When the dumb Hour, clothed in black,
Brings the Dreams about my bed,
Call me not so often back,
Silent Voices of the dead,
Toward the lowland ways behind me,
And the sunlight that is gone!
Call me rather, silent voices,
Forward to the starry track
Glimmering up the heights beyond me
On, and always on!

Beyond yon dim old mountain's shadowy height,
    The restless sun droops low his grand old face;
While downward sweeps the trembling veil of night,
    To hide the earth; the frost king's filmy lace
Rests on the mountain's hoary snow-crowned head,
    And adds to it a softened grace; the light
Which dies afar in faint and fading red
    In purple shadows circles near.

                    The flight
Of birds across the vast and silent plains
    Awakes the echoes of the sleeping earth;
Of all the summer beauty naught remains,
    There come no tidings of the spring's glad birth.

Beyond the valley and far-off height
    The birds in wandering do take their way;
Ah, whither is their strange and trackless flight
    Amid the dying embers of the day;

Quand' io son tutto volto in quella parte.

HE FLIES, BUT PASSION PURSUES HIM.


    When I reflect and turn me to that part
Whence my sweet lady beam'd in purest light,
And in my inmost thought remains that light
Which burns me and consumes in every part,
I, who yet dread lest from my heart it part
And see at hand the end of this my light,
Go lonely, like a man deprived of light,
Ignorant where to go; whence to depart.
Thus flee I from the stroke which lays me dead,
Yet flee not with such speed but that desire
Follows, companion of my flight alone.
Silent I go:--but these my words, though dead,
Others would cause to weep--this I desire,
That I may weep and waste myself alone.

CAPEL LOFFT.


    When all my mind I tur...

Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.

O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.

O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?

Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.

Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.

Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander

Christ was not sad, i' th' garden, for His own
Passion, but for His sheep's dispersion.

    Vain transient World, what charms are thine?
        And what do mortals in thee see,
    That they should worship at thy shrine,
        And sacrifice their all to thee?

    Thy brightest gifts, thy happiest hours
        Fly past on pinions of the wind;
    They fade like blooms upon the flowers,
        And leave a painful want behind.

    Thou art a road, though not of space,
        Which rich and poor alike must tread;
    Thy starting point we cannot trace,
        Thine end - the country of the dead.

    A pathway paved with want and woe,
        With pleasures painful, incomplete;
    Like stones upon the way below,
        Which wound the weary pilgrim's feet.

    Thou'rt hedged with visions of despair,
        With w...

A hundred miles between us
Could never part us more
Than that one step you took from me
What time my need was sore.

A hundred years between us
Might hold us less apart
Than that one dragging moment
Wherein I knew your heart.

Now what farewell is needed
To all I held most dear,
So far and far you are from me
I doubt if you could hear.

In that black forest, where, when day is done,
With a snake’s stillness glides the Amazon
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,

A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood,
The long, despairing moan of solitude
And darkness and the absence of all good,

Startles the traveller, with a sound so drear,
So full of hopeless agony and fear,
His heart stands still and listens like his ear.

The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll,
Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale’s thole,
Crosses himself, and whispers, “A lost soul!”

“No, Señor, not a bird. I know it well,
It is the pained soul of some infidel
Or cursed heretic that cries from hell.

“Poor fool! with hope still mocking his despair,
He wanders, shrieking on the midnight air
Fo...

(THE PARSON'S BROTHER, SISTER, AND TWO CHILDREN)


Preface.

What wonder man should fail to stay
A nursling wafted from above,
The growth celestial come astray,
That tender growth whose name is Love!

It is as if high winds in heaven
Had shaken the celestial trees,
And to this earth below had given
Some feathered seeds from one of these.

O perfect love that 'dureth long!
Dear growth, that shaded by the palms.
And breathed on by the angel's song,
Blooms on in heaven's eternal calms!

How great the task to guard thee here,
Where wind is rough and frost is keen,
And all the ground with doubt and fear
Is checkered, birth and death between!

Space is against thee - it can part;
Time is against thee - it can ...

How few are they that voyage through the night
    On that eternal quest,
For that strange light beyond our light,
    That rest beyond our rest.

And they who, seeking beauty, once descry
    Her face, to most unknown;
Thenceforth like changelings from the sky
    Must walk their road alone.

So once I dreamed. So idle was my mood;
    But now, before these eyes,
From those foul trenches, black with blood,
    What radiant legions rise!

And loveliness over the wounded earth awakes
    Like wild-flowers in the Spring.
Out of the mortal chrysalis breaks
    Immortal wing on wing.

They rise like flowers, they wander on wings of light,
    Through realms beyond our ken.
The loneliest soul is companied tonight
    By hosts of u...

DAKRTSI DIOISO POTMON 'APOTMON.

Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees: -
Such lovely ministers to meet
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth: - tame sacrifice
To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore...

Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why--
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...
I found this out by accident
and now it seems I'm sick all the time.

He stood alone on Fame's high mountain top,
His hands at rest, his forehead bound with bay;
And yet he watched with eyes unsatisfied
The downward winding way.

The great procession of the stars went by
Far overhead, beyond the mountain's rim,
But the unconquered worlds of time and space,
As nothing were to him.

There from his vantage ground, so still and high,
He watched the storm clouds when they rolled below,
And felt the wind mount up to where he stood
Amid eternal snow.

And sometimes in the valleys and the plains
He saw the little children at their play;
In cottage homes he saw the candle-light
Gleam out at close of day.

But he and loneliness kept feast and fast,
The while with weary eyes, by night and day;
They watched the...

I vex me not with brooding on the years
That were ere I drew breath: why should I then
Distrust the darkness that may fall again
When life is done?    Perchance in other spheres--
Dead planets--I once tasted mortal tears,
And walked as now among a throng of men,
Pondering things that lay beyond my ken,
Questioning death, and solacing my fears.
Ofttimes indeed strange sense have I of this,
Vague memories that hold me with a spell,
Touches of unseen lips upon my brow,
Breathing some incommunicable bliss!
In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well?
Still lovelier life awaits thee.    Fear not thou!

Since first I met thee, Dear, and long before
    I knew myself beloved, save by the sense
    All women have, a shadowy confidence
Half-fear, that feels its bliss nor asks for more,
    I have learned new desires, known Love's distress
    Sounded the deepest depths of loneliness.

I was a child at heart, and lived alone,
    Dreaming my dreams, as children may, at whiles,
    Between their hours of play, and Earth's broad smiles
Allured my heart, and ocean's marvellous tone
    Woke no strange echoes, and the woods' complain
    Made chants sonorous, stirred no thoughts of pain.

And if, sometimes, dear Nature spoke to me
    In tones mysterious, I had learned so much
    Dwelling beside her daily, that her touch
Made me discerning. Though I migh...

Out of the body for ever,
Wearily sobbing, “Oh, whither?”
A Soul that hath wasted its chances
Floats on the limitless ether.

Lost in dim, horrible blankness;
Drifting like wind on a sea,
Untraversed and vacant and moaning,
Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!

Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;
Haunted and tracked by the Past,
With fragments of pitiless voices,
And desolate faces aghast!

One saith “It is well that he goeth
Naked and fainting with cold,
Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,
Arrayed with the cunning of old!

“Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,
With pain for the glittering things
He saw on the shoulders of Rulers,
And the might in the mouths of the Kings!

“This Soul hath been one of the idlers
W...

He who a tender long-lov'd Wife survives,
    Sees himself sunder'd from the only mind
    Whose hopes, and fears, and interests, were combin'd,
    And blended with his own. - No more she lives!
No more, alas! her death-numb'd ear receives
    His thoughts, that trace the Past, or anxious wind
    The Future's darkling maze! - His wish refin'd,
    The wish to please, exists no more, that gives
The will its energy, the nerves their tone! -
    He feels the texture of his quiet torn,
    And stopt the settled course that Action drew;
Life stands suspended - motionless - till thrown
    By outward causes, into channels new; -
    But, in the dread suspense, how sinks the Soul forlorn!

I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.

In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colors from the sky;

Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made.

Cities of mortals woe-begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.

There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk...