak, he retells what he has heard.

"Then all you lovers have good heed
    Vex not young Love in word or deed:
    Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
    He will not pardon nor forget."

The old man's voice was sweet yet loud
And this shows what a man was he,
He'd scatter apples to the crowd
And give great draughts of cider, free.

In vain, sweet Maid! for me you bring
The first-blown blossoms of the spring;
My tearful cheek you wipe in vain,
And bid its pale rose bloom again.

In vain! unconscious, did I say?
Oh! you alone these tears can stay:
Alone, the pale rose can renew,
Whose sunshine is a smile for you.

Yet not in friendship's smile it lives;
Too cold the gifts that friendship gives:
The beam that warms a winter's day,
Plays coldly in the lap of may.

You bid my sad heart cease to swell;
But will you, if its tale I tell,
Nor turn away, nor frown the while,
But smile, as you were wont to smile?

Then bring me not the blossoms young,
That erst on Flora's forehead hung;
But round thy radiant temples twine,
The flowers whose flaunting mocks at mine...

'Tis well to have a goal in mind,
A life-aim, high and true;
Clear as the day, and well defined,
And ever kept in view.
But God has strewn along the way
Bright flowers of every hue.
Gather the brightest while you may,
For they were meant for you.

Heaven's joy transcends the joys of earth,
But if earth's joys be pure
They must have had a heavenly birth,
And bless while they endure;
So pluck the flower before it fades--
Drink from the purling stream;
Nor look for sorrow's darkening shades,
But for the morning gleam.

Life's burdens lose full half their weight
If gay our spirits be;
The rest beyond we antedate,
And serve, though ever free.
Our lamentations all will end,
Exchanged for smile and song,
And men will mark our u...

Before me, careless lying,
Young Love his ware comes crying;
Full soon the elf untreasures
His pack of pains and pleasures,--
With roguish eye,
He bids me buy
From out his pack of treasures.

His wallet's stuffed with blisses,
With true-love-knots and kisses,
With rings and rosy fetters,
And sugared vows and letters;--
He holds them out
With boyish flout,
And bids me try the fetters.

Nay, Child (I cry), I know them;
There's little need to show them!
Too well for new believing
I know their past deceiving,--
I am too old
(I say), and cold,
To-day, for new believing!

But still the wanton presses,
With honey-sweet caresses,
And still, to my undoing,
He wins me, with his wooing,
To buy his ware
With...

The splendor of the kindling day,
The splendor of the setting sun,
These move my soul to wend its way,
And have done
With all we grasp and toil amongst and say.

The paling roses of a cloud,
The fading bow that arches space,
These woo my fancy toward my shroud;
Toward the place
Of faces veiled, and heads discrowned and bowed.

The nation of the awful stars,
The wandering star whose blaze is brief,
These make me beat against the bars
Of my grief;
My tedious grief, twin to the life it mars.

O fretted heart tossed to and fro,
So fain to flee, so fain to rest!
All glories that are high or low,
East or west,
Grow dim to thee who art so fain to go.

        Only a simple rhyme of love and sorrow,
    Where "blisses" rhymed with "kisses," "heart," with "dart:"
        Yet, reading it, new strength I seemed to borrow,
    To live on bravely and to do my part.

        A little rhyme about a heart that's bleeding -
    Of lonely hours and sorrow's unrelief:
        I smiled at first; but there came with the reading
    A sense of sweet companionship in grief.

        The selfishness of my own woe forsaking,
    I thought about the singer of that song.
        Some other breast felt this same weary aching;
    Another found the summer days too long.

        The few sad lines, my sorrow so expressing,
    I read, and on the singer, all unknown,
        I breathed a fervent though a silent blessing,

I bring thee, love, a golden chain,
    I bring thee too a flowery wreath;
The gold shall never wear a stain,
    The flowerets long shall sweetly breathe.
Come, tell me which the tie shall be,
To bind thy gentle heart to me.

The Chain is formed of golden threads,
    Bright as Minerva's yellow hair,
When the last beam of evening sheds
    Its calm and sober lustre there.
The Wreath's of brightest myrtle wove,
    With sunlit drops of bliss among it,
And many a rose-leaf, culled by Love,
    To heal his lip when bees have stung it.
Come, tell me which the tie shall be,
To bind thy gentle heart to me.

Yes, yes, I read that ready eye,
    Which answers when the tongue is loath,
Thou likest the form of either tie,
    And spreadest thy ...

'Tis sweet to recollect life's past controls,
And turn to days of sorrow when they're bye,
And think of gentle friends and feeling souls
That offered shelter when the storm was high,--
It thrills one's heart:--As mariners have turn'd,
When 'scap'd from shipwreck 'mid the billows' roar,
To look on fragments that the tempest spurn'd,
On which they clung, and struggled to the shore,
So sweet it is to turn.--And, hour by hour,
Reflection muses on the good and great,
That lent a portion of their wealthy power,
And sav'd a wormling from destruction's fate.

Oft to the patron of her first essays
The rural muse, O Radstock, turns her eye,
Not with the fulsome noise of fawning praise,
But soul's deep gushings in a silent sigh;
As drooping blossoms, dwindling deep ...

Grant me a moment of peace,
Let me but open mine eyes,
Forgetting the empire of lies
And warfare’s majestic increase
Of national folly and hate;
Ere I return to my fate,
Grant me a moment of peace.

To what is I would turn from what seems
From a world where men fall and adore
The god that Fear shuddering bore
To Greed in the desert of dreams,
Unholy, inhuman, impure;
From the State to the loves that endure,
To what is I would turn from what seems.

No man has been richer than I,
Though he staggered with infinite gold
And bought of whatever is sold
Of the beauty that money can buy.
In the wealth that is lost in the mart
And is stored in the innermost heart
No man has been richer than I.

Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood,
W...

0 heart of mine - if I were but a swallow -
A thing so fearless, swift of flight, and free -
On wings unwearied I would find and follow
Some path that led to thee!

Were I a rose out in the garden growing
My sweetness I would give the vagrant breeze
For he, perchance, might meet thee all unknowing -
Yet bring thee memories.

    Glad hours have been when I have seen
    Life's scope and each dry day's intent
    United; so that I could stand
    In silence, covering with my hand
    The circle of the universe,
    Balance the blessing and the curse,
    And trust in deeds without chagrin,
Free from to-morrow and yesterday - content.

Be gentle, O hands of a child;
Be true: like a shadowy sea
In the starry darkness of night
Are your eyes to me.

But words are shallow, and soon
Dreams fade that the heart once knew;
And youth fades out in the mind,
In the dark eyes too.

What can a tired heart say,
Which the wise of the world have made dumb?
Save to the lonely dreams of a child,
'Return again, come!'