I leave the world to-morrow,
What news for Fairyland?
I’m tired of dust and sorrow
And folk on every hand.

A moon more calm and splendid
Moves there through deeper skies,
By maiden stars attended
She peaces goddes-wise.

And there no wrath oppresses,
And there no teardrops start,
There cool winds breathe caresses,
That soothe the weary heart.

The wealth the mad world follows
Turns ashes in the hand
Of him who sees the hollows
And glades of Fairyland.

And pine boughs sigh no sorrow
Where fairy rotas play,
I leave the world to-morrow
For ever and a day.

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
    The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
    Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
    But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
    Whose rushing keels made music as they went
    Sailing in search of some new continent,
    With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
    In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
    Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
    Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
    For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

I. 1.

Hence, to the realms of Night, dire Demon, hence!
    Thy chain of adamant can bind
    That little world, the human mind,
And sink its noblest powers to impotence.
    Wake the lion's loudest roar,
    Clot his shaggy mane with gore,
    With flashing fury bid his eye-balls shine;
    Meek is his savage, sullen soul, to thine!
    Thy touch, thy deadening touch has steel'd the breast, [Footnote 2]
    Whence, thro' her April-shower, soft Pity smil'd;
    Has clos'd the heart each godlike virtue bless'd,
    To all the silent pleadings of his child.
    At thy command he plants the dagger deep,
At thy command exults, tho' Nature bids him weep!

I. 2.

When, with a frown that froze the peopled earth, [Footnote 3]
    Thou dartedst thy...

Under an arch of glorious leaves I passed
Out of the wood and saw the sickle moon
Floating in daylight o'er the pale green sea.

It was the quiet hour before the sun
Gathers the clouds to prayer and silently
Utters his benediction on the waves
That whisper round the death-bed of the day.
The labourers were returning from the farms
And children danced to meet them. From the doors
Of cottages there came a pleasant clink
Where busy hands laid out the evening meal.
From smouldering elms around the village spire
There soared and sank the caw of gathering rooks.
The faint-flushed clouds were listening to the tale
The sea tells to the sunset with one sigh.
The last white wistful sea-bird sought for peace,
And the last fishing-boat stole o'er the bar,
And fr...

I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on

it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, its convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how hes shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles w...

At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side,
I watched the red star rising in the East,
And while his fellows of the flaming sign
From prisoning daylight more and more released,
Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher,
Out of their locks the waters of the Line
Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire,
Rose in the splendor of their curving flight,
Their dolphin leap across the austral night,
From windows southward opening on the sea
What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too,
Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony.
Where, from the garden to the rail above,
As though a lover's greeting to his love
Should bo...

Still the sovereign trees
Make the sundawn's breeze
More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose,
As wind and sun fulfil
Their living rapture: still
Noon, dawn, and evening thrill
With radiant change the immeasurable repose
Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest
And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.
Still the love-lit place
Given of God such grace
That here was born on earth a birth divine
Gives thanks with all its flowers
Through all their lustrous hours,
From all its birds and bowers
Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset shine
Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade
The life of all the living things it lit be glad.
Soft as light and strong
Rises yet their song
And thrills with pride the cedar-crested law...

TO MY FRIEND, JOHN FOX, JR.


You remember, the deep mist, -
Climbing to the Devil's Den -
Blue beneath us in the glen
And above us amethyst,
Throbbed and circled and away
Thro' the wild-woods opposite,
Torn and shattered, morning-lit,
Scurried up a dewy gray.
Vague as in Romance we saw
From the fog one riven trunk,
Its huge horny talons shrunk,
Thrust a hungry dragon's claw.
And we climbed two hours thro'
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To that wooded rock that shows
Undulating peaks of blue:
The vast Cumberlands that sleep,
Weighed with soaring forests, far
To the concave welkin's bar,
Leagues on leagues of purple sweep.
Range exalted over range
Billowed their enormous spines,
And we heard the priestly pines
Hum...

The patient Pan,
Drunken with nectar,
Sleeps or feigns slumber,
Drowsily humming
Music to the march of time.
This poor tooting, creaking cricket,
Pan, half asleep, rolling over
His great body in the grass,
Tooting, creaking,
Feigns to sleep, sleeping never;
'T is his manner,
Well he knows his own affair,
Piling mountain chains of phlegm
On the nervous brain of man,
As he holds down central fires
Under Alps and Andes cold;
Haply else we could not live,
Life would be too wild an ode.



Come search the wood for flowers,--
Wild tea and wild pea,
Grapevine and succory,
Coreopsis
And liatris,
Flaunting in their bowers;
Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn...

I.

There's a story no one knows,
But myself, about a rose
And a fairy and a star
Where the Toyland people are.
Once when I had gone to bed,
Mother said it was a dream,
From a rose above my head,
Growing by the window-beam,
Out there popped a fairy's head.

II.

And he nodded at me: smiled:
Said, "You're fond of stories, eh?
Well, I know a star each child
Ought to know. It's far away
Foryour kind, but not for me.
I will take you to that star,
Where you'll hear new stories; see?
Close your eyes. It is n't far
That is, 't is n't far for me."

III.

And he'd hardly spoken when
From the rose there came a moth;
And before you'd counted ten
We were on it, and were both
Flying to that star that mad...

I.

Over the lapsing lagune all the day
Urging my gondola with oar-strokes light,
Always beside one shadowy waterway
I pause and peer, with eager, jealous sight,
Toward the Piazza where Pepita stands,
Wooing the hungry pigeons from their flight.

Dark the canal; but she shines like the sun,
With yellow hair and dreaming, wine-brown eyes.
Thick crowd the doves for food. She gives ME none.
She sees and will not see. Vain are my sighs.
One slow, reluctant stroke. Aha! she turns,
Gestures and smiles, with coy and feigned surprise.

Shifting and baffling is our Lido track,
Blind and bewildering all the currents flow.
Me they perplex not. In the midnight black
I hold my way secure and fearless row,
But ah! what chart have I to her, my Sea,
W...

White roses, like a mist
Upon a terraced height,
And 'mid the roses, opal, moonbeam-kissed,
A fountain falling white.

And as the full moon flows,
Orbed fire, into a cloud,
There is a fragrant sound as if a rose
Had sighed its soul aloud.

There is a whisper pale,
As if a rose awoke,
And, having heard in sleep the nightingale,
Still dreaming of it spoke.

Now, as from some vast shell
A giant pearl rolls white,
From the dividing cloud, that winds compel,
The moon sweeps, big and bright.

Moon-mists and pale perfumes,
Wind-wafted through the dusk:
There is a sound as if unfolding blooms
Voiced their sweet thoughts in musk.

A spirit is abroad
Of music and of sleep:
The moon and mists have made for it a road<...

Night, dim night, and it rains, my love, it rains,
(Art thou dreaming of me, I wonder)
The trees are sad, and the wind complains,
Outside the rolling of the thunder,
And the beat against the panes.

Heart, my heart, thou art mournful in the rain,
(Are thy redolent lips a-quiver?)
My soul seeks thine, doth it seek in vain?
My love goes surging like a river,
Shall its tide bear naught save pain?

What were sweet life without her
Who maketh all things sweet
With smiles that dream about her,
With dreams that come and fleet!
Soft moods that end in languor;
Soft words that end in sighs;
Curved frownings as of anger;
Cold silence of her eyes.

Sweet eyes born but for slaying,
Deep violet-dark and lost
In dreams of whilom Maying
In climes unstung of frost.
Wild eyes shot through with fire
God's light in godless years,
Brimmed wine-dark with desire,
A birth for dreams and tears.

Dear tears as sweet as laughter,
Low laughter sweet as love
Unwound in ripples after
Sad tears we knew not of.
What if the day be lawless,
What if the heart be dead,
Such tears would make it flawless,
Such laughter make it red.

...

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
    Passed o'er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,
    The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.

Their attitude and aspect were the same,
    Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
    And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;
    Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
"Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
    The place where thy beloved are at rest!"

And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
    Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
    The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recogni...

Whether you frolic with comrade boys,
Or sit at your studies, or play with toys,
Whatever your station, or place, or sphere,
For just one purpose God sent you here;
And always and ever, you are to me -
Dear little Mothers, of Men to be.

So would I guard you from all mean things;
From the dwarfing of wealth, and from poverty's stings.
And from silly mothers of fuss and show,
And from dissolute fathers whose aims are low,
I would take you, and shield you, and set you free,
Dear little Mothers, of Men to be.

And then were the wish of my heart fulfilled,
Around about you, the world should build
A wall of Wisdom, with Truth for its Tower,
Where mind and body would wax in power,
Till the tender twig was a splendid tree -
Dear little Mothers, of Men ...

And, O beloved voices, upon which
Ours passionately call because erelong
Ye brake off in the middle of that song
We sang together softly, to enrich
The poor world with the sense of love, and witch,
The heart out of things evil, I am strong,
Knowing ye are not lost for aye among

The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche
In Heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
He brake them to our faces and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty, glorified
New Memnons singing in the great God-light.

    Dreary and dismal and dark
        Is the night of life to me,
    With nothing but clouds in the heaven above,
    Cruelly hiding the star that I love,
        Whose radiance was rapture to see.

    While the blasts from the cold frozen North
        Are biting right in to my soul -
    While the pitiless blasts from the bleak, barren shore
    Of the crystalline ocean incessantly roar,
        And the tempests that sweep from the pole.

    Oh! the gloom of the dark, dreary night,
        Concealing the star that I love!
    Oh! how bitter the anguish, bereft of its beam!
    While the beings around me are such that I seem
        In a dungeon of demons to move.

    Oh! when will the clouds clear away?
        And brighten the heaven abo...