[1] “Hey, rose, just bornTwin to a thorn;Was’t so with you, O Love and Scorn? “Sweet eyes that smiled,Now wet and wild;O Eye and Tear — mother and child. “Well: Love and PainBe kinsfolk twain:Yet would, Oh would I could love again.” Note 1: ‘A Song of Love’, like ‘Betrayal’, belongs to the early plan […]

“I saw a sky of stars that rolled in grime.All glory twinkled through some sweat of fight,From each tall chimney of the roaring timeThat shot his fire far up the sooty nightMixt fuels — Labor’s Right and Labor’s Crime —Sent upward throb on throb of scarlet lightTill huge hot blushes in the heavens blentWith golden […]

“If life were caught by a clarionet,And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,And utter its heart in every deed, “Then would this breathing clarionetType what the poet fain would be;For none o’ the singers ever yetHas wholly lived his minstrelsy, “Or clearly sung his true, true thought,Or […]

“Spring-germs, spring-germs,I charge you by your life, go back to death.This glebe is sick, this wind is foul of breath.Stay: feed the worms. “Oh! every clodIs faint, and falters from the war of growthAnd crumbles in a dreary dust of sloth,Unploughed, untrod. “What need, what need,To hide with flowers the curse upon the hills,Or sanctify […]

“To heal his heart of long-time painOne day Prince Love for to travel was fainWith Ministers Mind and Sense.`Now what to thee most strange may be?’Quoth Mind and Sense. `All things above,One curious thing I first would see —Hell,’ quoth Love. “Then Mind rode in and Sense rode out:They searched the ways of man about.First […]

“Thou Ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard,And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold,I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and swordAt battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold! “The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the […]

“Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine.Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbearTo feature me my Lord by rule and line.Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature’s hair,Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp,Would’st count the strings upon an angel’s harp?Forbear, forbear. “Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deepThan there is […]

Oft seems the Time a market-townWhere many merchant-spirits meetWho up and down and up and downCry out along the street Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO:Till all the ways are full of sound:— But still come rain, and sun, and snow,And still the world goes round.

Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found,Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep,Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leapUpon my spirit’s stage. Then Sight and Sound,Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound,And all familiar Forms that firmly keepMan’s reason in the road, change faces, peepBetwixt the legs and mock the daily […]

Time, hurry my Love to me:Haste, haste! Lov’st not good company?Here’s but a heart-break sandy waste‘Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing hasteWere best, dear Time, for thee, for thee! Oh, would that I might divineThy name beyond the zodiac signWherefrom our times-to-come descend.He called thee `Sometime’. Change it, friend:`Now-time’ sounds so much more fine! Sweet […]

I. O Age that half believ’st thou half believ’st,Half doubt’st the substance of thine own half doubt,And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv’st,Stand’st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!Lo! while thy heart’s within, helping the choir,Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,Blinking at o’er-bright science, smit with desireTo see and not […]

Across the brook of Time man leaping goesOn stepping-stones of epochs, that upriseFixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flowsOf neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies.So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps:Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded paceFrom meal to meal: some with convulsive leapsShake the green tussocks of malign disgrace:And some advance by system and […]

I. The storm that snapped our fate’s one ship in twainHath blown my half o’ the wreck from thine apart.O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved mainTo thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.I ask my God if e’en in His sweet place,Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,My soul could straightway tremble […]

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I knowTwo springs that with unbroken flowForever pour their lucent streamsInto my soul’s far Lake of Dreams. Not larger than two eyes, they lieBeneath the many-changing skyAnd mirror all of life and time,— Serene and dainty pantomime. Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,And shadowed sweet […]

I. — Red. Would that my songs might beWhat roses make by day and night —Distillments of my clod of miseryInto delight. Soul, could’st thou bare thy breastAs yon red rose, and dare the day,All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?Say yea — say yea! Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye;The wind is up; […]

To-day the woods are trembling through and throughWith shimmering forms, that flash before my view,Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.The leaves that wave against my cheek caressLike women’s hands; the embracing boughs expressA subtlety of mighty tenderness;The copse-depths into little noises start,That sound anon like beatings of a heart,Anon like talk ‘twixt […]

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,Complain no more; for these, O heart,Direct the random of the willAs rhymes direct the rage of art. The lute’s fixt fret, that runs athwartThe strain and purpose of the string,For governance and nice consortDoth bar his wilful wavering. The dark hath many dear avails;The dark distils divinest […]

Sail fast, sail fast,Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;Sweep lordly o’er the drowned Past,Fly glittering through the sun’s strange beams;Sail fast, sail fast.Breaths of new buds from off some drying leaWith news about the Future scent the sea:My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:I’ll loose me a bird upon this Present […]

Once, at night, in the manor woodMy Love and I long silent stood,Amazed that any heavens couldDecree to part us, bitterly repining.My Love, in aimless love and grief,Reached forth and drew aside a leafThat just above us played the thiefAnd stole our starlight that for us was shining. A star that had remarked her painShone […]

Frowning, the owl in the oak complained himSore, that the song of the robin restrained himWrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.“From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover,Over and over and over and over,Five o’clock, ten o’clock, twelve, or seven,Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven:How can we sleep? […]