When Helen first saw wrinkles in her face
(’T was when some fifty long had settled there
And intermarried and branch’d off awide)
She threw herself upon her couch and wept:
On this side hung her head, and over that            
Listlessly she let fall the faithless brass
That made the men as faithless.
But when you
Found them, or fancied them, and would not hear
That they were only vestiges of smiles,            
Or the impression of some amorous hair
Astray from cloister’d curls and roseate band,
Which had been lying there all night perhaps
Upon a skin so soft, “No, no,” you said,
“Sure, they are coming, yes, are come, are here:            
Well, and what matters it, while thou art too!”

    I thought I had forever lost,
        Alas, though still so young,
    The tender joys and sorrows all,
        That unto youth belong;

    The sufferings sweet, the impulses
        Our inmost hearts that warm;
    Whatever gives this life of ours
        Its value and its charm.

    What sore laments, what bitter tears
        O'er my sad state I shed,
    When first I felt from my cold heart
        Its gentle pains had fled!

    Its throbs I felt no more; my love
        Within me seemed to die;
    Nor from my frozen, senseless breast
        Escaped a single sigh!

    I wept o'er my sad, hapless lot;
        The life of life seemed lost;
    The earth an arid wilderness,
        Locked in eternal frost;

My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,
As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;
As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,
To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.

I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow
Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set;
Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow
The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.

Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound,
To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er,
The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around
With their insatiate need to wonder and adore.

The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands,
The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine,
Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beade...

See him quake and see him tremble,
    See him gasp for breath.
Nay, dear, he does not dissemble,
    This is really Death.
He is weak, and worn, and wasted,
    Bear him to his bier.
All there is of life he's tasted -
    He has lived a year.

He has passed his day of glory,
    All his blood is cold,
He is wrinkled, thin, and hoary,
    He is very old.
Just a leaf's life in the wild wood,
    Is a love's life, dear.
He has reached his second childhood
    When he's lived a year.

Long ago he lost his reason,
    Lost his trust and faith -
Better far in his first season
    Had he met with death.
Let us have no pomp or splendour,
    No vain pretence here.
As we bury, grave, yet tender,
    Love that's lived a year...

(My Soul) I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
"Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

(My Self). The consecretes blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady's dress and round
The wodden scabbard bound and wound
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn

(My Soul.) Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematica...

When the game began between them for a jest,
He played king and she played queen to match the best;
Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter,
These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.

Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night;
All the sting and all the stain of long delight;
These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her,
When she played at half a love with half a lover.

Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh or cry;
They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;
Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,
Till he died for good in play, and rose in sorrow.

What the years mean; how time dies and is not slain;
How love grows and laughs and cries and wanes again;
These were things she came to...

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?


What shall be said between us here
Among the downs, between the trees,
In fields that knew our feet last year,
In sight of quiet sands and seas,
This year, Félise?

Who knows what word were best to say?
For last year’s leaves lie dead and red
On this sweet day, in this green May,
And barren corn makes bitter bread.
What shall be said?

Here as last year the fields begin,
A fire of flowers and glowing grass;
The old fields we laughed and lingered in,
Seeing each our souls in last year’s glass,
Félise, alas!

Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,
Not we, though this be as it is?
For love awake or love asleep
Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,
A song like this.

I tha...

The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary,
    The tigers rend alive their quivering prey
In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary,
    Too gorged with living food to fly away.

All night the hungry jackals howl together
    Over the carrion in the river bed,
Or seize some small soft thing of fur or feather
    Whose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.

I hear from yonder Temple in the distance
    Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,
Reiterated with a sad insistence
    Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.

Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,
    Are consummated in the river bed;
Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper
    To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

But yet, their lust, thei...

Suspicion, discontent, and strife
Come in for dowry with a wife.

I
i(Ribb at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn)
Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig,
What juncture of the apple and the yew,
Surmount their bones; but speak what none ha've
heard.
The miracle that gave them such a death
Transfigured to pure substance what had once
Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join
There is no touching here, nor touching there,
Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole;
For the intercourse of angels is a light
Where for its moment both seem lost, consume...

Lines Found Among The Papers Of A Harvard Undergraduate

The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
Is all my Latin, all my Greek;
The only sciences I know
Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet geography;
No scholarship have I but such
As teaches me to love her much.

Why should I strive to read the skies,
Who know the midnight of her eyes?
Why should I go so very far
To learn what heavenly bodies are!
Not Berenice's starry hair
With Fanny's tresses can compare;
Not Venus on a cloudless night,
Enslaving Science with her light,
Ever reveals so much as when
SHE stares and droops her lids again.

If Nature's secrets are forbidden
To mortals, she may keep them hidden.
AEons and aeons we pro...

The elder folks shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal passed.
To simple ways like ours unused,
Half solemnized and half amused,
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest
His sense of glad relief expressed.
Outside, the hills lay warm in sun;
The cattle in the meadow-run
Stood half-leg deep; a single bird
The green repose above us stirred.
"What part or lot have you," he said,
"In these dull rites of drowsy-head?
Is silence worship? Seek it where
It soothes with dreams the summer air,
Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
But where soft lights and shadows fall,
And all the slow, sleep-walking hours
Glide soundless over grass and flowers!
From time and place and form apart,
Its holy ground the human heart,
Nor ritual-bound nor...

Dust to dust:
Fall and perish love and lust:
Life is one brief autumn day;
Sin and sorrow haunt the way
To the narrow house of clay,
Clutching at the good and just:
Dust to dust.

Dust to dust:
Still we strive and toil and trust,
From the cradle to the grave:
Vainly crying, "Jesus, save!"
Fall the coward and the brave,
Fall the felon and the just:
Dust to dust.

Dust to dust:
Hark, I hear the wintry gust;
Yet the roses bloom to-day,
Blushing to the kiss of May,
While the north winds sigh and say:
"Lo we bring the cruel frost
Dust to dust."

Dust to dust:
Yet we live and love and trust,
Lifting burning brow and eye
To the mountain peaks on high:
From the peaks the ages cry,
Strewing ashes, rime an...

Say little: where she lies, so let her rest:
What cares she now for Fame, and what for Art?
What for applause? She has played out her part.
Her hands are folded calmly on her breast,
God knows the best!

She has gone down, as all must go, to where
The players of the past are lying low,
Players who played their parts out long ago,
With the life-hue still bright on lips and hair
And forehead fair.

Cheek’s colour, poise of head, and flash of eye
Who will remember them when we are dead?
Whom that is dead have we rememberèd?
The end is one although we smile or sigh,
We live; we die.

Bitter to some is Death, to some is sweet,
Sweetest to youth and bitterest to age;
But simple is the costume for the stage,
The darkened stage of death, and v...

Five years ago! you cannot choose
But know the face of change,
Though July sleeps and Spring renews
The gloss in gorge and range.

Five years ago! I hardly know
How they have slipped away,
Since here we watched at ebb and flow
The waters of the Bay;

And saw, with eyes of little faith,
From cumbered summits fade
The rainbow and the rainbow wraith,
That shadow of a shade.

For Love and Youth were vext with doubt,
Like ships on driving seas,
And in those days the heart gave out
Unthankful similes.

But let it be! I’ve often said
His lot was hardly cast
Who never turned a happy head
To an unhappy Past

Who never turned a face of light
To cares beyond recall:
He only fares in sorer plight
Who hath no Past...

1.

Dear BECHER, you tell me to mix with mankind;
I cannot deny such a precept is wise;
But retirement accords with the tone of my mind:
I will not descend to a world I despise.


2.

Did the Senate or Camp my exertions require,
Ambition might prompt me, at once, to go forth;
When Infancy's years of probation expire,
Perchance, I may strive to distinguish my birth.


3.

The fire, in the cavern of Etna, conceal'd,
Still mantles unseen in its secret recess;
At length, in a volume terrific, reveal'd,
No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress.


4.

Oh! thus, the desire, in my bosom, for fame
Bids me live, but to hope for Posterity's praise.
Could I soar with the Phoenix on pinions of flame,
W...

Shall our memories live, when the sod rolls above us
    And marks our last home with a mouldering heap?
Shall the voices of those who profess that they love us
    E'er mention our names, as we dreamlessly sleep?

Will their eyes ever dim at some fond recollection,
    Or their hands ever plant a small flower o'er the breast,
Or will they gaze with a sad circumspection
    At the tablets, which tell of our last solemn rest?

Ah! soon shall the hearts which our memories cherish
    Forget, as they strive with the cares of their own;
And even the last dim remembrance shall perish
    As we peacefully slumber, unwept and unknown.

But if our lives, though of transient duration,
    Are filled with some work in humanity's name,
Some uplifting effort, or self...

That such have died enables us
The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
For immortality.