Where are the bay-leaves, Thestylis, and the charms?
Fetch all; with fiery wool the caldron crown;
Let glamour win me back my false lord's heart!
Twelve days the wretch hath not come nigh to me,
Nor made enquiry if I die or live,
Nor clamoured (oh unkindness!) at my door.
Sure his swift fancy wanders otherwhere,
The slave of Aphrodite and of Love.
I'll off to Timagetus' wrestling-school
At dawn, that I may see him and denounce
His doings; but I'll charm him now with charms.
So shine out fair, O moon! To thee I sing

SAY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
Free love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
Fettered love, motionless, can but remember,
Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
What does it find there that knows it again?
There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,

The brand is on thy brow,
A dark and guilty spot;
'Tis ne'er to be erased!
'Tis ne'er to be forgot!

The brand is on thy brow!
Yet I must shade the spot:
For who will love thee now,
If I love thee not?

Thy soul is dark, — is stained; —
From out the bright world thrown;
By God and man disdained,
But not by me, — thy own!

Oh! even the tiger slain
Hath one who ne'er doth flee,
Who soothes his dying pain!
— That one am I to thee!

I made a hundred little songs
That told the joy and pain of love,
And sang them blithely, tho' I knew
No whit thereof.

I was a weaver deaf and blind;
A miracle was wrought for me,
But I have lost my skill to weave
Since I can see.

For while I sang -- ah swift and strange!
Love passed and touched me on the brow,
And I who made so many songs
Am silent now.

When I would sing of crooked streams and fields,
On, on from me they stretch too far and wide,
And at their look my song all powerless yields,
And down the river bears me with its tide;
Amid the fields I am a child again,
The spots that then I loved I love the more,
My fingers drop the strangely scrawling pen,
And I remember nought but nature's lore,
I plunge me in the river's cooling wave,
Or on the embroidered bank admiring lean,
Now some endangered insect life to save,
Now watch the pictured flowers and grasses green;

I SANG of the sun on the waters,
And then of the wind in the wood;
And the people hearkened my singing
And said that the song was good.
I sang of the sheep on the mountains,
And then of the thrush on the hill;
And the people hearkened my singing
And said it was better still.
I sang of the bliss of lovers,
And then of their hopes that fall;
And the people hearkened my singing
And said it was best of all.
For the song that is loved of the people,
And sought since the world began,
Is the sad and beautiful music

The snow is deep on the ground.
Always the light falls
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.


This is a good world.
The war has failed.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the snow waits where love is.


Only a few go mad.
The sky moves in its whiteness
Like the withered hand of an old king.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the sky knows of our love.


The snow is beautiful on the ground.
And always the lights of heaven glow
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.

O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--

They used to say
Our mother brought us up like hot-house flowers,
From day to day
Such wondrous cares were ours
Her love inspired.
In truth we grew
Strangely. Unsought, as priestesses might be.
The girls we knew
Found tenderness. But we
Were more desired.
No doubt at all
Our spirits drew the secret souls of men.
They would recall
Old dreams through us; and then
Make dreams their choice.
Creatures of light,
Sun-darkened by the shining of her love,
We knew the plight
Of Sibyls, thus to prove

I COULD praise you once with beautiful words ere you came
And entered my life with love in a wind of flame.
I could lure with a song from afar my bird to its nest,
But with pinions drooping together silence is best.

In the land of beautiful silence the winds are laid,
And life grows quietly one in the cloudy shade.
I will not waken the passion that sleeps in the heart,
For the winds that blew us together may blow us apart.

Fear not the stillness; for doubt and despair shall cease