I know some lonely houses off the road
A robber 'd like the look of, --
Wooden barred,
And windows hanging low,
Inviting to
A portico,
Where two could creep:
One hand the tools,
The other peep
To make sure all's asleep.
Old-fashioned eyes,
Not easy to surprise!

How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,
With just a clock, --
But they could gag the tick,
And mice won't bark;
And so the walls don't tell,
None will.

A pair of spectacles ajar just stir --
An almanac's aware.
Was it the mat winked,
Or a nervous star?
The moon slides down the stair
To see who's there.

There's plunder, -- where?
Tankard, or spoon,
Earring, or stone,
A watch, some ancient brooch
To match the grandmamma,
...

I peeled bits of straws and I got switches too
From the grey peeling willow as idlers do,
And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone
Till my flesh, blood, and marrow was turned to dry bone.
My illness was love, though I knew not the smart,
But the beauty of love was the blood of my heart.
Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude
And fled to the silence of sweet solitude.
Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades,
Unseen of all shepherds and flower-loving maids--
The hermit bees find them but once and away.
There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.

I looked on the eyes of fair woman too long,
Till silence and shame stole the use of my tongue:
When I tried to speak to her I'd nothing to say,
So I turned myself round and she wan...

What land of Silence,
Where pale stars shine
On apple-blossom
And dew-drenched vine,
Is yours and mine?

The silent valley
That we will find,
Where all the voices
Of humankind
Are left behind.

There all forgetting,
Forgotten quite,
We will repose us,
With our delight
Hid out of sight.

The world forsaken,
And out of mind
Honour and labour,
We shall not find
The stars unkind.

And men shall travail,
And laugh and weep;
But we have vistas
Of Gods asleep,
With dreams as deep.

A land of Silence,
Where pale stars shine
On apple-blossoms
And dew-drenched vine,
Be yours and mine!

Love, art thou lonely to-day?
Lost love that I never see,
Love that, come noon or come night,
Comes never to me;
Love that I used to meet
In the hidden past, in the land
Of forbidden sweet.

Love! do you never miss
The old light in the days?
Does a hand
Come and touch thee at whiles
Like the wand of old smiles,
Like the breath of old bliss?
Or hast thou forgot,
And is all as if not?

What was it we swore?
'Evermore!
I and Thou,'
Ah, but Fate held the pen
And wrote N
Just before:
So that now,
See, it stands,
Our seals and our hands,
'I and Thou,
Nevermore!'

We said 'It is best!'
And then, dear, I went
And returned not again.
Forgive that I stir,
Like a breath in thy hair,

Oh dread uncertainty!
Life-wasting agony!
How dost thou pain the heart,
Causing such tears to start,
As sorrow never shed
O'er hopes for ever fled.
For memory hoards up joy
Beyond Time's dull alloy;
Pleasures that once have been
Shed light upon the scene,
As setting suns fling back
A bright and glowing track,
To show they once have cast
A glory o'er the past;
But thou, tormenting fiend,
Beneath Hope's pinions screened,
Leagued with distrust and pain,
Makest her promise vain;
Weaving in life's fair crown
Thistles instead of down.

Who would not rather know
Present than coming woe?
For certain sorrow brings
A healing in its wings.
The softening touch of years
Still dries the mourner's tears;
For human minds ...

There is nobody on the road
But I,
And no beseeming abode
I can try
For shelter, so abroad
I must lie.

The stars feel not far up,
And to be
The lights by which I sup
Glimmeringly,
Set out in a hollow cup
Over me.

They wag as though they were
Panting for joy
Where they shine, above all care,
And annoy,
And demons of despair -
Life's alloy.

Sometimes outside the fence
Feet swing past,
Clock-like, and then go hence,
Till at last
There is a silence, dense,
Deep, and vast.

A wanderer, witch-drawn
To and fro,
To-morrow, at the dawn,
On I go,
And where I rest anon
Do not know!

Yet it's meet this bed of hay
And roofless plight;
For there's a house of clay,

Liete e pensose, accompagnate e sole.

NOT FINDING HER WITH HER FRIENDS, HE ASKS THEM WHY SHE IS ABSENT.


P.    Pensive and glad, accompanied, alone,
        Ladies who cheat the time with converse gay,
        Where does my life, where does my death delay?
        Why not with you her form, as usual, shown?
L. Glad are we her rare lustre to have known,
        And sad from her dear company to stay,
        Which jealousy and envy keep away
        O'er other's bliss, as their own ill who moan.
P. Who lovers can restrain, or give them law?
L. No one the soul, harshness and rage the frame;
        As erst in us, this now in her appears.
        As oft the face, betrays the heart, we saw
        Clouds that, obscuring her...

You bid me hold my peace
And dry my fruitless tears,
Forgetting that I bear
A pain beyond my years.

You say that I should smile
And drive the gloom away;
I would, but sun and smiles
Have left my life's dark day.

All time seems cold and void,
And naught but tears remain;
Life's music beats for me
A melancholy strain.

I used at first to hope,
But hope is past and, gone;
And now without a ray
My cheerless life drags on.

Like to an ash-stained hearth
When all its fires are spent;
Like to an autumn wood
By storm winds rudely shent,--

So sadly goes my heart,
Unclothed of hope and peace;
It asks not joy again,
But only seeks release.

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
    The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
    The aspiration of my youth, to build
    Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
    Of restless passions chat would not be stilled,
    But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
    Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half way up the hill, I see the Past
    Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,--
    A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights.--
    And hear above me on the autumnal blast
    The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

"O Life, O Beyond,
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!"
--Mrs. Browning.


Dread phantom, with pale finger on thy lips,
    Who dost unclose the awful doors for each,
        That ope but once, and are unclosed no more,
            Turn the key gently in the mystic ward,
            And silently unloose the silver cord;
        Lay thy chill seal of silence upon speech,
    And mutely beckon through the soundless door
To endless night, and silence and eclipse.

Even now the soul unfettered may explore
    On its swift wing beyond the gates of morn,
        (Unravelled all the weary round of years)
            And stand, unfenced of time and crowding space,
            With love's fond instinct in that primal place,
        The distant north...

A petal drifted loose
From a great magnolia bloom,
Your face hung in the gloom,
Floating, white and close.

We seemed alone: but another
Bent o'er you with lips of flame,
Unknown, without a name,
Hated, and yet my brother.

Your one short moan of pain
Was an exorcising spell:
The devil flew back to hell;
We were alone again.

    What doest thou in heaven, O moon?
    Say, silent moon, what doest thou?
    Thou risest in the evening; thoughtfully
    Thou wanderest o'er the plain,
    Then sinkest to thy rest again.
    And art thou never satisfied
    With going o'er and o'er the selfsame ways?
    Art never wearied? Dost thou still
    Upon these valleys love to gaze?
    How much thy life is like
    The shepherd's life, forlorn!
    He rises in the early dawn,
    He moves his flock along the plain;
    The selfsame flocks, and streams, and herbs
    He sees again;
    Then drops to rest, the day's work o'er;
    And hopes for nothing more.
    Tell me, O moon, what signifies his life
    To him, thy life to thee? Say, whither tend
    My weary, short-lived pilgr...

I shall never see your tired sleep
In the bed that you make beautiful,
Nor hardly ever be a dream
That plays by your dark hair;
Yet I think I know your turning sigh
And your trusting arm's abandonment,
For they are the picture of my night,
My night that does not end.

From the Arabic of John Duncan.

She left me at the silent time
When the moon had ceased to climb
The azure path of Heaven's steep,
And like an albatross asleep,
Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovered in the purple night,
Ere she sought her ocean nest
In the chambers of the West.
She left me, and I stayed alone
Thinking over every tone
Which, though silent to the ear,
The enchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;
And feeling ever - oh, too much! -
The soft vibration of her touch,
As if her gentle hand, even now,
Lightly trembled on my brow;
And thus, although she absent were,
Memory gave me all of her
That even Fancy dares to claim: -
Her presence had made weak and tame
All passions, and I lived alone

Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several hours at least.
At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared I shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.
A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the day. I have seen several literary men ; one of them wished to know if he could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was an island) ; I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of r...

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

I am older than Nature and her Time
By all the timeless age of Consciousness,
And my adult oblivion of the clime
Where I was born makes me not countryless.
Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape
Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed,
Which I cannot recall in colour or shape
But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed
And yet is not as light remembered,
Nor to the left or to the right conceived;
And all round me tastes as if life were dead
And the world made but to be disbelieved.
    Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay; yet
    How but by hope do I the unknown truth get?

Oh that a wind would call
    From the depths of the leafless wood!
Oh that a voice would fall
    On the ear of my solitude!

Far away is the sea,
    With its sound and its spirit tone;
Over it white clouds flee;
    But I am alone, alone.

Straight and steady and tall
    The trees stand on their feet;
Fast by the old stone wall
    The moss grows green and sweet;
But my heart is full of fears,
    For the sun shines far away;
And they look in my face through tears,
    And the light of a dying day.

My heart was glad last night
    As I pressed it with my palm;
Its throb was airy and light
    As it sang some spirit psalm;
But it died away in my breast
    As I wandered forth to-day,--
As a bird sat dead on its ...