Now I make a leaf of Voices, for I have found nothing mightier than they are,
And I have found that no word spoken, but is beautiful, in its place.

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe.

All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practis'd and perfect organ? Where is the develop'd Soul?
For I see every word utter'd thence, has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms.

I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck,
Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,
Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering, forever ready, in...

I Saw the daughters of the Dawn come dancing o'er the hills;
The winds of Morn danced with them, oh, and all the sylphs of air:
I saw their ribboned roses blow, their gowns, of daffodils,
As over eyes of sapphire tossed the wild gold of their hair.

I saw the summer of their feet imprint the earth with dew,
And all the wildflowers open eyes in joy and wonderment:
I saw the sunlight of their hands waved at each bird that flew,
And all the birds, as with one voice, to their wild love gave vent.

"And, oh I" I said, "how fair you are I how fair! how very fair!
Oh, leap, my heart; and laugh, my heart! as laughs and leaps the Dawn!
Mount with the lark and sing with him and cast away your care!
For love and life are come again and night and sorrow gone!"

I saw the acoly...

Chiare, fresche e dolci acque.

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF VAUOLUSE--CONTEMPLATIONS OF DEATH.


    Ye limpid brooks, by whose clear streams
My goddess laid her tender limbs!
Ye gentle boughs, whose friendly shade
Gave shelter to the lovely maid!
Ye herbs and flowers, so sweetly press'd
By her soft rising snowy breast!
Ye Zephyrs mild, that breathed around
The place where Love my heart did wound!
Now at my summons all appear,
And to my dying words give ear.

If then my destiny requires,
And Heaven with my fate conspires,
That Love these eyes should weeping close,
Here let me find a soft repose.
So Death will less my soul affright,
And, free from dread, my weary spright
Naked alone will dare t' essay
The still unknown, though b...

The cigarette-smoke loops and slides above us,
Dipping and swirling as the waiter passes;
You strike a match and stare upon the flame.
The tiny fire leaps in your eyes a moment,
And dwindles away as silently as it came.

This melody, you say, has certain voices,
They rise like nereids from a river, singing,
Lift white faces, and dive to darkness again.
Wherever you go you bear this river with you:
A leaf falls, and it flows, and you have pain.

So says the tune to you, but what to me?
What to the waiter, as he pours your coffee,
The violinist who suavely draws his bow?
That man, who folds his paper, overhears it.
A thousand dreams revolve and fall and flow.

Some one there is who sees a virgin stepping
Down marble stairs to a deep tomb of roses:...

Letter VII. Hope.


I.

    O tears of mine! Ye start I know not why,
    Unless, indeed, to prove that I am glad,
    Albeit fast wedded to a thought so sad
    I scarce can deem that my despair will die,
    Or that the sun, careering up the sky,
    Will warm again a world that seem'd so mad.


II.

    And yet, who knows? The world is, to the mind,
    Much as we make it; and the things we tend
    Wear, for the nonce, the liveries that we lend.
    And some such things are fair, though ill-defined,
    And some are scathing, like...

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
    And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inward melody
        She paces to.

Each narrow hoof is lifted high
    Beneath the dark enclust'ring pines,
A silver ray within his bit
    And bridle shines.

His eye burns deep, his tail is arched,
    And streams upon the shadowy air,
The daylight sleeks his jetty flanks,
    His mistress' hair.

Her habit flows in darkness down,
    Upon the stirrup rests her foot,
Her brow is lifted, as if earth
    She heeded not.

'Tis silent in the avenue,
    The sombre pines are mute of song,
The blue is dark, there moves no breeze
    The boughs among.

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
    And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inwar...

Come, my dear Love, and let us climb yon hill,
The prospect, from its height, will well reward
The toil of climbing; thence we shall command
The various beauties of the landscape round.
Now we have reached the top. O! what a scene
Opens upon the sight, and swallows up
The admiring soul! She feels as if from earth
Uplifted into heaven. Scarce can she yet
Collect herself, and exercise her powers.
While o'er heaven's lofty, wide-extended arch,
And round the vast horizon, the bold eye
Shoots forth her view, with what sublime delight
The bosom swells! See, where the God of day,
Who through the cloudless ether long has rid
On his bright, fiery car, amidst a blaze
Of dazzling glory, and in wrath shot round
His burning arrows, with tyrannic power
Oppressing Natur...

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1868.)


Oh what is that country
    And where can it be,
Not mine own country,
    But dearer far to me?
Yet mine own country,
    If I one day may see
Its spices and cedars,
    Its gold and ivory.

As I lie dreaming
    It rises, that land:
There rises before me
    Its green golden strand,
With its bowing cedars
    And its shining sand;
It sparkles and flashes
    Like a shaken brand.

Do angels lean nearer
    While I lie and long?
I see their soft plumage
    And catch their windy song,
Like the rise of a high tide
    Sweeping full and strong;
I mark the outskirts
    Of their reverend throng.

Oh what is a king here,
    Or what is a boor?

        The ordered intermingling
            of the real and the dream,--
        The mill above the river,
            and the mist above the stream;
        The life of ceaseless labor,
            brave with song and cheery call--
        The radiant skies of evening,
            with its rainbow o'er us all.


        AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE!--Is this
            her presence here with me,
        Or but a vain creation of
            a lover's memory?

        A fair, illusive vision
            that would vanish into air
        Dared I even touch the silence
            with the whisper of a prayer?

        Nay, let me then believe in all
            the blended false a...

How beautiful, how beautiful,
    Beneath the morning sky,
In bridal veil of snowy mist,
    These dreamy headlands lie!
How beautiful, in soft repose,
    Upon the water's breast,
Steeped in the sunlight's golden calm,
    These fairy islets rest!

A Sabbath hush enfolds the hills,
    And broods upon the deep
Whose music every hollow fills,
    And climbs each rocky steep,
Now low and soft like love's own sigh,
    Now faint and far away,
Now plaining to the answering pines,
    With melancholy lay.

Like white-winged birds, through azure depths,
    Above the restless tide,
With snowy plume and golden crest,
    The fleecy cloudlets glide;
Their dancing shadows fleck the deep,
    Or flit above the green
Of emerald is...

The little dream she had forgot
Oh, long and long ago,
Came back across the April fields
And touched her garment so
(As might a wind-blown primrose cling
And one scarce guess or know.)

A little beggared outcast dream
Forgot of Love and men,
And all because a fiddler played
An old song in the glen,
And two Young Lovers hand in hand,
Sent back its tune again.

The little dream she had forgot
Crept near and clung and stayed--
A roving, ragged vagabond
Half daring, half afraid,
And all because young love went by
And one old fiddler played.

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlec on the shore,
The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,
Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you
Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

The sunlight glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.

The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
Against its ground
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.

On, on, we tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.

Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, the healing of the...

What do I care about the swift newspaper boys.
The approach of the late auto-beasts does not frighten me.
I rest on my moving legs.
My face is wet with rain.
Green remains of the night
Stick to my eyes.
That's the way I like it -
Even as the sharp, secret
Drops of water crack on thousands of walls.
Plop from thousands of roofs.
Hop along shining streets...
And all the sullen houses
Listen to their
Eternal song.
Close behind me the burning night is ruined...
Its smelly corpse burdens my back.
But above me I feel the rushing,
Cool heaven.
Behold - I am in front of a
Streaming church.
Large and quiet it takes me in.
Here I shall stay for a while.
Immersed in its dreams.
Dreams out of gray
Silk that does not shimmer.

"O Thou!" her words she thus without delay
Resuming, turn'd their point on me, to whom
They but with lateral edge seem'd harsh before,
"Say thou, who stand'st beyond the holy stream,
If this be true. A charge so grievous needs
Thine own avowal." On my faculty
Such strange amazement hung, the voice expir'd
Imperfect, ere its organs gave it birth.

A little space refraining, then she spake:
"What dost thou muse on? Answer me. The wave
On thy remembrances of evil yet
Hath done no injury." A mingled sense
Of fear and of confusion, from my lips
Did such a "Yea" produce, as needed help
Of vision to interpret. As when breaks
In act to be discharg'd, a cross-bow bent
Beyond its pitch, both nerve and bow o'erstretch'd,
The flagging weapon feebly hits the mark...

Far from "where the roses rest",
Round the altar and the aisle,
Which I loved, of all, the best --
I have come to rest awhile
By the ever-restless sea --
Will its waves give rest to me?

But it is so hard to part
With my roses. Do they know
(Who knows but each has a heart?)
How it grieves my heart to go?
Roses! will the restless sea
Bring, as ye, a rest for me?

Ye were sweet and still and calm,
Roses red and roses white;
And ye sang a soundless psalm
For me in the day and night.
Roses! will the restless sea
Sing as sweet as ye for me?

Just a hundred feet away,
Seaward, flows and ebbs the tide;
And the wavelets, blue and gray,
Moan, and white sails windward glide
O'er the ever restless sea
From me, far and pea...

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers;
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the air, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with the twilight, the Hours,
The Day's last Hours, departed, and Dusk put up her bars.

Pale fingers beckoned me on; pale fingers, like starlit mist;
Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind's dim rune,
As up from the night, like a nymph from the amethyst
Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white breast of the moon.

And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands,
The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet,
And the sibilant whisper of silence, that summoned to lands
Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet.

And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night
Brooded ...

The Shadow

Who art thou, O Glory,
    In flame from the deep,
Where stars chant their story,
    Why trouble my sleep?

I hardly had rested,
    My dreams wither now:
Why comest thou crested
    And gemmed on they brow?


The Glory

Up, Shadow, and follow
    The way I will show;
The blue gleaming hollow
    To-night we will know,

And rise mid the vast to
    The fountain of days;
From whence we had pass to
    The parting of ways.


The Shadow

I know thee, O Glory:
    Thine eyes and thy brow
With white fire all hoary
    Come back to me now.

Together we wandered
    In ages agone;
Our thoughts as we pondered
    Were stars at the dawn.

The glory...