Will rend thy golden tresses; The ocean with the morrow light Will be both blue and calm; Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all And the billow will embrace thee with a Keen knowledges of low-embowéd eld) kiss as soft as mine. No Western odors wander On the black and moaning sea, And when thou art dead, Leander, My soul must follow thee! O go not yet, my love! Thy voice is sweet and low; The deep salt wave breaks in above Those marble steps below. That lead into the sea. Or I will follow thee! THE MYSTIC. ANGELS have talked with him, and showed him thrones : Ye knew him not; he was not one of ye, Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn: : Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, Always there stood before him, night and day, Of wayward vary-colored circumstance The imperishable presences serene, Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound, Dim shadows but unwaning presences Fourfacéd to four corners of the sky : And yet again, three shadows, fronting Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud Which droops low-hung on either gate of life, Both birth and death: he in the centre fixt, Saw far on each side through the grated gates Most pale and clear and lovely distances. within The narrower circle: he had wellnigh reached The last, which with a region of white flame, Pure without heat, into a larger air Upburning. and an ether of black blue, Investeth and ingirds all other lives. THE GRASSHOPPER. I. VOICE of the summer wind, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet. Sans peur et sans reproche, II. I would dwell with thee, Merry grasshopper, Thou art so glad and free, And as light as air; Thou hast no sorrow or tears, And slumbers in the clover. In thy heat of summer pride, What hast thou to do with evil, silken LOVE, PRIDE, AND FORGETFUL NESS. The day, the diamonded night, The echo, feeble child of sound, The heavy thunder's griding might, The herald lightning's starry bound, The vocal spring of bursting bloom, The naked summer's glowing birth, The troublous autumn's sallow gloom, The hoarhead winter paving earth With sheeny white, are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change. Each sun which from the centre flings Grand music and redundant fire, The burning belts, the mighty rings, The murm'rous planets' rolling choir, The globe-filled arch that, cleaving air, Lost in its own effulgence sleeps, The lawless comets as they glare, And thunder through the sapphire deeps In wayward strength, and full of strange Astonishment and boundless change. LOST HOPE. ERE yet my heart was sweet Love's You cast to ground the hope which once tomb, Love labored honey busily. I was the hive, and Love the bee, One very dark and chilly night Pride came beneath and held a light. The cruel vapors went through all, Awhile she scarcely lived at all. CHORUS was mine: THE TEARS OF HEAVEN. HEAVEN weeps above the earth all night till morn, In darkness weeps as all ashamed to weep, IN AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA, WRITTEN Because the earth hath made her state VERY EARLY. THE varied earth, the moving heaven, That wander round their windy cones, The subtle life, the countless forms Of living things, the wondrous tones Of man and beast are full of strange forlorn LOVE AND SORROW. O MAIDEN, fresher than the first green leaf With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea, Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief Doth hold the other half in sovranty. Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline : Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine : Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart, Issue of its own substance, my heart's night Thou canst not lighten even with thy light, All-powerful in beauty as thou art. Almeida, if my heart were substanceless, Then might thy rays pass through to the other side, So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide, But lose themselves in utter emptiness. Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep; They never learned to love who never knew to weep. TO A LADY SLEEPING. O THOU whose fringed lids I gaze upon, Through whose dim brain the wingéd dreams are borne, Unroof the shrines of clearest vision, thee; So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth, Long hath the white wave of the virgin| An honorable eld shall come upon thee. light Driven back the billow of the dreamful With points of blast-borne hail their | Athwart the veils of evils which infold heated eyne! So their wan limbs no more might come between The moon and the moon's reflex in the night, thee. We beat upon our aching hearts in rage; We cry for thee; we deem the world thy tomb. As dwellers in lone planets look upon Nor blot with floating shades the solar The mighty disk of their majestic sun, Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling light. gloom, Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee. Come, thou of many crowns, white-robéd love, Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore thee; Heaven crieth after thee; earth waiteth for thee; Breathe on thy wingéd throne, and it shall move In music and in light o'er land and sea. |