Thou hast taken the light of many suns,
    And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom.
    Even as candle-flames
    Hast thou taken the souls of men,
    With winds from out a hollow place;
    They are hid in the abyss as in a sea,
    And the gulfs are over them
    As the weight of many peaks,
    As the depth of many seas;
    Thy shields are between them and the light;
    They are past its burden and bitterness;
    The spears of the day shall not touch them,
    The chains of the sun shall not hale them forth.

    Many men there were,
    In the days that are now of thy realm,
    That thou hast sealed with the seal of many deeps;
    Their feet were as eagles' wings in the quest of Truth -
    Aye, mightily they desired her face,...

Send out the singers,let the room be still;
They have not eased my pain nor brought me sleep.
Close out the sun, for I would have it dark
That I may feel how black the grave will be.
The sun is setting, for the light is red,
And you are outlined in a golden fire,
Like Ursula upon an altar-screen.
Come, leave the light and sit beside my bed,
For I have had enough of saints and prayers.
Strange broken thoughts are beating in my brain,
They come and vanish and again they come.
It is the fever driving out my soul,
And Death stands waiting by the arras there.

Ornella, I will speak, for soon my lips
Shall keep a silence till the end of time.
You have a mouth for loving,listen then:
Keep tryst with Love before Death comes to tryst;
For I, who die, could wi...

The sky is like an envelope,
    One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
    The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read - our sentence or reprieve?

I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet;
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth;
Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat.

Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry?
(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.)
That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry,
I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest.

Rest! Well, it's restful a...

When she sleeps, her soul, I know,
Goes a wanderer on the air,
Wings where I may never go,
Leaves her lying, still and fair,
Waiting, empty, laid aside,
Like a dress upon a chair. . . .
This I know, and yet I know
Doubts that will not be denied.

For if the soul be not in place,
What has laid trouble in her face?
And, sits there nothing ware and wise
Behind the curtains of her eyes,
What is it, in the self's eclipse,
Shadows, soft and passingly,
About the corners of her lips,
The smile that is essential she?

And if the spirit be not there,
Why is fragrance in the hair?

[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]

FEBRUARY 5, 18 - .

        Want - want - want - want! O God! forgive the crime,
        If I, asleep, awake, at any time,
        Upon my bended knees, my back, my feet,
        In church, on bed, on treasure-lighted street,
        Have ever hinted, or, much less, have pleaded
        That I hadn't ten times over all I needed!
        Lord save my soul! I never knew the way
        That people starve along from day to day;
        May gracious Heaven forgive me, o'er and o'er,
        That I have never found these folks before!

        Of course some news of it has come my way,
        Like a faint echo on a drowsy day;
        At home I "gave," whene'er by suffering grieved,
        And called i...

Genesis 28:10-22.


The sun had set. He was alone;
Mid twilight shadows he would rest.
He laid his head upon a stone
To woo sweet slumber for his guest.

Perhaps within those midnight hours
His rugged bed was cold and chill,
But wrapped in Dreamland's mystic powers,
He knew no danger, felt no ill.

A vision in his dreams appeared!
Angels were stepping to and fro
Upon a ladder which, upreared,
Aided their ministry below.

And then God spake in words which said
What future ages would unfold,
The soil on which he made his bed
Was his, by prophecy foretold.

He further heard that holy voice
Predict that through his tribe would be
Blessings in which all should rejoice,
Blessings which all the world should see.
...

Safe in the magic of my woods
I lay, and watched the dying light.
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
And washed with rain and veiled by night,

Silver and blue and green were showing.
And the dark woods grew darker still;
And birds were hushed; and peace was growing;
And quietness crept up the hill;

And no wind was blowing

And I knew
That this was the hour of knowing,
And the night and the woods and you
Were one together, and I should find
Soon in the silence the hidden key
Of all that had hurt and puzzled me
Why you were you, and the night was kind,
And the woods were part of the heart of me.

And there I waited breathlessly,
Alone; and slowly the holy three,
The three that I loved, together grew
One, in the hour of kn...

The pigeons, following the faint warm light,
Stayed at last on the roof till warmth was gone,
Then in the mist that's hastier than night
Disappeared all behind the carved dark stone,
Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost.
With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came
Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then
Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost,
Vanishing and returning ever again,
Small cloud following cloud across the flame
That clear and meagre burned and burned away
And left the ice unmelting day by day.

... Nor could the sun through the roof's purple slate
(Though his gold magic played with shadow there
And drew the pigeons from the streaming air)
With any fiery magic penetrate.
Under the roof the air and water froze,

If there were in my kalendar
No Emma, Florence, Mary,
What would be my existence now -
A hermit's? - wanderer's weary? -
How should I live, and how
Near would be death, or far?

Could it have been that other eyes
Might have uplit my highway?
That fond, sad, retrospective sight
Would catch from this dim byway
Prized figures different quite
From those that now arise?

With how strange aspect would there creep
The dawn, the night, the daytime,
If memory were not what it is
In song-time, toil, or pray-time. -
O were it else than this,
I'd pass to pulseless sleep!

    Dear are some hidden things
            My soul has sealed in silence; past delights,
    Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
            Remembered in the nights.

    But my best treasures are
            Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
    Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
            No reliquaries hold.

    There lie my trespasses,
            Abjured but not disowned.    I’ll not accuse
    Determinism, nor, as the Master {26} says,
            Charge even "the poor Deuce."

    Under my hand they lie,
            My very own, my proved iniquities,
    And though the glory of my life go by
            I hold and garner these.

    How else, how otherwhere.
            How otherwise, shall I discern and grope<...

Draped in shadows stands the mountain
Against the eastern sky,
Above it the fair summer moon
Looks downward tenderly;
And Venus in the glowing west,
Opens her languid eye.

Now the winds breathe softer music,
Half a song, and half a sigh;
While twilight wraps her purple veil
Around us silently,
And our thoughts appear like pictures,
Pictures shaded wondrously.

Quiet landscapes, sweet and lonely,
Silvery sea, and shadowy glade,
Forest lakes by man forsaken,
Where the white fawn's steps are stayed;
And contadinos straying
'Neath the Pantheon's solemn shade.

And we see the wave bridged over
By the moonlight's mystic link,
Desert wells by tall palms shaded,
Where dusky camels drink;
While dark-eyed Arab maidens
F...

I do not know what truth the false untruth
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,
Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit
Unto the true reality unknown.
But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,
Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,
A hope, not real yet not fancy's, lies
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill,
Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped;
Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel
Man hath a Nature's reason for having groped,
    Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures,
    Towards a better shelter than Time's pleasures.

The train draws forth from the station-yard,
And with it carries me.
I rise, and stretch out, and regard
The platform left, and see
An airy slim blue form there standing,
And know that it is she.

While with strained vision I watch on,
The figure turns round quite
To greet friends gaily; then is gone . . .
The import may be slight,
But why remained she not hard gazing
Till I was out of sight?

"O do not chat with others there,"
I brood. "They are not I.
O strain your thoughts as if they were
Gold bands between us; eye
All neighbour scenes as so much blankness
Till I again am by!

"A troubled soughing in the breeze
And the sky overhead
Let yourself feel; and shadeful trees,
Ripe corn, and apples red,
Read as things b...

When some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet 'All hails,'
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause.

I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled --
Some thousands -- on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies, --
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.

You're not alone when you are still alone;
O God! from you that I could private be!
Since you one were, I never since was one;
Since you in me, myself since out of me.
    Transported from myself into your being,
Though either distant, present yet to either;
Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing;
And only absent when we are together.
    Give me my self, and take your self again!
Devise some means but how I may forsake you!
So much is mine that doth with you remain,
That taking what is mine, with me I take you.
    You do bewitch me! O that I could fly
    From my self you, or from your own self I!

The sky is swollen with tears and melancholy.
Only far off, where its foul vapors burst,
Green glow pours down.    The houses,
Gray grimaces, are fiendishly bloated with mist.

Yellowish lights are beginning to gleam.
A stout father with wife and children dozes.
Painted women are practicing their dances.
Grotesque mimes strut towards the theater.

Jokers shriek, foul connoisseurs of men:
The day is dead... and a name remains!
Powerful men gleam in girls' eyes.
A woman yearns for her beloved woman.

Friends! do you see in yon sunset sky,
    That cloud of crimson bright?
Soon will its gorgeous colors die
    In coming dim twilight;
E'en now it fadeth ray by ray -
Like it I too shall pass away!

Look on yon fragile summer flower
    Yielding its sweet perfume;
Soon shall it have lived out its hour,
    Its beauty and its bloom:
Trampled, 'twill perish in the shade -
Alas! as quickly shall I fade.

Mark you yon planet gleaming clear
    With steadfast, gentle light,
See, heavy dark clouds hovering near,
    Have veiled its radiance bright -
As you vainly search that gloomy spot,
You'll look for me and find me not!

Turn now to yonder sparkling stream,
    Where silver ripples play;
Dancing within the moon's pale beam -