THERE be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
She was so dear, so fair. Her memory stays,
Even her dying robs me not of this,
That I have walked with her in mortal ways
Whose tender beauty now immortal is.
There are sweet flowers that bloom in ways forlorn
And sad sweet eyes whose beauty is a flower
Blown in the night to which there is no morn,
Dream-born and dying in its dewy bower;
And she was such a flower, her sweet eyes such;
The secret hours that only the heart knows
Thrill with the glamour of her tone and touch
Like music that is sweetest at the close,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found the earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in dreams you can do this.
Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,
a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;
the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straight
How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flower,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!
How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!
It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season's frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summertime.
Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy's age renews its youth,
"I'll do the old dump in a day,"
He told me in his brittle way.
"Two more, I guess, I'll give to Rome
Before I hit the trail for home;
But while I'm there I kindo' hope
To have an audience with the Pope."
II
We stood upon the terraced height
With sunny Florence in our sight.
I gazed and gazed, too moved to speak
Until he queried: "What's that creek?"
"The Arno, sir," I said surprised;
He stared at it with empty eyes.
III
"It is," said I, "the storied stream
Where Dante used to pace and dream,
No! 'twas the questing dream that first achieved her--
More sensed for knowing no material part,
More real that no false outward eye perceived her,
Too gross, but that pure eye within my heart.
Nor feigned I, as my spirit so embraced her,
These arms encumbered might; ah! could they too,
Would she not fade as vision e'er effaced her,
As loves in this weak flesh so often do?
In flesh she might escape me, might expire
In the vicissitudes through flesh that range;
But, being the shadow of my heart's desire,
BENEATH this narrow jostling street,
Unruffled by the noise of feet,
Like a slow organ-note I hear
The pulses of the great world beat.
Unseen beneath the city’s show
Through this aorta ever flow
The currents of the universe—
A thousand pulses throbbing low!
Unheard beneath the pavement’s din
Unknown magicians sit within
Dim caves, and weave life into words
On patient looms that spin and spin.
There, uninspired, yet with the dower
Of mightier mechanic power,
My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar,
Higher and higher on soul-lent wings;
But ever and often and more and more
They are dragged down earthward by little things,
By little troubles and little needs,
As a lark might be tangled among the weeds.
My purpose is not what it ought to be,
Steady and fixed, like a star on high,
But more like a fisherman's light at sea;
Hither and thither it seems to fly--
Sometimes feeble, and sometimes bright,
Then suddenly lost in the gloom of night.
Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn.
For in some procreative way that isn't very clear,
Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet with sympathy I see the grimy son of toil,
And heartly congratulate the tiller of the soil.
I like the miner in the mine, the sailor on the sea,
Because up to five hundred pounds they sail and mine for me.