[Greek: Erotes hyper men agan, K.T.L.[1]]


1.

When fierce conflicting passions urge
The breast, where love is wont to glow,
What mind can stem the stormy surge
Which rolls the tide of human woe?
The hope of praise, the dread of shame,
Can rouse the tortur'd breast no more;
The wild desire, the guilty flame,
Absorbs each wish it felt before.


2.

But if affection gently thrills
The soul, by purer dreams possest,
The pleasing balm of mortal ills
In love can soothe the aching breast:
If thus thou comest in disguise,
Fair Venus! from thy native heaven,
What heart, unfeeling, would despise
The sweetest boon the Gods have given?


3.

But, never from thy golden bow,
May I beneath the...

Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying.

I

Over the broken world, the dark gone by,
Horror of outcast darkness torn with wars;
And timeless agony
Of the white fire, heaped high by blinded Stars,
Unfaltering, unaghast;--
Out of the midmost Fire
At last,--at last,--
Cry! ...
O darkness' one desire,--
O darkness, have you heard?--
Black Chaos, blindly striving towards the Word?
--The Cry!

Behold thy conqueror, Death!
Behold, behold from whom
It flutters forth, that triumph of First-Breath,
Victorious one that can but breathe and cling,--
This pulsing flower,--this weaker than a wing,
Halcyon thing!--
Cradled above unfathomable doom.


II

Under my feet, O Death,
Under my trembling feet!
Back, through the gates of hell, now give me way.
I...

I have been across the bridges of the years.
    Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
    Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
    My lost youth.

As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all -
    Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
    My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
    By the track.

As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
    My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
    Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
    Down a mountain.

On the border of that valley I found you,
    Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
    Hand in hand.
And my pulses...

When Mary found fault with me that day the trouble was well begun.
No man likes being found fault with, no man really thinks it fun
To have a wisp of a woman, in a most obnoxious way,
Allude to his temper as beastly, and remark that day by day
He proves himself so careless, so lacking in love, so mean,
Then add, with an air convincing, she wishes she'd never seen
A person who thinks so little of breaking a woman's heart,
And since he is - well, what he is - 'tis better that they should part.

Now, no man enjoys this performance - he has his faults, well and good,
He doesn't want to hear them named - this ought to be understood.

Mary was aggravating, and all because I'd forgot
To bring some flowers I'd promised - as though it mattered a lot;
But that's the way with a wo...

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,
The moon was at the window-square,
Deedily brooding in deformed decay -
The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze;
At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn
So the moon looked in there.

Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber,
Where lay two souls opprest,
One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!"
To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!"
And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber,
And these two reft of rest.

While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,
Nought seeming imminent,
Something fell sheer, and crashed, and from the floor
Lay glittering at the pair with a shattered gaze,
While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,
And th...

On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood
Uprear their shadowing heads, and at their feet
Hear not the surge that has for ages beat,
How many a lonely wanderer has stood!
And, whilst the lifted murmur met his ear,
And o'er the distant billows the still eve
Sailed slow, has thought of all his heart must leave
To-morrow; of the friends he loved most dear;
Of social scenes, from which he wept to part!
Oh! if, like me, he knew how fruitless all
The thoughts that would full fain the past recall,
Soon would he quell the risings of his heart,
And brave the wild winds and unhearing tide
The World his country, and his GOD his guide.

Summer is gone with all its roses,
    Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,
    Its warm air and refreshing showers:
    And even Autumn closes.

Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,
    And winter comes which is yet colder;
    Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder,
    And the last buds cease blowing.

Bee-Bitten in the orchard hung
The peach; or, fallen in the weeds,
Lay rotting, where still sucked and sung
The gray bee, boring to its seed's
Pink pulp and honey blackly stung.

The orchard-path, which led around
The garden, with its heat one twinge
Of dinning locusts, picket-bound
And ragged, brought me where one hinge
Held up the gate that scraped the ground.

All seemed the same: the martin-box
Sun-warped with pigmy balconies
Still stood, with all its twittering flocks,
Perched on its pole above the peas
And silvery-seeded onion-stocks.

The clove-pink and the rose; the clump
Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat
Sick to the heart: the garden stump,
Red with geranium-pots, arid sweet
With moss and ferns, this side the pump.

She sat and sang alway
    By the green margin of a stream,
Watching the fishes leap and play
    Beneath the glad sunbeam.

I sat and wept alway
    Beneath the moon's most shadowy beam,
Watching the blossoms of the May
    Weep leaves into the stream.

I wept for memory;
    She sang for hope that is so fair:
My tears were swallowed by the sea;
    Her songs died on the air.

Our true hearts are forever lonely:
A wistfulness is in our thought:
Our lights are like the dawns which only
Seem bright to us and yet are not.

Something you see in me I wis not:
Another heart in you I guess:
A stranger's lips--but thine I kiss not,
Erring in all my tenderness.

I sometimes think a mighty lover
Takes every burning kiss we give:
His lights are those which round us hover:
For him alone our lives we live.

Ah, sigh for us whose hearts unseeing
Point all their passionate love in vain,
And blinded in the joy of being,
Meet only when pain touches pain.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a summering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are ...

The leaves are many under my feet,
    And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
    A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
    The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,-
    Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
    Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
    The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
    Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
    Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
    You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I w...

    Whisper it not that late in years
    Sorrow shall fade and the world be brighter,
    Life be freed of tremor and tears,
    Heads be wiser and hearts be lighter.
    Ah! but the dream that all endears,
    The dream we sell for your pottage of truth--
    Give us again the passion of youth,
    Sorrow shall fade and the world be brighter.

Far out at sea there has been a storm,
And still, as they roll their liquid acres,
High-heaped the billows lower and glisten.
The air is laden, moist, and warm
With the dying tempest's breath;
And, as I walk the lonely strand
With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned
By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers,
Furious sporting, tossed and tumbling,
Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling -
Watch, and muse, and vainly listen
To the inarticulate mumbling
Of the hoary-headed deep;
For who may tell me what it saith,
Muttering, moaning as in sleep?

Slowly and heavily
Comes in the sea,
With memories of storm o'erfreighted,
With heaving heart and breath abated,
Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow,
And seamed with many a gaping, sighing f...

As pearls slip off a silken string and fall into the sea,
These rounded summer days fall back into eternity.

Into the deep from whence they came; into the mystery -
At set of sun each one slips back as pearls into the sea.

They are so sweet - so warm and sweet - Love fain would hold them fast:
He weeps when through his finger tips they slip away at last.

Ha! snow
Upon the crags!
How slow
The winter lags
Ha, little lamb upon the crags,
How fearlessly you go!
Take care
Up there,
You little woolly atom! On and on
He goes . . . ‘tis steep . . . Hillo!
My friend is gone,
Friend orthodoxo-logical,
He could not argue with a waterfall!
And here it is, my Aber . . . Stay!
I’ll cross
This way:
The moss
Upon these stones is dripping with the spray,
And now one turn, left hand,
And I shall stand
Before the very rock: not yet . . . not yet!
O let me think ! No, no ! I don’t forget
(Forget!) but this is sacred . . . peace, then, peace!
Release
From all dead things, that serve not to present
At my soul’s grate the lovely innocent.
He had heard some idle talk
Of how his f...

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breeding soft balm, and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold earth she breathed a tender sigh, -
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson-tasseled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the star-light of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow, and stormily he said: -
"Sole lord of terror, and the fiend of storm,
Crow...