Oh what comes over the sea,Shoals and quicksands past;And what comes home to me,Sailing slow, sailing fast? A wind comes over the seaWith a moan in its blast;But nothing comes home to me,Sailing slow, sailing fast. Let me be, let me be,For my lot is cast:Land or sea all’s one to me,And sail it slow […]

The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,The moonrise wakes the nightingale.Come darkness, moonrise, every thingThat is so silent, sweet, and pale:Come, so ye wake the nightingale. Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,Make haste to wake the nightingale:Let silence set the world in tuneTo hearken to that wordless taleWhich warbles from the nightingale O herald […]

Love that is dead and buried, yesterdayOut of his grave rose up before my face,No recognition in his look, no traceOf memory in his eyes dust-dimmed and grey.While I, remembering, found no word to say,But felt my quickened heart leap in its place;Caught afterglow thrown back from long set days,Caught echoes of all music passed […]

I marked where lovely Venus and her courtWith song and dance and merry laugh went by;Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly,Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport.Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort,Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye,Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling highOr low, and cooed […]

A fool I was to sleep at noon,And wake when night is chillyBeneath the comfortless cold moon;A fool to pluck my rose too soon,A fool to snap my lily. My garden-plot I have not kept;Faded and all-forsaken,I weep as I have never wept:Oh it was summer when I slept,It’s winter now I waken. Talk what […]

Hope new born one pleasant mornDied at even;Hope dead lives nevermore,No, not in heaven. If his shroud were but a cloudTo weep itself away;Or were he buried undergroundTo sprout some day!But dead and gone is dead and goneVainly wept upon. Nought we place above his faceTo mark the spot,But it shows a barren placeIn our […]

Like flowers sequestered from the sunAnd wind of summer, day by dayI dwindled paler, whilst my hairShowed the first tinge of grey. “Oh, what is life, that we should live?Or what is death, that we must die?A bursting bubble is our life:I also, what am I?” “What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,That I […]

Through the vales to my love!To the happy small nest of homeGreen from basement to roof;Where the honey-bees comeTo the window-sill flowers,And dive from above,Safe from the spider that weavesHer warp and her woofIn some outermost leaves. Through the vales to my love!In sweet April hoursAll rainbows and showers,While dove answers dove,–In beautiful May,When the […]

“And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.” The earth was green, the sky was blue:I saw and heard one sunny mornA skylark hang between the two,A singing speck above the corn; A stage below, in gay accord,White butterflies danced on the wing,And still the singing skylark soaredAnd silent sank, and soared to sing. […]

Once in a dream I saw the flowersThat bud and bloom in Paradise;More fair they are than waking eyesHave seen in all this world of ours.And faint the perfume-bearing rose,And faint the lily on its stem,And faint the perfect violetCompared with them. I heard the songs of Paradise:Each bird sat singing in his place;A tender […]

B.C. 570. Here, where I dwell, I waste to skin and bone;The curse is come upon me, and I wasteIn penal torment powerless to atone.The curse is come on me, which makes no hasteAnd doth not tarry, crushing both the proudHard man and him the sinner double-faced.Look not upon me, for my soul is bowedWithin […]

“O where are you going with your love-locks flowing,On the west wind blowing along this valley track?”“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.” So they two went together in glowing August weather,The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;And dear she […]

A smile because the nights are short!And every morning brings such pleasureOf sweet love-making, harmless sport:Love that makes and finds its treasure;Love, treasure without measure. A sigh because the days are long!Long, long these days that pass in sighing,A burden saddens every song:While time lags which should be flying,We live who would be dying.

It’s a year almost that I have not seen her:Oh, last summer green things were greener,Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer. It’s surely summer, for there’s a swallow:Come one swallow, his mate will follow,The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken. Oh happy swallow whose mate will followO’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow,To […]

I. We met, hand to hand,We clasped hands close and fast,As close as oak and ivy stand;But it is past:Come day, come night, day comes at last. We loosed hand from hand,We parted face from face;Each went his way to his own landAt his own pace:Each went to fill his separate place. If we should […]

My sun has set, I dwellIn darkness as a dead man out of sight;And none remains, not one, that I should tellTo him mine evil plightThis bitter night.I will make fast my doorThat hollow friends may trouble me no more. “Friend, open to Me.”–Who is this that calls?Nay, I am deaf as are my walls:Cease […]

God strengthen me to bear myself;That heaviest weight of all to bear,Inalienable weight of care. All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them out,The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. I lock my door upon myself,And bar them out; but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed of all? If I could once lay down […]

At morn I plucked a rose and gave it Thee,A rose of joy and happy love and peace,A rose with scarce a thorn:But in the chillness of a second mornMy rose bush drooped, and all its gay increaseWas but one thorn that wounded me. I plucked the thorn and offered it to Thee;And for my […]

Why should I call Thee Lord, Who art my God?Why should I call Thee Friend, Who art my Love?Or King, Who art my very Spouse above?Or call Thy Sceptre on my heart Thy rod?Lo, now Thy banner over me is love,All heaven flies open to me at Thy nod:For Thou hast lit Thy flame in […]

“O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?Me whom thou settest in a barren land,Hungry and thirsty on the burning sand,Hungry and thirsty where no waters beNor shadows of date-bearing tree:–O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?” “I came from Edom by as parched a track,As rough a track beneath My bleeding […]