The old enthusiasms
Are dead, quite dead, in me;
Dead the aspiring spasms
Of art and poesy,
That opened magic chasms,
Once, of wild mystery,
In youth's rich Araby.
That opened magic chasms.

The longing and the care
Are mine; and, helplessly,
The heartache and despair
For what can never be.
More than my mortal share
Of sad mortality,
It seems, God gives to me,
More than my mortal share.

O world! O time! O fate!
Remorseless trinity!
Let not your wheel abate
Its iron rotary!
Turn round! nor make me wait,
Bound to it neck and knee,
Hope's final agony!
Turn round! nor make me wait.

Oft in the stilly night,
    Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
    Of other days around me;
        The smiles, the tears,
        Of boyhood's years,
    The words of love then spoken;
        The eyes that shone,
        Now dimmed and gone,
    The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
    Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
    Of other days around me.

When I remember all
    The friends, so linked together,
I've seen around me fall,
    Like leaves in wintry weather;
        I feel like one,
        Who treads alone,
    Some banquet-hall deserted,
        Whose lights are fled,
        Whose garlands dead,
    And all but he departed!
Thu...

Last night her Form the hours of slumber bless'd
    Whose eyes illumin'd all my youthful years. -
    Spirit of dreams, at thy command appears
    Each airy Shape, that visiting our rest,
Dismays, perplexes, or delights the breast.
    My pensive heart this kind indulgence cheers;
    Bliss, in no waking moment now possess'd,
    Bliss, ask'd of thee with Memory's thrilling tears,
Nightly I cry, how oft, alas! in vain,
    Give, by thy powers, that airy Shapes controul,
    HONORA to my visions! - ah! ordain
Her beauteous lip may wear the smile that stole,
    In years long fled, the sting from every pain!
    Show her sweet face, ah show it to my soul!

June 1780.

Betimes, I seem to see in dreams
What when awake I may not see;
Can night be God's more than the day?
Do stars, not suns, best light his way?
Who knoweth? Blended lights and shades
Arch aisles down which He walks to me.

I hear him coming in the night
Afar, and yet I know not how;
His steps make music low and sweet;
Sometimes the nails are in his feet;
Does darkness give God better light
Than day, to find a weary brow?

Does darkness give man brighter rays
To find the God, in sunshine lost?
Must shadows wrap the trysting-place
Where God meets hearts with gentlest grace?
Who knoweth it? God hath His ways
For every soul here sorrow-tossed.

The hours of day are like the waves
That fret against the shores of sin:
They touch the ...

There is silence that saith, "Ah me!"
There is silence that nothing saith;
One the silence of life forlorn,
One the silence of death;
One is, and the other shall be.

One we know and have known for long,
One we know not, but we shall know,
All we who have ever been born;
Even so, be it so, -
There is silence, despite a song.

Sowing day is a silent day,
Resting night is a silent night;
But whoso reaps the ripened corn
Shall shout in his delight,
While silences vanish away.

I cannot look upon thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
The stillness round a star?

Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
This madness of the heart.

And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
Had oped and closed again.

And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
Then turn away to peace.

But oh, for evermore thy look,
Thy laugh, thy charm, thy tone,
Thy sweet and wayward earthlin...

Oh, for some cup of consummating might,
Filled with life's kind conclusion, lost in night!
A wine of darkness, that with death shall cure
This sickness called existence! Oh to find
Surcease of sorrow! quiet for the mind,
An end of thought in something dark and sure!
Mandrake and hellebore, or poison pure!
Some drug of death, wherein there are no dreams!
No more, no more, with patience, to endure
The wrongs of life, the hate of men, it seems;
Or wealth's authority, tyranny of time,
And lamentations and the boasts of man!
To hear no more the wild complaints of toil,
And struggling merit, that, unknown, must starve:
To see no more life's disregard for Art!
Oh God! to know no longer anything!
Nor good, nor evil, or what either means!
Nor hear the changing tid...

Fall'n pile! I ask not what has been thy fate;
But when the winds, slow wafted from the main,
Through each rent arch, like spirits that complain,
Come hollow to my ear, I meditate
On this world's passing pageant, and the lot
Of those who once majestic in their prime
Stood smiling at decay, till bowed by time
Or injury, their early boast forgot,
They may have fall'n like thee! Pale and forlorn,
Their brow, besprent with thin hairs, white as snow,
They lift, still unsubdued, as they would scorn
This short-lived scene of vanity and woe;
Whilst on their sad looks smilingly they bear
The trace of creeping age, and the pale hue of care!

He who wears blacks, and mourns not for the dead,
Does but deride the party buried.

This is the place.    Stand still, my steed,
    Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
    The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
    Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
    But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
    There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
    O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
    Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
    A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
    And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
    Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
    Bend down t...

O passi sparsi, o pensier vaghi e pronti.

EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF HIS PASSION IS A TORMENT TO HIM.


    O scatter'd steps! O vague and busy thoughts!
O firm-set memory! O fierce desire!
O passion powerful! O failing heart!
O eyes of mine, not eyes, but fountains now!
O leaf, which honourest illustrious brows,
Sole sign of double valour, and best crown!
O painful life, O error oft and sweet!
That make me search the lone plains and hard hills.
O beauteous face! where Love together placed
The spurs and curb, to strive with which is vain,
They prick and turn me so at his sole will.
O gentle amorous souls, if such there be!
And you, O naked spirits of mere dust,
Tarry and see how great my suffering is!

MACGREGOR.

    The time is all so short. One week is much
        To be without your deep and peaceful eyes,
    Your soft and all-contenting cheek, the touch
        Of well-caressing hands.    O were we wise
    We would not love too strongly, would not bind
        Life into life so inextricably,
    That the dumb body suffers with the mind
        In a sad partnership this agony.
    For death will come and swallow up us two,
        You there, I here, and we shall lie apart,
    Out of the houses and the woods we knew.
        Then in the lonely grave, my dust-choked heart
    Out of the dust will raise, if it can speak,
    A threnody for this lost, lovely week.

I

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.

II

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

We look up to the stars tonight,
    Idolatrous of them,
And dream that Heaven is in sight,
And each a ray of purest light
    From some celestial gem
    In her bright diadem.

Before that lonely home we wait,
    Ah! nevermore to see
Her lovely form within the gate
Where heart and hearthstone desolate
    And vine and shrub and tree
    Seem asking: "Where is she?"

There is the cottage Love had planned -
    Where hope in ashes lies -
A tower beautiful to stand,
Her monument whose gentle hand
    And presence in the skies
    Make home of Paradise.

In wintry bleakness nature glows
    Beneath the stellar ray;
We see the mold, but not the rose,
And meditate if knowledge goes
    Into yon mound of clay,
    W...

            TO E.M. II.

Dear friend, you love the poet's song,
    And here is one for your regard.
    You know the "melancholy bard,"
Whose grief is wise as well as strong;

Already something understand
    For whom he mourns and what he sings,
    And how he wakes with golden strings
The echoes of "the silent land;"

How, restless, faint, and worn with grief,
    Yet loving all and hoping all,
    He gazes where the shadows fall,
And finds in darkness some relief;

And how he sends his cries across,
    His cries for him that comes no more,
    Till one might think that silent shore
Full of the burden of his loss;

And how there comes sublimer cheer--
    Not darkness solacing sad eyes,
    Not the wild joy of mournf...

Oh, straight, white road that runs to meet,
    Across green fields, the blue green sea,
You knew the little weary feet
    Of my child bride that was to be!

Her people brought her from the shore
    One golden day in sultry June,
And I stood, waiting, at the door,
    Praying my eyes might see her soon.

With eager arms, wide open thrown,
    Now never to be satisfied!
Ere I could make my love my own
    She closed her amber eyes and died.

Alas! alas! they took no heed
    How frail she was, my little one,
But brought her here with cruel speed
    Beneath the fierce, relentless sun.

We laid her on the marriage bed
    The bridal flowers in her hand,
A maiden from the ocean led
    Only, alas! to die inland.

I w...

Above the city hung the moon,
Right o'er a plot of ground
Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced
With lofty walls around:
'Twas Gilbert's garden, there to-night
Awhile he walked alone;
And, tired with sedentary toil,
Mused where the moonlight shone.

This garden, in a city-heart,
Lay still as houseless wild,
Though many-windowed mansion fronts
Were round it; closely piled;
But thick their walls, and those within
Lived lives by noise unstirred;
Like wafting of an angel's wing,
Time's flight by them was heard.

Some soft piano-notes alone
Were sweet as faintly given,
Where ladies, doubtless, cheered the hearth
With song that winter-even.
The city's many-mingled sounds
Rose like the hum of ocean;
They rather lulled the...

The fourteen centuries fall away
Between us and the Afric saint,
And at his side we urge, to-day,
The immemorial quest and old complaint.

No outward sign to us is given,
From sea or earth comes no reply;
Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven
He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky.

No victory comes of all our strife,
From all we grasp the meaning slips;
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life,
With the old question on her awful lips.

In paths unknown we hear the feet
Of fear before, and guilt behind;
We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat
Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind.

From age to age descends unchecked
The sad bequest of sire to son,
The body's taint, the mind's defect;
Through every web of life the dark threads run.