Why look'd I on that fatal line?
Why did I pray that page to see?
Too well I knew no word of thine
Was fraught with aught but pain to me.
I should have known, I should have thought
The fleeting hope would soon decay!
So oft the gleam of joy it brought
Has only shone to pass away.
Thy hand had traced the words I read;
And in that dream I wandered on—
Forgot their cherish'd spell was fled,
Thy vows no more—thy fondness gone.
I lived whole years of joy again
I dwelt on each recorded vow;

If we should ever meet again

When many tedious years are past;

When time shall have unbound the chain,

And this sad heart is free at last;—

Then shall we meet and look unmov'd,

As though we ne'er had met—had lov'd!

And I shall mark without a tear

How cold and calm thy alter'd brow;

I shall forget thou once wert dear,

Rememb'ring but thy broken vow!

Rememb'ring that in trusting youth

I lov'd thee with the purest truth;

That now the fleeting dream is o'er,

In the sad November time,
When the leaf has left the lime,
And the Cam, with sludge and slime,
Plasters his ugly channel,
While, with sober step and slow,
Round about the marshes low,
Stiffening students stumping go
Shivering through their flannel.

Then to me in doleful mood
Rises up a question rude,
Asking what sufficient good
Comes of this mode of living?
Moping on from day to day,
Grinding up what will not "pay,"
Till the jaded brain gives way
Under its own misgiving.

Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,

As neat as wax, as good as new,
As true as steel, as truth is true,
Good as a sermon, keen as hate,
Full as a tick, and fixed as fate--

Brief as a dream, long as the day,
Sweet as the rosy morn in May,
Chaste as the moon, as snow is white,
Broad as barn doors, and new as sight--

Useful as daylight, firm as stone,
Wet as a fish, dry as a bone,
Heavy as lead, light as a breeze--
Frank Wilstach's book of similies.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loviliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondance, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o`er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, inspite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness
From lonely prairies and God's tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,
Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire —
Fire that freed the slave.

If you could crowd them into forty lines!
Yes; you can do it, once you get a start;
All that you want is waiting in your head,
For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by heart.

. . . .
Begin: your mind’s the room where you have slept,
(Don’t pause for rhymes), till twilight woke you early.
The window stands wide-open, as it stood
When tree-tops loomed enchanted for a child
Hearing the dawn’s first thrushes through the wood
Warbling (you know the words) serene and wild.

You’ve said it all before: you dreamed of Death,

Like undistinguishable horses,
Gleam by my ever-painful days,
As if fade all the living roses,
And die all living nightingales.

But she is, too, upset and saddened,
My single governess – my love,
And under her skin of a satin,
The poisoned blood is now moved.

And if I stand the world I live in,
That is because I have a dream:
Both of us, like two blind children,
Will go to the highland’s rims,

Where clouds are so white and close,
Where only goats run the dales,
To seek forever faded roses,

Like some wild sleeper who alone at night
Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
With death below and only stars above;
I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep,
Along the edges of life's perilous steep,
The lost somnambulist of love.

I, in broad day, go walking in a dream,
Led on in safety by the starry gleam
Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall;
Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day,
Startled to find how far I've gone astray,
I dash my life out in my fall.