Strong pinions bore Safi, the dreamer,
Through the dazzle and whirl of a race,
And the earth, raying up in confusion,
Like a sea thundered under his face!

And the earth, raying up in confusion,
Passed flying and flying afar,
Till it dropped like a moon into silence,
And waned from a moon to a star.

Was it light, was it shadow he followed,
That he swept through those desperate tracts,
With his hair beating back on his shoulders
Like the tops of the wind-hackled flax?

“I come,” murmured Safi, the dreamer,
“I come, but thou fliest before:
But thy way hath the breath of the honey,
And the scent of the myrrh evermore!”

His eyes were the eyes of a watcher
Held on by luxurious faith,
And his lips were the lips of a longer
Amazed...

At dusk the window panes grew grey;
The wet world vanished in the gloom;
The dim and silver end of day
Scarce glimmered through the little room.

And all my sins were told; I said
Such things to her who knew not sin--
The sharp ache throbbing in my head,
The fever running high within.

I touched with pain her purity;
Sin's darker sense I could not bring:
My soul was black as night to me:
To her I was a wounded thing.

I needed love no words could say;
She drew me softly nigh her chair,
My head upon her knees to lay,
With cool hands that caressed my hair.

She sat with hands as if to bless,
And looked with grave, ethereal eyes;
Ensouled by ancient quietness,
A gentle priestess of the Wise.

A voice of grave, deep emphasis
Is in the woods to-night;
No sound of radiant day is this,
No cadence of the light.
Here in the fall and flights of leaves
Against grey widths of sea,
The spirit of the forests grieves
For lost Persephone.

The fair divinity that roves
Where many waters sing
Doth miss her daughter of the groves
The golden-headed Spring.
She cannot find the shining hand
That once the rose caressed;
There is no blossom on the land,
No bird in last year’s nest.

Here, where this strange Demeter weeps
This large, sad life unseen
Where July’s strong, wild torrent leaps
The wet hill-heads between,
I sit and listen to the grief,
The high, supreme distress,
Which sobs above the fallen leaf
Like human tenderne...

High travelling winds by royal hill
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.

To-night across a wild wet plain
A shadow sobs and strays;
The trees are whispering in the rain
Of long departed days.

I cannot say what forest saith
Its words are strange to me:
I only know that in its breath
Are tones that used to be.

Yea, in these deep dim solitudes
I hear a sound I know
The voice that lived in Penrith woods
Twelve weary years ago.

And while the hymn of other years
Is on a listening land,
The Angel of the Past appears
And leads me by the hand;

And takes me over moaning wave,
And tracts of sleepless change,
To set me by a lonely grave
Within a lonely range.

Citoyen, lui dit Enjoiras, ma mère, c’est la République.
- Les Misérables.


Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside,
In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride,
In the dust, in the rainfall sitting, with soiled feet bare,
With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair?
She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her eyes,
Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth of skies.

This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake,
Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men’s hearts break.
This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that were
Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air.
This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam;
Whose face was a...

Weeping, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight;
MYRA, too sincere for feigning,
Fears th' approaching bridal night.

Yet, why impair thy bright perfection?
Or dim thy beauty with a tear?
Had MYRA followed my direction,
She long had wanted cause of fear.

With dirge-like music, low,
Sounds forth again the solemn harp of Time;
Mass for the buried hours, a funeral chime
O'er human joy and woe.
The sere leaves wail around thy passing bier,
Speed to thy dreamless rest, departing year!

Yet, ere thy sable pall
Cross the wide threshold of the mighty Past,
Give back the treasures on thy bosom cast;
Earth would her gems recall:
Give back the lily's bloom and violet's breath,
The summer leaves that bowed before the reaper Death.

Give back the dreams of fame,
The aspirations strong for glory won;
Hopes that went out perchance when set thy sun,
Nor left nor trace nor name:
Give back the wasted hours, half-uttered prayer,
The high resolves forgot that stained thine annals fair.

Give back the flow...

    Unaware of its terror,
    And but half aware
    Of the world's beauty near her -
    Of sunlight on the stones,
    And trembling birds in the square,
    Lightly went Madala -
    A rose blown suddenly
    From Spring's gay mouth; part of the Spring was she.
    Warmed to her delicate bones,
    Cool in its linen her skin,
    Her hair up-combed and curled,
    Lightly she flowered on the sin
    And pain of the Spring-struck world.
    Down the street went crazy men,
    The winter misery of their blood
    Budding in new pain
    While beggars whined beside her,
    While the streets' daughters eyed her, -
    Poor flowers that kept midsummer
    With desperate bloom, and thrust
    Stale rose at each newcomer,
    And crime a...

I.

There is a scent of roses and spilt wine
Between the moonlight and the laurel coppice;
The marble idol glimmers on its shrine,
White as a star, among a heaven of poppies.
Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine.
There is a mouth of music like a lute,
A nightingale that sigheth to one flower;
Between the falling flower and the fruit,
Where love hath died, the music of an hour.

II.

To sit alone with memory and a rose;
To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;
To make one hour of a year of woes
And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,
With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose,
To shape from music and the scent of buds
Love's spirit and its presence of sweet fire,
Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's,
Is...

Unto the house of prayer my spirit yearns,
Unto the sources of her being turns,
To where the sacred light of heaven burns,
She struggles thitherward by day and night.


The splendor of God's glory blinds her eyes,
Up without wings she soareth to the skies,
With silent aspiration seeks to rise,
In dusky evening and in darksome night.


To her the wonders of God's works appear,
She longs with fervor Him to draw anear,
The tidings of His glory reach her ear,
From morn to even, and from night to night.


The banner of thy grace did o'er me rest,
Yet was thy worship banished from my breast.
Almighty, thou didst seek me out and test
To try and to instruct me in the night.


I dare not idly on my pillow lie,
With winged fe...

The dirge is played, the throbbing death-peal rung,
The sad-voiced requiem sung;
On each white urn where memory dwells
The wreath of rustling immortelles
Our loving hands have hung,
And balmiest leaves have strown and tenderest blossoms flung.

The birds that filled the air with songs have flown,
The wintry blasts have blown,
And these for whom the voice of spring
Bade the sweet choirs their carols sing
Sleep in those chambers lone
Where snows untrodden lie, unheard the night-winds moan.

We clasp them all in memory, as the vine
Whose running stems intwine
The marble shaft, and steal around
The lowly stone, the nameless mound;
With sorrowing hearts resign
Our brothers true and tried, and close our broken line.

How fast the lamps of li...

    'T is pleasant to bear recollections in mind
    Of joys that time hurries away--
    To look back on smiles that have passed like the wind,
    And compare them with frowns of to-day.
    'T was the constant delight of Old Robin, forsooth,
    On the past with clear vision to dwell--
    To recount the fond loves and the raptures of youth,
    And tales of lost pleasures to tell.

    "'T is now many years," like a child, he would say,
    "Since I joined in the sports of the green--
    Since I tied up the flowers for the garland of May,
    And danced with the holiday queen.
    My memory looks backward in sorrowful pride,
    And I think, till my eyes dim with tears,
    Of the past, where my happiness withered and died,
    And the present dull, desol...

    Were we in May now, while
        Our souls are yearning,
    Sad hearts would bound and smile
        With red blood burning;
    Around the tedious dial
        No slow hands turning.

    Were we in May now, say,
        What joy to know
    Her heart's streams pulse away
        In winds that blow,
    See graceful limbs of May
        Revealed to glow.

    Were we in May now, think
        What wealth she has;
    The dog-tooth violets pink,
        Wind-flowers like glass,
    About the wood brook's brink
        Dark sassafras.

    Nights, which the large stars strew
        Heav'n on heav'n rolled,
    Nights, whose feet flash with dew,
        Whose long locks hold
    Aromas cool and new,
      ...

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.

These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Lais! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls.
Under cold rags, their shredded petticoats,

They creep, lashed by the merciless north wind,
Quake from the riot of an omnibus,
Clasp by their sides like relics of a saint
Embroidered bags of flowery design;

They toddle, every bit like marionettes,
Or drag themselves like wounded animals,
Or dance against their will, poor little bells
That a remorseless demon rings! Worn out

They are, yet they have eyes piercing like...

Storm and strife and stress,
Lost in a wilderness,
Groping to find a way,
Forth to the haunts of day

Sudden a vista peeps,
Out of the tangled deeps,
Only a point--the ray
But at the end is day.

Dark is the dawn and chill,
Daylight is on the hill,
Night is the flitting breath,
Day rides the hills of death.

I.

Alas! That breathing Vanity should go
Where Pride is buried, - like its very ghost,
Uprisen from the naked bones below,
In novel flesh, clad in the silent boast
Of gaudy silk that flutters to and fro,
Shedding its chilling superstition most
On young and ignorant natures - as it wont
To haunt the peaceful churchyard of Bedfont!


II.

Each Sabbath morning, at the hour of prayer,
Behold two maidens, up the quiet green
Shining, far distant, in the summer air
That flaunts their dewy robes and breathes between
Their downy plumes, - sailing as if they were
Two far-off ships, - until they brush between
The churchyard's humble walls, and watch and wait
On either side of the wide open'd gate,


III.

And there they ...

Sounds of the seas grow fainter,
    Sounds of the sands have sped;
The sweep of gales,
The far white sails,
    Are silent, spent and dead.

Sounds of the days of summer
    Murmur and die away,
And distance hides
The long, low tides,
    As night shuts out the day.

Sickness brought me this
Thought, in that scale of his:
Why should I be dismayed
Though flame had burned the whole
World, as it were a coal,
Now I have seen it weighed
Against a soul?