The ghost of Ninon would be sorry nowTo laugh at them, were she to see them here,So brave and so alert for learning howTo fence with reason for another year. Age offers a far comelier diademThan theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace,When time’s malicious mercy cautions themTo think a while of number and […]

By what serene malevolence of namesHad you the gift of yours, Theophilus?Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his gamesWould have you long,–and you are one of us. Told of your deeds I shudder for your dreams,And they, no doubt, are few and innocent.Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it seems,Heredity outshines environment. What lingering […]

When he, who is the unforgiven,Beheld her first, he found her fair:No promise ever dreamt in heavenCould then have lured him anywhereThat would have been away from there;And all his wits had lightly striven,Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair. There’s nothing in the saints and sagesTo meet the shafts her glances had,Or such […]

Could he have made Priscilla shareThe paradise that he had planned,Llewellyn would have loved his wifeAs well as any in the land. Could he have made Priscilla ceaseTo goad him for what God left out,Llewellyn would have been as mildAs any we have read about. Could all have been as all was not,Llewellyn would have […]

(Washington Square) I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,”Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.” He led me down familiar steps again,Appealingly, and set me in a chair.“My dreams have all come true to other men,”Said he; “God […]

“When he was here alive, Eileen,There was a word you might have said;So never mind what I have been,Or anything,–for you are dead. “And after this when I am thereWhere he is, you’ll be dying still.Your eyes are dead, and your black hair,–The rest of you be what it will. “‘Twas all to save him? […]

Faint white pillars that seem to fadeAs you look from here are the first one seesOf his house where it hides and dies in a shadeOf beeches and oaks and hickory trees.Now many a man, given woods like these,And a house like that, and the Briony gold,Would have said, “There are still some gods to […]

Or the Contented Metaphysician To the lore of no manner of menWould his vision have yieldedWhen he found what will never againFrom his vision be shielded,–Though he paid with as much of his lifeAs a nun could have given,And to-night would have been as a knife,Devil-drawn, devil-driven. For to-night, with his flame-weary eyesOn the work […]

No longer torn by what she knowsAnd sees within the eyes of others,Her doubts are when the daylight goes,Her fears are for the few she bothers.She tells them it is wholly wrongOf her to stay alive so long;And when she smiles her forehead showsA crinkle that had been her mother’s. Beneath her beauty, blanched with […]

Where a faint light shines alone,Dwells a Demon I have known.Most of you had better say“The Dark House”, and go your way.Do not wonder if I stay. For I know the Demon’s eyes,And their lure that never dies.Banish all your fond alarms,For I know the foiling charmsOf her eyes and of her arms, And I […]

She’d look upon us, if she could,As hard as Rhadamanthus would;Yet one may see,–who sees her face,Her crown of silver and of lace,Her mystical serene addressOf age alloyed with loveliness,–That she would not annihilateThe frailest of things animate. She has opinions of our ways,And if we’re not all mad, she says,–If our ways are not […]

Dark hills at evening in the west,Where sunset hovers like a soundOf golden horns that sang to restOld bones of warriors under ground,Far now from all the bannered waysWhere flash the legions of the sun,You fade — as if the last of daysWere fading, and all wars were done.

As often as we thought of her,We thought of a gray lifeThat made a quaint economistOf a wolf-haunted wife;We made the best of all she boreThat was not ours to bear,And honored her for wearing thingsThat were not things to wear. There was a distance in her lookThat made us look again;And if she smiled, […]

Between me and the sunset, like a domeAgainst the glory of a world on fire,Now burned a sudden hill,Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,With nothing on it for the flame to killSave one who moved and was alone up thereTo loom before the chaos and the glareAs if he were the last […]

Well, Bokardo, here we are;Make yourself at home.Look around–you haven’t farTo look–and why be dumb?Not the place that used to be,Not so many things to see;But there’s room for you and me.And you–you’ve come. Talk a little; or, if not,Show me with a signWhy it was that you forgotWhat was yours and mine.Friends, I gather, […]

Time was when his half million drewThe breath of six per cent;But soon the worm of what-was-notFed hard on his content;And something crumbled in his brainWhen his half million went. Time passed, and filled along with hisThe place of many more;Time came, and hardly one of usHad credence to restore,From what appeared one day, the […]

(Philadelphia, 1794) Note. — The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr — who […]

Observant of the way she toldSo much of what was true,No vanity could long withholdRegard that was her due:She spared him the familiar guile,So easily achieved,That only made a man to smileAnd left him undeceived. Aware that all imaginingOf more than what she meantWould urge an end of everything,He stayed; and when he went,They parted […]

Unyielding in the pride of his defiance,Afloat with none to serve or to command,Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,He seeks the Vanished Land. Alone, by the one light of his one thought,He steers to find the shore from which we came, —Fearless of in what coil he may be caughtOn seas that […]

So little have you seen of what awaitsYour fevered glimpse of a democracyConfused and foiled with an equalityNot equal to the envy it creates,That you see not how near you are the gatesOf an old king who listens fearfullyTo you that are outside and are to beThe noisy lords of imminent estates. Rather be then […]