Sweet is the highroad when the skylarks call,
When we and Love go rambling through the land.
But shall we still walk gayly, hand in hand,
At the road's turning and the twilight's fall?
Then darkness shall divide us like a wall,
And uncouth evil nightbirds flap their wings;
The solitude of all created things
Will creep upon us shuddering like a pall.

This is the knowledge I have wrung from pain:
We, yea, all lovers, are not one, but twain,
Each by strange wisps to strange abysses drawn;
But through the black immensity of night

My heart was winter-bound until
I heard you sing;
O voice of Love, hush not, but fill
My life with Spring!

My hopes were homeless things before
I saw your eyes;
O smile of Love, close not the door
To paradise!

My dreams were bitter once, and then
I found them bliss;
O lips of Love, give me again
Your rose to kiss!

Springtide of Love! The secret sweet
Is ours alone;
O heart of Love, at last you beat
Against my own!

My heart is like a city of the gay
Reared on the ruins of a perished one
Wherein my dead loves cower from the sun,
White-swathed like kings, the Pharaohs of a day.
Within the buried city stirs no sound,
Save for the bat, forgetful of the rod,
Perched on the knee of some deserted god,
And for the groan of rivers underground.

Stray not, my Love, 'mid the sarcophagi --
Tempt not the silence, for the fates are deep,
Lest all the dreamers, deeming doomsday nigh,
Leap forth in terror from their haunted sleep;
And like the peal of an accursed bell

Helen's lips are drifting dust;
Ilion is consumed with rust;
All the galleons of Greece
Drink the ocean's dreamless peace;
Lost was Solomon's purple show
Restless centuries ago;
Stately empires wax and wane --
Babylon, Barbary, and Spain; --
Only one thing, undefaced,
Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste
And the heavens are overturned.
Dear, how long ago we learned!

There's a sight that blinds the sun,
Sound that lives when sounds are done,
Music that rebukes the birds,
Language lovelier than words,
Hue and scent that shame the rose,

Would I were on the sea-lands,
Where winds know how to sting;
And in the rocks at midnight
The lost long murmurs sing.

Would I were with my first love
To hear the rush and roar
Of spume below the doorstep
And winds upon the door.

My first love was a fair girl
With ways forever new;
And hair a sunlight yellow,
And eyes a morning blue.

The roses, have they tarried
Or are they dun and frayed?
If we had stayed together,
Would love, indeed, have stayed?

Ah, years are filled with learning,
And days are leaves of change!

I have praised many loved ones in my song,
And yet I stand
Before her shrine, to whom all things belong,
With empty hand.

Perhaps the ripening future holds a time
For things unsaid;
Not now; men do not celebrate in rhyme
Their daily bread.

Song is so old,
Love is so new --
Let me be still
And kneel to you.

Let me be still
And breathe no word,
Save what my warm blood
Sings unheard.

Let my warm blood
Sing low of you --
Song is so fair,
Love is so new!

Life burns us up like fire,
And Song goes up in flame:
The radiant body smoulders
To the ashes whence it came.

Out of things it rises
With a mouth that laughs and sings,
Backward it fades and falters
Into the char of things.

Yet soars a voice above it --
Love is holy and strong;
The best of us forever
Escapes in Love and Song.

My child, why weepest thou? Are these drawn lines of sorrow alone thy
garlands? Why this dreary awe, this languishing on all around you? But
hush, these are the foot-prints of Death; he has indeed been with you
in his uncertain rounds. The deep, reposing influences indicate his
path. I will not dare to question a mother's love, so strange and
inexplicable in power, and so mysterious in operation, gentle as the
breathing of the memory, ungovernable as the whirlwind in its frenzy,
tender as the angel of sympathy, yet stronger than the bands of Death,

I love to watch thy youthful eye,
That speaks thy fond affection;
I love to hear thy tender sigh,--
It charms my deep dejection.

The gentle beamings of that eye
Have power to soothe each sorrow,
While casting hope's refulgent dye,
In glances, on to-morrow.

My love is clear as crystal streams,
Flowing from sylvan fountains,--
And pure as Phoebus' noon-day beams,
That gild yon rising mountains.

And constant as the Northern Bear,
That guards the pole unceasing,
And ushers in the new-born year,--