'Tis not when we look on the dreamless dead,
And feel that the spirit forever has fled;
'Tis not when we're called to the voiceless tomb
By the loved who were culled in their brightest bloom;
'Tis not when the grave's last rite is o'er,
And we know they are gone to return no more;
But, oh! 'tis when Time with oblivious wing
A balm to all other hearts may bring;
When the dark, dark hours of grief are o'er,
And we join the world we can love no more,
That world whose grief for the absent one
Passed like a cloud from an April sun;
When, amid the mirth that salutes the ear,
One tone is gone we had used to hear,
One form is missed in that happy train,
That will never exult in its sports again;
We feel that death has indeed passed o'er,
And a blank...

I was not sorrowful, I could not weep,
And all my memories were put to sleep.

I watched the river grow more white and strange,
All day till evening I watched it change.

All day till evening I watched the rain
Beat wearily upon the window pane.

I was not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever I desired.

Her lips, her eyes, all day became to me
The shadow of a shadow utterly.

All day mine hunger for her heart became
Oblivion, until the evening came,

And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep,
With all my memories that could not sleep.

Loss molds our lives in many ways,
And fills our souls with guesses;
Upon our hearts sad hands it lays
Like some grave priest that blesses.

Far better than the love we win,
That earthly passions leaven,
Is love we lose, that knows no sin,
That points the path to Heaven.

Love, whose soft shadow brightens Earth,
Through whom our dreams are nearest;
And loss, through whom we see the worth
Of all that we held dearest.

Not joy it is, but misery
That chastens us, and sorrow;
Perhaps to make us all that we
Expect beyond To-morrow.

Within that life where time and fate
Are not; that knows no seeming:
That world to which death keeps the gate
Where love and loss sit dreaming.

Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, -
Wail, for the world's wrong!

The seasons send their ruin as they go,
For in the spring the narciss shows its head
Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red,
And in the autumn purple violets blow,
And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow;
Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again
And this grey land grow green with summer rain
And send up cowslips for some boy to mow.

But what of life whose bitter hungry sea
Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night
Covers the days which never more return?
Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn
We lose too soon, and only find delight
In withered husks of some dead memory.

    They will find in this life who are grieved with its gladness
        No songs for the heart and no hopes for the soul,
    But will faint in the glooms where the dirges of sadness
        In tremulous murmurs of wretchedness roll;
    For the sweets of this earth never lavish their kisses
        Where lives in the valleys of rapture repine;
    In the tortures they mourn who denounce all the blisses,--
        They weep in the shadow that rail at the shine.

    In the fields that are fair with the blooms of the clover,
        No garlands are grown for the arbors of shade
    Where the woes of the wood in their darkness hang over
        The grasses that wave with the winds of the glade;
    From the chimes of the breezes there echo no measures
        That gladd...

When you mournfully rivet your tear-laden eyes,
    That have seen the last sunset of hope pass away,
On some bright orb that seems, through the still sapphire skies,
    In beauty and splendour to roll on its way:

Oh, remember this earth, if beheld from afar,
    Appears wrapt in a halo as soft, and as bright,
As the pure silver radiance enshrining yon star,
    Where your spirit is eagerly soaring to-night.

And at this very midnight, perhaps some poor heart,
    That is aching, or breaking, in that distant sphere;
Gazes down on this dark world, and longs to depart
    From its own dismal home, to a happier one here.

I cannot tell what change hath come to you
To vex your splendid hair. I only know
One grief. The passion left betwixt us two,
Like some forsaken watchfire, burneth low.
’Tis sad to turn and find it dying so,
Without a hope of resurrection! Yet,
O radiant face that found me tired and lone!
I shall not for the dear, dead past forget
The sweetest looks of all the summers gone.
Ah! time hath made familiar wild regret;
For now the leaves are white in last year’s bowers,
And now doth sob along the ruined leas
The homeless storm from saddened southern seas,
While March sits weeping over withered flowers.

The soul of love is harmony; as such
All melodies, that with wide pinions beat
Elastic bars, which mew it in the flesh,
Till 'twould away to kiss their throats and cling,
Are kindred to the soul, and while they sway,
Lords of its action molding all at will.

Ah! neither was I I, nor knew the clay,
For all my soul lay on full waves of song
Reverberating 'twixt the earth and moon.

O soft complaints, that haunted all the heart
With dreams of love long cherished, love dreams found
On sunset mountains gorgeous toward the West:
Kisses - soft kisses bartered 'mid pale buds
Of bursting Springs; and vows of fondest faith
Kept evermore; and eyes whose witchery
Might lure old saints down to the lowest hell
For one swift glance, - sweet, melancholy eyes
Ye...

The rose, that wrote its message on the noon's
Bright manuscript, has turned her perfumed face
Towards Fall, and waits, heart-heavy, for the moon's
Pale flower to take her place.

With eyes distraught, and dark disheveled hair,
The Season dons a tattered cloak of storm
And waits with Night that, darkly, seems to share
Her trouble and alarm.

It is the close of summer. In the sky
The sunset lit a fire of drift and sat
Watching the last Day, robed in empire, die
Upon the burning ghat.

The first leaf crimsons and the last rose falls,
And Night goes stalking on, her cloak of rain
Dripping, and followed through her haunted halls
By all Death's phantom train.

The sorrow of the Earth and all that dies,
And all that suffers, in her breast sh...

Arranging long-locked drawers and shelves
Of cabinets, shut up for years,
What a strange task we've set ourselves!
How still the lonely room appears!
How strange this mass of ancient treasures,
Mementos of past pains and pleasures;
These volumes, clasped with costly stone,
With print all faded, gilding gone;

These fans of leaves from Indian trees,
These crimson shells, from Indian seas,
These tiny portraits, set in rings,
Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things;
Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith,
And worn till the receiver's death,
Now stored with cameos, china, shells,
In this old closet's dusty cells.

I scarcely think, for ten long years,
A hand has touched these relics old;
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears
The growth...

        -    - Methought I saw
Life swiftly treading over endless space;
And, at her foot-print, but a bygone pace,
The ocean-past, which, with increasing wave,
Swallow'd her steps like a pursuing grave.

Sad were my thoughts that anchor'd silently
On the dead waters of that passionless sea,
Unstirr'd by any touch of living breath:
Silence hung over it, and drowsy Death,
Like a gorged sea-bird, slept with folded wings
On crowded carcases - sad passive things
That wore the thin gray surface, like a veil
Over the calmness of their features pale.

And there were spring-faced cherubs that did sleep
Like water-lilies on that motionless deep,
How beautiful! with bright unruffled hair
On sleek unfretted brows, and eyes that were
Buried in marble tombs,...

Despair is in the suns that shine,
    And in the rains that fall,
This sad forsaken soul of mine
    Is weary of them all.

They fall and shine on alien streets
    From those I love and know.
I cannot hear amid the heats
    The North Sea's freshening flow

The people hurry up and down,
    Like ghosts that cannot lie;
And wandering through the phantom town
    The weariest ghost am I.

She looked at her neighbour's house in the light of the waning day -
A shower of rice on the steps, and the shreds of a bride's bouquet.
And then she drew the shade, to shut out the growing gloom,
But she shut it into her heart instead.    (Was that a voice in the room?)

'My neighbour is sad,' she sighed, 'like the mother bird who sees
The last of her brood fly out of the nest to make its home in the trees' -
And then in a passion of tears - 'But, oh, to be sad like her:
Sad for a joy that has come and gone!'    (Did some one speak, or stir?)

She looked at her faded hands, all burdened with costly rings;
She looked on her widowed home, all burdened with priceless things.
She thought of the dead years gone, of the empty years ahead -
(Yes, something stirred and something sp...

A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
Touching the roses moist of memory
To die within the Present's grief of clouds -
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.

A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,
Or red or white; its darting length of tongue
Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,
And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:
A love that put into expanding bowers
Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers
To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone -
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.

A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece
Moves amber girt into a b...

I have experienc'd
The worst, the World can wreak on me, the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd Discontents the dying prayer,
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That Hostage, which the world had in it's keeping
Given by me as a Pledge that I would live,
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life, is gone ah! whither?
What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself, and break I shall!

'T is not alone that black and yawning void
    That makes her heart ache with this hungry pain,
But the glad sense of life hath been destroyed,
    The lost delight may never come again.
Yet myriad serious blessings with grave grace
Arise on every side to fill their place.


For much abides in her so lonely life, -
    The dear companionship of her own kind,
Love where least looked for, quiet after strife,
    Whispers of promise upon every wind,
A quickened insight, in awakened eyes,
For the new meaning of the earth and skies.


The nameless charm about all things hath died,
    Subtle as aureole round a shadow's head,
Cast on the dewy grass at morning-tide;
    Yet though the glory and the joy be fled,
'T is much her own endurance to hav...

When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.