Now dabble the poppies shrink,

And the coxcomb and the pink;

While the candytuft's damp crown

Droops dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;

And long spikes o' the mignonette

Little musk-sacks open set,

Which the dripping o' dew drags down.

Stretched taunt on the blades of grass,

Like a gossamer-fibered glass,

Which the garden-spider spun,

The web, where the round rain clings

In its middle sagging, swings;—

A hammock for Elfin things

When the stars succeed the sun.

And mark, where the pale gourd grows

Up high as the clambering rose,

How that tiger-moth is pressed

To the wide leaf's underside.—

And I know where the red wasps hide,

And the wild bees,—who defied

The first strong gusts,—distressed.

Yet I feel that the gray will blow

Aside for an afterglow;

And a breeze on a sudden toss

Drenched boughs to a pattering show'r

Athwart the red dusk in a glow'r,

Big drops heard hard on each flow'r

On the grass and the flowering moss.

And then for a minute, may be,—

A pearl—hollow worn—of the sea,—

A glimmer of moon will smile;

Cool stars rinsed clean on the dusk,

A freshness of gathering musk

O'er the showery lawns, as brusk

As spice from an Indian isle.

LA Gitanilla! tall dragoons

In Andalusian afternoons,

With ogling eye and compliment

Smiled on you, as along you went

Some sleepy street of old Seville;

Twirled with a military skill

Moustaches; buttoned uniforms

Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms.

Proud, wicked head and hair blue-black!

Whence your mantilla, half thrown back,

Discovered shoulders and bold breast

Bohemian brown: and you were dressed—

In some short skirt of gipsy red

Of smuggled stuff; thence stockings dead

White silk exposed with many a hole

Thro' which your plump legs roguish stole

A fleshly look; and tiny toes

In red morocco shoes with bows

Of scarlet ribbons. Daintily

You walked by me and I did see

Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip,

That gnawed the rose you once did flip

At bashful Jose's nose while loud

Laughed the guant guards among the crowd.

And, in your brazen chemise thrust,

Heaved with the swelling of your bust,

That bunch of white acacia blooms

Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes.

As in a cool neveria

I ate an ice with Mérimée,

Dark Carmencita, you passed gay,

All holiday bedizenéd,

A new mantilla on your head;

A crimson dress bespangled fierce;

And crescent gold, hung in your ears,

Shone wrought Morisco; and each shoe

Cordovan leather, spangled blue,

Glanced merriment; and from large arms

To well-turned ancles all your charms

Blew flutterings and glitterings

Of satin bands and beaded strings;

And 'round each arm's fair thigh one fold,

And graceful wrists, a twisted gold

Coiled serpents, tails fixed in the head,

Convulsive-jeweled glossy red.

In flowers and trimmings to the jar

Of mandolin and low guitar

You in the grated patio

Danced; the curled coxcombs' flirting row

Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance,

With wily motion and glad glance

Voluptuous, the wild romalis,

Where every movement was a kiss

Of elegance delicious, wound

In your Basque tambourine's dull sound.

Or as the ebon castanets

Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,

Saw angry Jose thro' the grate

Glare on us a pale face of hate,

When some indecent colonel there

Presumed too lewdly for his ear.

Some still night in Seville; the street,

Candilejo; two shadows meet—

Flash sabres; crossed within the moon,—

Clash rapidly—a dead dragoon.

HUSH! She is dead! Tread gently as the light

Foots dim the weary room. Thou shalt behold.

Look:—In death's ermine pomp of awful white,

Pale passion of pulseless slumber virgin cold:

Bold, beautiful youth proud as heroic Might—

Death! and how death hath made it vastly old.

Old earth she is now: energy of birth

Glad wings hath fledged and tried them suddenly;

The eyes that held have freed their narrow mirth;

Their sparks of spirit, which made this to be,

Shine fixed in rarer jewels not of earth,

Far Fairylands beyond some silent sea.

A sod is this whence what were once those eyes

Will grow blue wild-flowers in what happy air;

Some weed with flossy blossoms will surprise,

Haply, what summer with her affluent hair;

Blush roses bask those cheeks; and the wise skies

Will know her dryad to what young oak fair.

The chastity of death hath touched her so,

No dreams of life can reach her in such rest;—

No dreams the mind exhausted here below,

Sleep built within the romance of her breast.

How she will sleep! like musick quickening slow

Dark the dead germs, to golden life caressed.

Low musick, thin as winds that lyre the grass,

Smiting thro' red roots harpings; and the sound

Of elfin revels when the wild dews glass

Globes of concentric beauty on the ground;

For showery clouds o'er tepid nights that pass

The prayer in harebells and faint foxgloves crowned.

So, if she's dead, thou know'st she is not dead.

Disturb her not; she lies so lost in sleep:

The too-contracted soul its shell hath fled:

Her presence drifts about us and the deep

Is yet unvoyaged and she smiles o'erhead:—

Weep not nor sigh—thou wouldst not have her weep?

To principles of passion and of pride,

To trophied circumstance and specious law,

Stale saws of life, with scorn now flung aside,

From Mercy's throne and Justice would'st thou draw

Her, Hope in Hope, and Chastity's pale bride,

In holiest love of holy, without flaw?

The anguish of the living merciless,—

Mad, bitter cruelty unto the grave,—

Wrings the dear dead with tenfold heart's distress,

Earth chaining love, bound by the lips that rave.

If thou hast sorrow let thy sorrow bless

That power of death, of death our selfless slave.

"Unjust?"—He is not! for hast thou not all,

All that thou ever hadst when this dull clay

So heartless, blasted now, flushed spiritual,

A restless vassal of Earth's night and day?

This hath been thine and is; the cosmic call

Hath disenchanted that which might not stay.

Thou unjust!—bar not from its high estate,—

Won with what toil thro' devastating cares:

What bootless battling with the violent Fate;

What mailed endeavor with resistless years;—

That soul:—whole-hearted granted once thy mate,

Heaven only loaned, return it not with tears!

CAST on sleep there came to me

Three Urgandas; and the sea

In lost lands of Briogne

Sounded moaning, moaning:

Cloudy clad in awful white;

And each face a lucid light

Rayed and blossomed out of night,—

And a wind was groaning.

In my sleep I saw them rest,

Each a long hand at her breast,

A soft flame that lulls the West;—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

Hair like hoarded ingots rolled

Down white shoulders glossy gold,

Streaks of molten moonlight cold,—

And a wind was groaning.

Rosy 'round each high brow bent

Four-fold starry gold that sent

Barbs of fire redolent;—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

'Neath their burning crowns their eyes

Burned like southern stars the skies

Rock in shattered storm that flies,—

And a wind was groaning.

Wisdom's eyes of lurid dark;

And each red mouth like a spark

Flashed and laughed off care and cark,—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

Mouths for song and lips to kiss;

Lips for hate and mouths to hiss;

Lips that fashioned hell or bliss,—

And the wind was groaning.

Tall as stately virgins dead,

Tapers lit at feet and head,

'Round whom Latin prayers are said,—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

Or as vampire women, who,

Buried beauties, rise and woo

Youths whose blood they suck like dew,—

And a wind was groaning.

Then the west one said to me:

"Thou hast slept thus holily

While seven sands ran secretly."—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

"Earth hath served thee like a slave,

Serving us who found thee brave,

Fearless of or life or grave."—

And a wind was groaning.

"Know!"—she smote my brow; a pain,

Riddling arrows, rent my brain,

Ceased and earth fell, some vast strain;—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

Then I understood all thought;

What was life the spirit fraught;

Love and hate; how worlds were wrought:—

And a wind was groaning.

Then the east one said to me:

"Thou hast wandered wearily

By what mist-enveloped sea!"—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

"Know the things thou hast not seen;

Life and law, and love and teen;

Things that be and have not been."—

And the wind was groaning.

"See!" her voice sung like a lyre

Throbs of thunderous desire;

Then the iron sight like fire—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

Burst; the inner eyelids, which

Husked clairvoyance, with a twitch

Rose—and I with light was rich;—

And a wind was groaning.

Then I saw the eyes of Sleep;

Nerves of Life and veins that leap;

Laws of entity; the deep:—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

Orbs and eons; springs of Power;

Circumstance—blown like a flower;—

Time—the second of an hour:—

And the wind was groaning.

To the central third one's full

Balanced being beautiful

Heart, to hearken, made a lull,—

And the sea was moaning, moaning;—

As she sternly stooped to me:

"Thou dost know and thou canst see;

What thou art arise and be!"—

And the wind was groaning.

To my mouth hot lips she pressed;

And my famished soul, thrice blessed,

Quaffed her radiance and caressed:—

And vague seas were moaning, moaning:—

Mounted; star-vibrating fled;

Soared to love, with her who said:

"Thou dost live and thou art dead."—

Far off winds were groaning.

ERE wild haws, looming in the glooms,

Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;

And in the whistling hollow there

The red-bud bends as brown and bare

As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm;

From some slick hickory or larch,

Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March,

The sad heart thrills and reddens warm

To hear thee braving the rough storm,

Frail courier of green-gathering powers,—

Rebelling sap in trunks and flowers;

Love's minister come heralding;

O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers!—

Thou brown-red pursuivant of Spring!

"Moan" sob the woodland cascades still

Down bloomless ledges of the hill;

And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang

In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang

Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:

Black scowl the forests, and unkind

The far fields as the near; while song

Seems murdered and all passion, wrong.

One wild frog only in the thaw

Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw,

Expires a melancholy bass

And stops as if bewildered; then

Along the frowning wood again,

Flung in the thin wind's fangy face,

Thou, in red, woolly tassels proud

Of bannered maples, flutest loud:

"Her Grace! her Grace! her Grace!"

"Her Grace! her Grace! her Grace!"

Climbs beautiful and sunny-browed

Up, up the kindling hills and wakes

Blue berries in the berry brakes;

With fragrant flakes, that blow and bleach,

Deep powders smothered quince and peach;

Eyes dogwoods with a thousand eyes;

Teaches each sod how to be wise

With twenty wild-flowers for one weed;

And kisses germs that they may seed.

In purest purple and sweet white

Treads up the happier hills of light;

Bloom, cloudy-borne, song in her hair,

Long dew-drops her pale fingers fair:

Big wind-retainers, and the rains

Her yeomen strong that flash the plains;

While scarlet mists at dawn,—and gold

At eve,—her panoply enfold.—

Her herald tabarded behold!—

Awake to greet! prepare to sing!

She comes, the darling Duchess, Spring!"

SLEEP while I sing to thee, Dulcinea,—

How like a shower of moonlight-crusted beams

Of textile form compact, whose veins run stars,—

Discovered goddess of what naked loves!—

Maiden of dreams and aromatic sleep,

Thou liest. Thy long instrument against

Thy god-voluptuous sensuousness of hip

Pure iridescent pearl of ocean slopes:

Tempestuous silent color-melodies

Pulse glimmering from it beaten by the moon,—

Soft songs the white hands of white shadows touch.—

Magnetic star set slumberous over night,

Watch with me this superior star of Earth

Good Heaven was kind to grant me: Trembler,

Like some soft bird, dream, while I sing to thee—

Dream, languid ardor, my Dulcinea, dream.

FLOATS a wild chant of morning from the hills;

Bursts a broad song of sunlight on the sea;

High Heaven throbs strung with rays of chords and thrills,

Life's resonant pæans to Earth's minstrelsy.

Bind thou swift sandals on of youth,

My love, and harp to me of truth

In lands of joy or ruth.

Now sheer o'er solitudes of noon the strife

Of chariot fierce by chariot scintillant

Flames, and the blade-bare charioteers for life,

O'er-bent, close-curled, goad their hot yokes that pant.

Haste not, my love, but from the beam

Beside this olive-frosty stream

Sing while I rest and dream.

What swart Penthesilea, Amazon,

Hath, smitten, hurled her shield, that crescent there;

To wrench the barbéd arrow leaned,—voiced one

Defiant shout, breathed her red life in air.—

Tho' life be close to sunset, lo,

Into the sunset let us go

Still lyring joy not woe.

How swims the Night thro' the deep-oceaned sky!

How at pale lips blown stars like bubbles break,

Burn, streamed from showery locks she tosses high!—

A stronger swimmer, Death, glares in her wake.—

Cast, love, ah cast thy harp away!

Aweary am I of thy lay—

Kneel down by me and pray.

WHEN love delays, when love delays and Joy

Steals a strange shadow o'er the happy hills,

And Hope smiles from To-morrow, nor fulfills

One promise of To-day, thy sight would cloy

This soul with loved despair

By seeing thee so fair.

When love delays, when love delays and song

Aches at wild lips regretful, as the sound

Of a whole sea strives in the shell-mouth bound,

Tho' Hope smiles still to-morrowed, all this wrong

Would, at one little word,

Leap forth for thee a sword.

When love delays, when love delays and sleep

Nests in dark eyeballs, like a song of home

Heard 'mid familiar flowers o'er the foam,

Tho' Hope smiles still to-morrowed, thou wouldst steep

This hurt heart overmuch

In balm with one true touch.

When love delays, when love delays and Sorrow

Drinks her own tears that fever her soul's thirst,

And song, and sleep, and memory seem accurst,

For Hope smiles still to-morrowed, I would borrow

One smile from thee to cheer

The weary, weary year.

When love delays, when love delays and Death

Hath sealed dim lips and mocked young eyes with night,

To love or hate locked calm, indifferent quite,—

Hope's star-eyed acolyte,—what kisses' breath,

What joys can slay regret

Or teach thee to forget!

THOU hast not loved her, hast not as thou shouldst,

O narrow heart, that could not grasp so wide!

And tho' thy oaths seemed oaths yet they have lied,

And thy caresses, kisses were—denied—

Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou couldst.

Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou shouldst;

O shallow eyes, that could not image deep!—

Enough! what boots it tho' ye weep and weep?

Her sleep is deep, too deep! so let her sleep—

Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou couldst.

Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou shouldst;

For hadst thou, that confluent night and day

Had in oblivion currents borne away

Not one alone—but coward! thou didst stay—

Thou hast not loved her, hast not as thou couldst!

OH Life, thou hast no power left to strive,

Life, who, upon wild mountains of Surprise,

Behold'st Love's citadelled, tall towers rise,—

Shafts of clear, Paphian waters poured that live.

O Hope, who sought'st fulfillment of deep dreams

Beyond those Caucasus of Faith and Truth,—

Twixt silver realms of eld and golden youth

Rolled,—cloudward clustered; whose sonorous streams,

Urned in the palms of Death, gush to his feet:

Unlovely beauty of sad, stirless sight

Mixed in them with eternity of night;—

O Hope, how sad the journey once so sweet!

Dreams crowned with thorns have passed thee on the way;

And Beauties with bare limbs red-bruised and torn;

Tall, holy Hours their eyes dull, wan and worn,

Slaves manacled whom lashed the brutal Day.

And Sorrow sat beside a sea so wide,

That shoreless Heaven unto one little star

Upon the brink of night seems not so far,

And on her feet the frail foams tossing sighed.

She, her rent hair, dressed like a siren's, full

Of weedy waifs and strays of moaning shells,

Streaked with the glimmering sands and foamy bells,

Loomed a pale utterance most beautiful.

"And thou shall love me, Sorrow!" I; but she

Turned her vast eyes upon me and no more;

Their melancholy language clove the core

Of my fast heart; and in mine ears the sea

Along gaunt crags yearned iron-husky grief;

Groaned the hard headlands with the wings of Storm,

Huge thunder shook the foot-hills and Alarm

Gnashed her thin fangs from hissing reef to reef.

So to the hills aweary I did turn.—

Beyond, a reach of sunlight and slim flowers;

Where Hope, an amaranth, and tearless Hours,

Long lilies, lived, whose hearts stiff gold did burn.

And there curled Joy clinked their chaste chalices;

Distilled at dusk, poured bubbling dewy wine,

Divine elixir! off his lips divine

Tossed the fleet rapture to the golden lees,

And so lolled dazed with pleasure. And I said,

"Yield me the lily thou hast drained that I

This hollow thirst may kill and so not die?"

To me he laughed, "I yield it!"—but 'twas dead.

And each blown reach and eminence of blooms

Flushed long, low, gurgling murmurs like a sea,

And laughed bright lips that flashed white teeth of glee

In pearly flower on flower; pure perfumes

Gasped the rolled fields; and o'er the eminence

I journeyed joyless thro' a blossom-fire

That, budding kisses curled with blown desire,

Clasped me and claimed me tho' I spurned it hence.

Then came unto a land of thorns and weeds,

And dust and thirst o'er which a songless sky,

Hoarse with lean vultures, scowled a scoffing lie,

Where cold snakes hissed among dead, rattling reeds.

And there I saw the bony brow of Hate;

Vile, vicious sneers, the eyes of shriveled Scorn

Among the writhing briers; each a thorn

Of cavernous hunger barbed with burning fate.

They, thro' her face-drawn locks of raveled dark,

Stung a stark horror; and I felt my heart

Freeze, wedged with ice, to dullness part by part,

And knew Hate coiled toward me yet stood stark—

Fell; seeing on the happy, happy hills,

Above that den of dust and thorny thirst,

The bastioned walls of Love in glory burst,

Built by sweet glades of Poesy and rills.

O Life, I had not life enough to strive!

O Hope, I had not hope enough to dream!

Death drew me to him and to sigh did seem,

"Love? Love?—thou canst not reach her and yet live!

"For sorrow, joy, and hate, and scorn are bound

About thee, girdling so, thy lips are dumb;

And Fame, ah Fame! her towers are but a tomb—

Star-set on dwindling heights of starry ground.

"And thou art done and being done must die,

Endeavor being dead and energy

Slain, a wild bird that beat bars to be free,

Despairing perished, finding life a lie."

IF thou wouldst know the Beautiful that breathes

Consanguined with young Earth, go seek!—but seek

No sighing Shadows with dead hemlock-wreaths,

No sleepy Sorrows whose wan eyes are weak

With vanished vigils, Melancholy made,

Forlorn, in lands of sin and saddening shade;

No tearful Angers torn of truthless Love,

Who stab their own hearts to dull daggers' hilts

For vengeance sweet; no miser Moods that fade

In owlet towers. Such it springs above,

And buds on morning meads no flower that wilts.

If thou dost seek the Beautiful, beware!

Lest thou discover her, nor know 'tis she;

And she enslave thee evermore, and there

Reward thee with but kingliest beggary:

Make thine the robust red her cheek that stings;

The kiss-sweet odor, thine, her wild breath brings;

Make thine the broad bloom of her crownéd brow;

The hearts of light that ardor her proud eyes;

That melody,—which is herself,—that sings

The poem of her presence and the vow,

That stars exalts and mortals deifies.

Lone art thou then, lone as the lone first star

Kindling pale beauty o'er the mournful wave;

Lost to all happiness save searching far

Thro' lands of Life where Death hath delved no grave:

Lost,—even as I,—a devotee to her,

Poor in world-blessedness her bliss to share,

But rich in passion.—For her hermitage

Hope no Hydaspes' splendor, for it lies

Mossy by woody waters hidden, where

She, priestess pure, wise o'er all Wisdom sage,

Shrines artists' hearts for godliest sacrifice.

THEN up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced a crescent,—

Up and far up and over,—a warm erubescence liquescent

Rioted roses and rubies; eruptions of opaline gems,

Flung and wide sown, blushed crushed, and crumbled from diadems

Wealth of the kings of the Sylphs; whence, old alchemist, Earth—

Dewed down—by chemistry occult fashions petrified waters of worth.—

Then out of the stain and rash furor, the passionate pulver of stone,

The trembling suffusion that dazzled and awfully shone,

Chamelion-convulsion of color, hilarious ranges of glare—

Like a god who for vengeance ires, nodding battle from every hair,

Fares forth with majesty girdled and clangs with hot heroes for life,

Till the brazen gates boom bursten hells and the walls roar bristling strife,—

Athwart with a stab of glittering fire, in-plunged like a knife,

Cut billowing gold, in bullion rolled, and an army driven,

Routed, the stars fled shriveled; and the white moon riven,

Puffed,—like a foam-feather forth of a Triton's conch when sounded,—

Clung, vague as a web, on heaven; then weak as a face that is wounded

Died on the withering clouds and sorrowed with them and mingled.

While up and up with a steadiness and triumph of sparkle that tingled,

Wrestled the tempest of Dawn, that hurricaned heaven with spangle,

And halcyon bloom like mercy,—a shatter, a scatter, a tangle

Of labyrinthed glory.—O God! with manifold mirth

The hallelujah of Heaven, hosanna of Earth.

And I in my vision imprisoned was restless and wan

With a yearning for vigor to gird and be gone

Out of false dreams to the true—realities noble of dawn.

VANISHING visions, whose lineaments steal into slumbers,

Loosened the lids of the sight the night that encumbers;

Secretly, sweetly with fingers of fog that were slow,

Slow as a song that mysterious

Passions the soul, till delirious,

Wrapped in mad melody mastering the uttermost woe,

Deep to the innermost deep it is shaken

Ruffled and rippled and tossed,

Tantalized, terrorized, cursed with a thirst that, unslaken,

Debauches with eyes that burn stolid, yet only shall waken

With infinite scorn of the cost

If no note of the rhapsody's lost.

Oh, for the music of moonbeams that master and sweep

Chords of the resonant deep!

Smiting loud lyres of Night, sonorous as fire,

Leap fluttering fingers of vanquishing flash and of flake

Fain at each firmament-universe-instrument star-strung.

Vibrating-vestured in garments of woven desire,

Stoop to me, breathe on me, smile on me, waver, "Awake!

From waking to sleeping, to silence from manifold clamor,

To revelous regions of multiform glamour!"

Murmur and whisper "Awake!"

Oh, necromance banquets by fountains of fairy, the spar-sprung!

Oh, sorcerous beauties and wonders of wizards! oh take

The millions of morning-spun gleams,

All glitters of galloping streams,

The glimmer the gasp the clutch and the grasp,

That colorless crystals and virtuous jewels

As spasmodic fuels

Cuddle and huddle and clasp:

The wrinkle and crinkle of scintillant heat in white metals;

The quiver of terrible gold and the pearly

Lithe brilliance of soft, holy petals,

Of slender, sad blossoms, tumultuous tossed crispy and curly

In shadowy reaches of violet dark;

The burn of the stars and the spark

Fragile of foams that are fluted, to make

One cordial of dreams

To drink and to sink

Deep, deep into dreams nor awake.

AS to a Nymph in the ripple-ribbed body of ocean,

Down, down thro' vast stories of water, a hiss and devour

Electrify altitudes orbed,—pulses violent motion

Of Thunder, who treads the brute neck of the seas in his power,

Till their spine writhes lumped into waves,—the Nymph in her bower,

Rubbing moist sleep from her eyes, arises,—

Loosens the loops of her locks,

Loosens, and suddenly darts on the storm and surprises

The boisterous bands of the rocks,

That hoot to the riddling arrows of rain and of seas,

Mountainous these;—

Swirling and whirling,

She of the huge exultation beheld, with long tresses,

Dotted with bells of the hollow, hard foam, flung streaming,

Dives, bounds to the whirlwind embracing; then mockingly presses

Hair to wild face and wild throat, drifts desolate dreaming;

With scorn then laughing and screaming,

Discovers full beauty of nakedness leaping and gleaming;

And showering the rain from her hair,

Pouts blown, curdled foam from her lips,

And eddying slips,

From the ravenous eyes of the Thunder that glare,

Away, away,

To the arms of her lover the Spray.

So I,—

At swift thoughts that were spoken, that came

As if winds had fashioned a speech—was a flame

That dwindled, was kindled, then mounted and,

Marvelling why,—

Stemming all thought, a gleam out of gleams

Was born into dreams.

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night! with thy moon,

Move in majesty slowly to majesty lightly!

Silent as sleep, who is lulled by a delicate tune,

O'er-stroke thou the air with a languor of moonlight brightly!

Thin ice, in sockets of turquoise fastened, the stars

Gash golden the bosom of heaven with fiery scars.

Swoon down, O shadowy hosts,

O multitude ghosts,

Of the moonlight and starlight begotten!—Then swept

Whispers that sighed to me, sorrows that stealthily hovered,

Laughters with lips that were mist. And murmurings crept

On toward me feet that were glow; and faces uncovered,

Radiant and crystalline clear,

In tortuous, sinuous swirl of vapory pearl,

Waned near and more near.

Flashed faster a spiral of shapes and of shadows still faster,

On in a whirl of unutterable beauties by music expired,

That lived and desired,—

Born births of the brain of a rhapsody-reveling master;

And mine eyes, with their beauties infired,

Smiled scorn on dark Death and Disaster.

AH! now the orchard's leaves are sear,

Drip not with starlight-litten dew;

Green-drowned no moon-bright fruit hangs here;

Dead, dead your long, white lilies too—

And you, Allita, where are you!"

Then comes her dim touch, faintly warm;

Cool hair sense on my feverish cheek;

Dim eyes at mine deep with some charm,—

So gray! so gray! and I am weak

Weak with wild tears and can not speak.

I am as one who walks with dreams:

Sees as in youth his father's home;

Hears from his native mountain-streams

Far music of continual foam.

I  wot well o' his going

To think in flowers fair;—

His a right kind heart, my dear,

To give the grass such hair.

I wot well o' his lying

Such nights out in the cold,—

To list the cricket's crick, my sweet,

To see the glow-worm's gold.

An mine eyes be laughterful,

Well may they laugh, I trow,—

Since two dead eyes a yesternight

Gazed in them sad enow.

An my heart make moan and ache,

Well may it dree, I'm sure;—

He is dead and gone, my love,

And it is beggar poor.

IN samite sark yclad was she;

And that fair glimmerish band of gold

Which crowned long, savage locks of hair

In the moon brent cold.

She with big eyeballs gloomed and glowered,

And lightly hummed some Elfin's song,

And one could naught save on her stare

And fare along.

Yea; sad and lute-like was that song

And softly said its mystery;

Which quaintly sang in elden verse

"Thy love I'll be."

And oft it said: "I love thee true,

Sir Ewain, champion of the fair."

And never wist he what a witch

Was that one there.

And never wist he that a witch

Had bound him with her wily hair,

Eke with dark art had ta'en his heart

To slay him there.

And all his soul did wax amort

To stars, to hills, to slades, to streams,

And it but held that sorceress fair

As one of dreams.

And now he kens some castle gray

Wild turrets ivied, in the moon,

Old, where through woodlands foaming on

A torrent shone....

In its high hall full twenty knights

With visors barred all sternly stand;

The following of some gracious brave,

Lord of the land.

And lo! when that dim damosel

Moved down the hall, they louted low;

And she was queen of all that band,

That dame of snow.

Now on that knight she stared eftsoons,

And cried on high unto her crew,

"Behold! Sir Knights, the dastard brave

Your king that slew."

And all those heathen knights wox wild

Attonce; and all against him drave;

Long battle blades and daggers bright

Aloft did wave.

The press on him puissant bare

And smote him to the rush-strown earth;—

Tall, tall o'er all that Fairy rose

Aloud with mirth.

WHAT deity for dozing laziness

Devised the lounging coziness of this

Enchanted nook?—and how!—did I distress

His musing ease that fled but now, or his

Laughed frolic with some forest-sister, fair

As those wild hill-carnations are and rare?

Too true, alas!—Feel! the wild moss is warm

And moist with late reclining, as the palm

Of what hot Hamadryad, who, a-nap,

Props her hale cheek upon it, while her arm

Weak wind-flowers bury; in her hair the balm

Of a whole Spring of blossoms and of sap?

See, how the dented moss, that pads the hump

Of these distorted roots, elastic springs

From that god's late departure; lump by lump,

Pale tufts impressed twitch loose in nervous rings,

As crowding stars qualm thro' gray evening skies.

Indulgence grant thou my profane surprise,

Pray!—then to dream where thou didst dream before,

Benevolent! ... here where the veiny leaves

Bask broad the fuzzy bosoms of their hands

O'er wistful waters: 'neath this sycamore,

Smooth, giraffe-brindled, where each ripple weaves

A twinkling quiver as of marching bands

Of Elfin chivalry, that, helmed with gold,

Split spilled the scaley sunbeams wrinkled off.

What brought thee here?—This wind that steals the old

Weird legends from the forests, with a scoff

To laugh them thro' their beards? Or, in those weeds,

The hermit brook so busy with his beads?—

How many Aves, Paters doth he say

In one droned minute on his rosary

Of bubbles—wot'st thou?—Pucker-eyed didst mark

Yon lank hag-tapers, yellow by yon way,

A haggard company of seven?—See

How dry swim by such curled brown bits of bark?