Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand,He wakes lost echoes from song’s classic shore,And brings their crystal cadence back once moreTo touch the clouds and sorrows of a landWhere God’s truth, cramped and fettered with a bandOf iron creeds, he cheers with golden loreOf heroes and the men that long beforeWrought the romance of […]

No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,There was her place. No matter what men said,No matter what she was; living or dead,Faithful or not, he loved her all the same.The story was as old as human shame,But ever since that lonely night she fled,With books to blind him, he had only readThe story […]

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor sayThat I am wearing half my life awayFor bubble-work that only fools pursue.And if my bubbles be too small for you,Blow bigger then your own: the games we playTo fill the frittered minutes of a day,Good glasses are to read […]

I Just as I wonder at the twofold screenOf twisted innocence that you would plaitFor eyes that uncourageously awaitThe coming of a kingdom that has been,So do I wonder what God’s love can meanTo you that all so strangely estimateThe purpose and the consequent estateOf one short shuddering step to the Unseen. No, I have […]

Here there is death. But even here, they say, —Here where the dull sun shines this afternoonAs desolate as ever the dead moonDid glimmer on dead Sardis, — men were gay;And there were little children here to play,With small soft hands that once did keep in tuneThe strings that stretch from heaven, till too soonThe […]

A melancholy face Charles Carville had,But not so melancholy as it seemed, —When once you knew him, — for his mouth redeemedHis insufficient eyes, forever sad:In them there was no life-glimpse, good or bad, —Nor joy nor passion in them ever gleamed;His mouth was all of him that ever beamed,His eyes were sorry, but his […]

Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dineWith him one day; and after soup and meat,And all the other things there were to eat,Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wineAnd one with wormwood. Then, without a signFor me to choose at all, he took the draughtOf bitterness himself, and lightly quaffedIt off, and said […]

Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, —Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose.A miser was he, with a miser’s nose,And eyes like little dollars in the dark.His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark;And when he spoke there came like sullen blowsThrough scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,As if a cur […]

Because he was a butcher and therebyDid earn an honest living (and did right),I would not have you think that Reuben BrightWas any more a brute than you or I;For when they told him that his wife must die,He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,And cried like a great baby half that […]

I pray you not, Leuconoe, to poreWith unpermitted eyes on what may beAppointed by the gods for you and me,Nor on Chaldean figures any more.‘T were infinitely better to imploreThe present only: — whether Jove decreeMore winters yet to come, or whether heMake even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shoreShatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last […]

The man who cloaked his bitterness withinThis winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,God never gave to look with common eyesUpon a world of anguish and of sin:His brother was the branded man of Lynn;And there are woven with his jollitiesThe nameless and eternal tragediesThat render hope and hopelessness akin. We laugh, and crown him; but anon […]

With searching feet, through dark circuitous ways,I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near,Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear,Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, —When, like an exile given by God’s graceTo feel once more a human atmosphere,I caught the world’s first murmur, large and clear,Flung from a singing river’s endless race. […]

At first I thought there was a superfinePersuasion in his face; but the free glowThat filled it when he stopped and cried, “Hollo!”Shone joyously, and so I let it shine.He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine,But be that as it may; — I only knowHe talked of this and that and So-and-So,And laughed and chaffed […]

The master and the slave go hand in hand,Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave,And there be kings do sorrowfully craveThe joyance that a scullion may command.But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understandThe mission of his bondage, or the graveMay clasp his bones, or ever he shall saveThe perfect word that is the poet’s […]

I did not think that I should find them thereWhen I came back again; but there they stood,As in the days they dreamed of when young bloodWas in their cheeks and women called them fair.Be sure, they met me with an ancient air, —And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhoodAbout them; but the men were […]

If ever I am old, and all alone,I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;For then, thank God, I shall not have to waitMuch longer for the sheaves that I have sown.The devil only knows what I have done,But here I am, and here are six or eightGood friends, who most ingenuously prateAbout my […]

I cannot find my way: there is no starIn all the shrouded heavens anywhere;And there is not a whisper in the airOf any living voice but one so farThat I can hear it only as a barOf lost, imperial music, played when fairAnd angel fingers wove, and unaware,Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are. […]

Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will, —But his hard, human pulse is throbbing stillWith the sure strength that fearless truth endows.In spite of all fine science disavows,Of his plain excellence and stubborn skillThere yet remains what fashion cannot kill,Though years have thinned the laurel from his […]

Oh for a poet — for a beacon brightTo rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;To spirit back the Muses, long astray,And flush Parnassus with a newer light;To put these little sonnet-men to flightWho fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way,Songs without souls, that flicker for a day,To vanish in irrevocable night. What does it mean, […]

Whenever I go by there nowadaysAnd look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,The torn blue curtains and the broken glass,I seem to be afraid of the old place;And something stiffens up and down my face,For all the world as if I saw the ghostOf old Ham Amory, the murdered host,With his dead eyes […]