We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.

What shall a man remember
In days when he is old,
And Life is a dying ember,
And Fame a story told?

Power, that came to leave him?
Wealth, to the wild waves blown?
Fame, that came to deceive him?
Ah, no! Sweet Love alone!

Honour, and Wealth, and Power
May all like dreams depart,
But Love is a fadeless flower
Whose roots are in the heart.

(In Memory of Henry Kendall)


Ah! that God once would touch my lips with song
To pierce, as prayer doth heaven, earth’s breast of iron,
So that with sweet mouth I might sing to thee,
O sweet dead singer buried by the sea,
A song, to woo thee, as a wooing siren,
Out of that silent sleep which seals too long
Thy mouth of melody.

For, if live lips might speak awhile to dead,
Or any speech could reach the sad world under
This world of ours, song surely should awake
Thee who didst dwell in shadow for song’s sake!
Alas! thou canst not hear the voice of thunder,
Nor low dirge over thy low-lying head
The winds of morning make.

Down through the clay there comes no sound of these;
Down in the grave there is no sign of Summer,
Nor any knowledg...

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

One night in my room, still and beamless,
With will and with thought in eclipse,
I rested in sleep that was dreamless;
When softly there fell on my lips

A touch, as of lips that were pressing
Mine own with the message of bliss--
A sudden, soft, fleeting caressing,
A breath like a maiden's first kiss.

I woke-and the scoffer may doubt me--
I peered in surprise through the gloom;
But nothing and none were about me,
And I was alone in my room.

Perhaps 't was the wind that caressed me
And touched me with dew-laden breath;
Or, maybe, close-sweeping, there passed me
The low-winging Angel of Death.

Some sceptic may choose to disdain it,
Or one feign to read it aright;
Or wisdom may seek to explain it--
This mystical kiss in the n...

Give me the chance, and I will make
Thy thoughts of me, like worms this day,
Take wings and change to butterflies
That in the golden light shall play;
Thy cold, clear heart, the quiet pool
That never heard Love's nightingale,
Shall hear his music night and day,
And in no seasons shall it fail.

I'll make thy happy heart my port,
Where all my thoughts are anchored fast;
Thy meditations, full of praise,
The flags of glory on each mast.
I'll make my Soul thy shepherd soon,
With all thy thoughts my grateful flock;
And thou shalt say, each time I go,
How long, my Love, ere thou'lt come back?

Lo! from quiet skies
In through the window my Lord the Sun!
And my eyes
Were dazzled and drunk with the misty gold,
The golden glory that drowned and crowned me
Eddied and swayed through the room . . .
    Around me,
To left and to right,
Hunched figures and old,
Dull blear-eyed scribbling fools, grew fair,
Ringed round and haloed with holy light.
Flame lit on their hair,
And their burning eyes grew young and wise,
Each as a God, or King of kings,
White-robed and bright
(Still scribbling all);
And a full tumultuous murmur of wings
Grew through the hall;
And I knew the white undying Fire,
And, through open portals,
Gyre on gyre,
Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing,
And a Face unshaded . . .
Till the light faded;
And th...

First-born of the creating Voice!
Minister of God's spirit, who wast sent
To wait upon Him first, what time He went
Moving about 'mid the tumultuous noise
Of each unpiloted element
Upon the face of the void formless deep!
Thou who didst come unbodied and alone,
Ere yet the sun was set his rule to keep,
Or ever the moon shone,
Or e'er the wandering star-flocks forth were driven!
Thou garment of the Invisible, whose skirt
Falleth on all things from the lofty heaven!
Thou Comforter, be with me as thou wert
When first I longed for words, to be
A radiant garment for my thought, like thee.

We lay us down in sorrow,
Wrapt in the old mantle of our mother Night;
In vexing dreams we 'strive until the morrow;
Grief lifts our eyelids up--and lo, the light!...

Dame of the night of hair
Like blue smoke blown!
World yet undreamed-of there
Lurks to be known.

Dame of the dizzy eyes,
Lure of dim quests!
World of what midnights lies
Under thy breasts!

Dame of the quench of love,
Give me to quaff!
There's all the world's made of
Under thy laugh.

Dame of the dare of gods,
Let the sky lower!
Time, give the world for odds,--
I choose this hour.

I said that I would see
Her once, to curse her fair, deceitful grace,
To curse her for my life-long agony;
But when I saw her face,
I said, "Sweet Christ, forgive both her and me."

High swelled the chanted hymn,
Low on the marble swept the velvet pall,
I bent above, and my eyes grew dim,
My sad heart saw it all -
She loved me, loved me though she wedded him.

And then shot through my soul
A thrill of fierce delight, to think that he
Must yield her form, his all, to Death's control,
The while her love for me
Would live, when sun and stars had ceased to roll.

But no, on the white brow,
Graved in its marble, was deep calm impressed,
Saying that peace had come to her through woe;
Saying, she had found rest
At last, and I, I must not...

The sole true Something, This! In Limbo Den
It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here frighten men
For skimming in the wake it mock'd the care
Of the old Boat-God for his Farthing Fare ;
Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he ne'er frown'd blacker on,
The skin and skin-pent Druggist crost the Acheron,
Styx, and with Puriphlegethon Cocytus,
(The very names, methinks, might thither fright us)
Unchang'd it cross'd, & shall some fated Hour
Be pulveris'd by Demogorgon's power
And given as poison to annilate Souls
Even now It shrinks them! they shrink in as Moles
(Nature's mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light, then listen for its Sound;
See but to dread, and dread they know not why
The natural Alien of their negative Eye.

        'Tis a strange pla...

Two dead men boarded a spectral ship
    In the astral Port of Space;
On that ghost-filled barque, they met in the dark,
    And halted, face to face.

'Now whither away' - called one of the ghosts,
    'This ship sets sail for Earth.
On the astral plane you must remain,
    Where the newly dead have birth.'

'But I could not stay and I would not stay,'
    The other ghost replied;
'I must hurry back to the old Earth track
    And stand at my loved one's side.

'She weeps for me in her lonely room,
    In the land from whence I came;
Oh! stow me away in this ship, I pray,
    For I hear her call my name.'

'You must not go, and you shall not go,'
    The first ghost cried in wrath.
'Your work is planned, in the astral land,
 ...

Wouldst thou be taught, when sleep has taken flight,
By a sure voice that can most sweetly tell,
How far off yet a glimpse of morning light,
And if to lure the truant back be well,
Forbear to covet a Repeater's stroke,
That, answering to thy touch, will sound the hour;
Better provide thee with a Cuckoo-clock
For service hung behind thy chamber-door;
And in due time the soft spontaneous shock,
The double note, as if with living power,
Will to composure lead, or make thee blithe as bird in bower.

List, Cuckoo, Cuckoo! oft tho' tempests howl,
Or nipping frost remind thee trees are bare,
How cattle pine, and droop the shivering fowl,
Thy spirits will seem to feed on balmy air:
I speak with knowledge, by that Voice beguiled,
Thou wilt salute old memories as t...

Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,
Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:
Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour
Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower.
Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the starbright air
Made the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of the sea, more fair.
Whence came change? Was the sweet night weary of rest? What anguish awoke in the dark?
Sudden, sublime, the strong storm spake: we heard the thunders as hounds that bark.
Lovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars, we saw the lightnings exalt the sky,
Living and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to quicken and lighten an...

When, wild and spent, I fly before
Some steadfast Fate, serene, malign,
Let me not think, Lord, I implore
Those dark and awful eyes are thine!

Oh, when the dogs of life are loose,
And, raging, follow on my track.
Let me not dream, by chance or use.
The leash was thine that held the pack!

Nay, hunted, breathless, faint and prone.
With my last gaze, ah, let me see
The shape I know, nor shall disown.
Thy shape, oh Grod, that runs with me!

I

Sleep, little eyes
That brim with childish tears amid thy play,
Be comforted!No grief of night can weigh
Against the joys that throng thy coming day.

Sleep, little heart!
There is no place in Slumberland for tears:
Life soon enough will bring its chilling fears
And sorrows that will dim the after years.
Sleep, little heart!


II

Ah, little eyes
Dead blossoms of a springtime long ago,
That life's storm crushed and left to lie below
The benediction of the falling snow!

Sleep, little heart
That ceased so long ago its frantic beat!
The years that come and go with silent feet
Have naught to tell save this, that rest is sweet.
Dear little heart.

The bard and mystic held me for their own,
I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids,
I took the friendly noble by the hand,
I was the trustee of the hand-cart man,
The brother of the fisher, porter, swain,
And these from the crowd's edge well pleased beheld
The service done to me as done to them.



With the key of the secret he marches faster,
From strength to strength, and for night brings day;
While classes or tribes, too weak to master
The flowing conditions of life, give way.

It fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Seyd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Ev...