The scent of honeysuckle,Drugging the twilightWith its sweet opiate of lovers’ dreams!The last red glow of the setting sunOn the red brick wallOf the neighboring house,And the scramble of red roses over it! Slowly, slowlyThe night smokes up from the city to the stars,The faint foreshadowed stars;The smouldering nightBreathes upward like the breathOf a woman […]

The blue night, like an angel, came into the room,–Came through the open window from the silent skyDown trellised stairs of moonlight into the dear roomAs if a whisper breathed of some divine one nigh.The nightingales, like brooks of song in Paradise,Gurgled their serene rapture to the silent sky–Like springs of laughter bubbling up in […]

The typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight;The mother of poets is sitting alone;Only the katydid teases the noonday;Where are the good-for-naught wanderbirds flown? Tom’s in the North with his purple impressions;Dickon’s in London a-building his fame;Fred’s in the mountains a-minding his cattle;Kavanagh’s teaching and preaching and game. Over in Kingscroft a toiler is writing,The […]

About the time of Michael’s feastAnd all his angels,There comes a word to man and beastBy dark evangels. Then hearing what the wild things sayTo one another,Those creatures first born of our grayMysterious Mother, The greatness of the world’s unrestSteals through our pulses;Our own life takes a meaning guessedFrom the torn dulse’s. The draft and […]

For every oneBeneath the sun,Where Autumn walks with quiet eyes,There is a word,Just overheardWhen hill to purple hill replies. This afternoon,As warm as June,With the red apples on the bough,I set my earTo hark and hearThe wood-folk talking, you know how. There comes a “Hush!”And then a “Tush,”As tree to scarlet tree responds,“Babble away!He’ll not […]

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood–Touch of manner, hint of mood;And my heart is like a rhyme,With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cryOf bugles going by.And my lonely spirit thrillsTo see the frosty asters […]

The ghost of a wind came over the hill,While day for a moment forgot to die,And stirred the sheavesOf the millet leaves,As Nancibel went by. Out of the lands of Long Ago,Into the land of By and By,Faded the gleamOf a journeying dream,As Nancibel went by.

The body is no prison where we lieShut out from our true heritage of sun;It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly.Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon,No ray of light had reached the caverned mind,No thrill of pleasure through the life had run,No love of nature or of humankind,Were it but […]

Browning, old fellow,Your leaves grow yellow,Beginning to mellowAs seasons pass.Your cover is wrinkled,And stained and sprinkled,And warped and crinkledFrom sleep on the grass. Is it a wine stain,Or only a pine stain,That makes such a fine stainOn your dull blue,–Got as we numberedThe clouds that lumberedSouthward and slumberedWhen day was through? What is the dear […]

For love of the roving footAnd joy of the roving eye,God send you store of morrows fairAnd a good rest by and by!

Kilrudden ford, Kilrudden dale,Kilrudden fronting every galeOn the lorn coast of Inishfree,And Lal’s last bed the plunging sea. Lal of Kilrudden with flame-red hair,And the sea-blue eyes that rove and dare,And the open heart with never a care;With her strong brown arms and her ankles bare,God in heaven, but she was fair,That night the storm […]

Give me your last Aloha,When I go out of sight,Over the dark rim of the seaInto the Polar night! And all the Northland give youSkoal for the voyage begun,When your bright summer sail goes downInto the zones of sun!

They that eat the uncrushed grapeWalk with steady heels:Lo, now, how they stare and gapeWhere the poet reels!He has drunk the sheer divineConcentration of the vine.

Avid of life and love, insatiate vagabond,With quest too furious for the graal he would have won,He flung himself at the eternal sky, as oneWrenching his chains but impotent to burst the bond. Yet under the revolt, the revel, the despond,What pools of innocence, what crystal benison!As through a riven mist that glowers in the […]

You hearken, fellows? Turned asideInto the road-house of the past!The prince of vagabonds is goneTo house among his peers at last. The stainless gallant gentleman,So glad of life, he gave no trace,No hint he even once beheldThe spectre peering in his face; But gay and modest held the road,Nor feared the Shadow of the Dust;And […]

He said, “Good-night, my heart is light,To-morrow morn at dayWe two together in the dewShall forth and fare away. “We shall go down, the halls of dawnTo find the doors of joy;We shall not part again, dear heart.”And he laughed out like a boy. He turned and strode down the blue roadAgainst the western skyWhere […]

Eric of Marka holds the knife:“A nameless death for a nameless life.”– “Mary of Marka, bid him stay,And the morrow shall be our wedding-day.”– “Will the blessing of priest give back my faith,Or life to the child you left to death?”– Eric of Marka holds the knife,And turns to the mother that is no wife: […]

Buie Annajohn was the king’s black mare,Buie, Buie, Buie Annajohn!Satin was her coat and silk was her hair,Buie Annajohn,The young king’s own.March with the white moon, march with the sun,March with the merry men, Buie Annajohn! Buie Annajohn, when the dew lay hoar,(Buie, Buie, Buie Annajohn!)Down through the meadowlands went to war,–Buie Annajohn,The young king’s […]

Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor,When the horn is on the hill? (Bugle: Tarantara!With the crisp air stinging, and the huntsmen singing,And a ten-tined buck to kill! Before the sun goes down, goes down,We shall slay the buck of ten; (Bugle: Tarantara!And the priest shall say benison, and we shall ha’e venison,When we come home […]

Said the hearse-horse to the coffin, “What the devil have you there? I may trot from court to square, Yet it neither swears nor groans, When I jolt it over stones.” Said the coffin to the hearse-horse, “Bones!” Said the hearse-horse to the coffin, “What the devil have you there, With that purple frozen stare? […]