I wanted to be married
To a sprightly barber-lad,
But my parents wished to put me
In the convent dim and sad.

One afternoon of summer
They walked me out in state,
And as we turned a corner,
I saw the convent gate.

Out poured all the solemn nuns
In black from toe to chin,
Each with a lighted candle,
And made me enter in.

The file was like a funeral;
The door shut out the day;
They set me on a marble stool
And cut my hair away.

The pendants from my ears they took,
And the ring I loved to wear,

How quietly it feeds the eye
This soft autumnal day,
'Twixt yellowing woods and misted sky,
The Castle of Blonay!

Calm on the russet mountain-side
It holds seigniorial state.
The glittering lords who used to ride
Through its reverberant gate,

Now, their last battle lost or won,
Are dust upon the air;
Their ladies, bliss and anguish done,
The beauty and the prayer,

Have long been comforted of sleep;
The judgment-seal is set
On the black secrets of that deep,
Sinister oubliette.

From dim aerial depths, a silver light
Stole forth, and formed, and soared against the sky,
A domelike summit, gloriously bright,

The adoration of the gazing eye,
Mont Blanc. O beautiful beyond all dream,
That thou for our great longing shouldst put by

Thy curtains woven soft with mist, and gleam
In such a splendor! Queen of Air, are those
Lustres miraculously white, supreme

In sparkling radiance on the blue repose
Of heaven, thy diamond-crusted veils, thy frore,
Virginal vesture of eternal snows?

The rain that fell a yesterday is ruby on the roses,
Silver on the poplar-leaf and gold on willow-stem;
The grief that chanced a yesterday is silence that encloses
Holy loves where time and change shall never trouble them.

The rain that fell a yesterday makes all the hillside glisten,
Coral on the laurel and beryl on the grass;
The grief that chanced a yesterday has taught the soul to listen
For whispers of eternity in all the winds that pass.

O faint-of-heart, storm-beaten, this rain will gleam tomorrow

I deemed this ravening grief long since was slain,
But yestermorn, as I went forth to reap,
Soft in his covert stirred mine ancient pain
And rose upon me with a tiger-leap.

Arise, come forth into the night! Arise,
Belovèd, for her dusky lips will teach
A nobler tale than any mortal speech,
And the pure lights of her eternal eyes,
Beyond all anger, sorrow and surprise,
Look with the same large loveliness on each,
Not human-fashion, scorning who beseech
To cherish those who scorn. The gleaming skies
Are royal with old goddesses and queens
Whose faces lit the earth till, banished thence,
They watch from heaven the fair, familiar scenes
That nevermore shall do them reverence,

Softly I come into the dance of the spheres,
Into the choir of lights,
New from my nest in God's heart.
O Night, the chosen of nights,
Longing and dream of the years,
Blessèd thou art.

Golden the fruit hangs on the hyaline tree;
Golden the glistening tide
Sweeps through the heavens; the cars
Of the great mooned planets glide
Golden; and yet to me
Bow down the stars;

Casting their crowns, bright with aeonian reigns,
Under the flight of my feet
Eager for Bethlehem,
Thither with music-beat

Our fathers, in the years grown dim,
Reared slowly, wall by wall,
A holy dwelling-place for Him
That filleth all in all.
They wrought His house of faith and prayer,
The rainbow round the Throne,
A precious temple builded fair
On Christ the Corner-stone.

The Angel of the Golden Reed
Hath found their measure strait;
He hears the great Foundation plead
For ampler wall and gate.
The living pillars of the Truth
Grow on from morn to morn,
And still the heresy of youth
Is age's creed outworn.

I stood on the cliffs
And watched the ocean tumbling in.
It was high-tide.
And the sea rumbled and roared around the rocks.
And it seemed that the rocks were mothers
And the sea-weeds were children that clung to them.

The sea leaped higher and higher,
An army of waves,
Reaching out long white hands
To tear the children from the breast of the mothers.
But the weeds clung tighter
And the rocks stood in the midst of the warring waters,
Silent and strong.

And the name brings back those kindly hills
And the drowsing life so new to me;
And the welcome that those purple blossoms
With their tiny trumpets blew to me.

Stout and tall, they raised their clustered heads,
Leaping, as a lusty fellow would,
Through the lowlands, down the twisting cowpaths;
Running past the green and yellow wood.

How they come again—those rambling roads;
And the weeds' wild jewels glowing there.
Richer than a Paradise of flowers
Was that bit of pasture growing there.