I SAW thee on thy bridal day – When a burning blush came o’er thee, Though happiness around thee lay, The world all love before thee: And in thine eye a kindling light (Whatever it might be) Was all on Earth my aching sight Of Loveliness could see. That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame – […]

FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty – the unhidden heart – The playful maziness of art In old Alberto’s daughter; But when within thy wave she looks – Which glistens then, and trembles – Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her […]

I HEED not that my earthly lot Hath-little of Earth in it– That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute:– I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer-by.

1 The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see The wantonest singing birds Are lips – and all thy melody Of lip-begotten words – 2 Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin’d Then desolately fall, O! God! on my funereal mind Like starlight on a pall – 3 Thy heart – thy heart! – I wake […]

IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell “Whose heart-strings are a lute;” None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute. Tottering above In her highest noon The enamoured moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red […]

Once it smiled a silent dell Where the people did not dwell; They had gone unto the wars, Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, Nightly, from their azure towers, To keep watch above the flowers, In the midst of which all day The red sun-light lazily lay. Now each visiter shall confess The sad valley’s restlessness. […]

HELEN, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And […]

KIND solace in a dying hour! Such, father, is not (now) my theme – I will not madly deem that power Of Earth may shrive me of the sin Unearthly pride hath revell’d in – I have no time to dote or dream: You call it hope – that fire of fire! It is but […]

O ! NOTHING earthly save the ray (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye, As in those gardens where the day Springs from the gems of Circassy – O ! nothing earthly save the thrill Of melody in woodland rill – Or (music of the passion-hearted) Joy’s voice so peacefully departed That like the murmur […]

SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled […]

“In Youth I Have Known One” How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature’s universal throne; Her woods–her wilds–her mountains-the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence! I IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held-as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: […]

Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius I WREATHED in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal Like those champions devoted and brave, When they plunged in the tyrant their steel, And to Athens deliverance gave. II Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam In the joy breathing isles of the blest; Where the mighty of old have their home […]

A dark unfathom’d tide Of interminable pride – A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem; I say that dream was fraught With a wild, and waking thought Of beings that have been, Which my spirit hath not seen, Had I let them pass me by, With a dreaming eye! Let none of […]

I THE happiest day-the happiest hour My seared and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown. Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween But they have vanished long, alas! The visions of my youth have been But let them pass. III And pride, what have I […]

‘TWAS noontide of summer, And midtime of night, And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, through the light Of the brighter, cold moon. ‘Mid planets her slaves, Herself in the Heavens, Her beam on the waves. I gazed awhile On her cold smile; Too cold-too cold for me– There passed, as a shroud, A fleecy […]

IN spring of youth it was my lot To haunt of the wide earth a spot The which I could not love the less — So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that tower’d around. But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that […]

DIM vales – and shadowy floods – And cloudy-looking woods, Whose forms we can’t discover For the tears that drip all over Huge moons there wax and wane – Again – again – again – Every moment of the night – Forever changing places – And they put out the star-light With the breath from […]

ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been – a most familiar bird – Taught me my alphabet to say – To lisp my very earliest word While in the […]

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed — But a waking dreams of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past? That holy dream — […]

1 Thy soul shall find itself alone ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone – Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy: 2 Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness – for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In […]