I As long as Fame’s imperious music ringsWill poets mock it with crowned words august;And haggard men will clamber to be kingsAs long as Glory weighs itself in dust. II Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled,Nor shudder for the revels that are done:The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled,The strings that Nero fingered […]

For those that never know the light,The darkness is a sullen thing;And they, the Children of the Night,Seem lost in Fortune’s winnowing. But some are strong and some are weak, —And there’s the story. House and homeAre shut from countless hearts that seekWorld-refuge that will never come. And if there be no other life,And if […]

There be two men of all mankindThat I should like to know about;But search and question where I will,I cannot ever find them out. Melchizedek he praised the Lord,And gave some wine to Abraham;But who can tell what else he didMust be more learned than I am. Ucalegon he lost his houseWhen Agamemnon came to […]

Up from the street and the crowds that went,Morning and midnight, to and fro,Still was the room where his days he spent,And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow. Year after year, with his dream shut fast,He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim,For the love that his brushes had earned at […]

As we the withered fernsBy the roadway lying,Time, the jester, spurnsAll our prayers and prying —All our tears and sighing,Sorrow, change, and woe —All our where-and-whyingFor friends that come and go. Life awakes and burns,Age and death defying,Till at last it learnsAll but Love is dying;Love’s the trade we’re plying,God has willed it so;Shrouds are […]

(To A. T. Schumann.) In dreams I crossed a barren land,A land of ruin, far away;Around me hung on every handA deathful stillness of decay;And silent, as in bleak dismayThat song should thus forsaken be,On that forgotten ground there layThe broken flutes of Arcady. The forest that was all so grandWhen pipes and tabors had […]

Slowly I smoke and hug my knee,The while a witless masqueradeOf things that only children seeFloats in a mist of light and shade:They pass, a flimsy cavalcade,And with a weak, remindful glow,The falling embers break and fade,As one by one the phantoms go. Then, with a melancholy gleeTo think where once my fancy strayed,I muse […]

Down by the flash of the restless waterThe dim White Ship like a white bird lay;Laughing at life and the world they sought her,And out she swung to the silvering bay.Then off they flew on their roystering way,And the keen moon fired the light foam flyingUp from the flood where the faint stars play,And the […]

Some are the brothers of all humankind,And own them, whatsoever their estate;And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blindWith enmity for man’s unguarded fate. For some there is a music all day longLike flutes in Paradise, they are so glad;And there is hell’s eternal under-songOf curses and the cries of men gone mad. Some say […]

Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,Stung by the mob that came to see the show,The Master toiled along to Calvary;We gibed him, as he went, with houndish glee,Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow;We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly, —And this was nineteen […]

I Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelmsAll outward recognition of revealedAnd righteous omnipresence are the daysOf most of us affrighted and diseased,But rather by the common snarls of lifeThat come to test us and to strengthen usIn this the prentice-age of discontent,Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame. II When through hot fog the fulgid sun […]

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich, — […]

They are all gone away,The House is shut and still,There is nothing more to say. Through broken walls and grayThe winds blow bleak and shrill:They are all gone away. Nor is there one to-dayTo speak them good or ill:There is nothing more to say. Why is it then we strayAround that sunken sill?They are all […]

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal, —There where the vines cling crimson on the wall, —And in the twilight wait for what will come.The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some —Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall;But go, and if you trust her she will call.Go to the western gate, […]

“Where are you going to-night, to-night, —Where are you going, John Evereldown?There’s never the sign of a star in sight,Nor a lamp that’s nearer than Tilbury Town.Why do you stare as a dead man might?Where are you pointing away from the light?And where are you going to-night, to-night, —Where are you going, John Evereldown?” “Right […]

Since Persia fell at Marathon,The yellow years have gathered fast:Long centuries have come and gone. And yet (they say) the place will donA phantom fury of the past,Since Persia fell at Marathon; And as of old, when HeliconTrembled and swayed with rapture vast(Long centuries have come and gone), This ancient plain, when night comes on,Shakes […]

Vengeful across the cold November moors,Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleakSad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,Reverberant through lonely corridors.The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,Words out of lips that were no more to speak —Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheekLike dead, remembered footsteps on […]

Because he puts the compromising chartOf hell before your eyes, you are afraid;Because he counts the price that you have paidFor innocence, and counts it from the start,You loathe him. But he sees the human heartOf God meanwhile, and in God’s hand has weighedYour squeamish and emasculate crusadeAgainst the grim dominion of his art. Never […]

Ah, — shuddering men that falter and shrink soTo look on death, — what were the days we live,Where life is half a struggle to forgive,But for the love that finds us when we go?Is God a jester? Does he laugh and throwPoor branded wretches here to sweat and striveFor some vague end that never […]

Once, when I wandered in the woods alone,An old man tottered up to me and said,“Come, friend, and see the grave that I have madeFor Amaryllis.” There was in the toneOf his complaint such quaver and such moanThat I took pity on him and obeyed,And long stood looking where his hands had laidAn ancient woman, […]