O Sorrow, wilt thou live with meNo casual mistress, but a wife,My bosom-friend and half of life;As I confess it needs must be; O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,Be sometimes lovely like a bride,And put thy harsher moods aside,If thou wilt have me wise and good. My centred passion cannot move,Nor will it lessen […]

In those sad words I took farewell:Like echoes in sepulchral halls,As drop by drop the water fallsIn vaults and catacombs, they fell; And, falling, idly broke the peaceOf hearts that beat from day to day,Half-conscious of their dying clay,And those cold crypts where they shall cease. The high Muse answer’d: `Wherefore grieveThy brethren with a […]

Peace; come away: the song of woeIs after all an earthly song:Peace; come away: we do him wrongTo sing so wildly: let us go. Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;But half my life I leave behind:Methinks my friend is richly shrined;But I shall pass; my work will fail. Yet in these ears, till […]

So careful of the type?’ but no.From scarped cliff and quarried stoneShe cries, `A thousand types are gone:I care for nothing, all shall go. ‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:I bring to life, I bring to death:The spirit does but mean the breath:I know no more.’ And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who […]

HThe wish, that of the living wholeNo life may fail beyond the grave,Derives it not from what we haveThe likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature then at strife,That Nature lends such evil dreams?So careful of the type she seems,So careless of the single life; That I, considering everywhereHer secret meaning in her […]

Oh yet we trust that somehow goodWill be the final goal of ill,To pangs of nature, sins of will,Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet;That not one life shall be destroy’d,Or cast as rubbish to the void,When God hath made the pile complete; That not a worm is cloven […]

How many a father have I seen,A sober man, among his boys,Whose youth was full of foolish noise,Who wears his manhood hale and green: And dare we to this fancy give,That had the wild oat not been sown,The soil, left barren, scarce had grownThe grain by which a man may live? Or, if we held […]

I cannot love thee as I ought,For love reflects the thing beloved;My words are only words, and movedUpon the topmost froth of thought. ‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,’The Spirit of true love replied;`Thou canst not move me from thy side,Nor human frailty do me wrong. ‘What keeps a spirit wholly trueTo that ideal […]

Do we indeed desire the deadShould still be near us at our side?Is there no baseness we would hide?No inner vileness that we dread? Shall he for whose applause I strove,I had such reverence for his blame,See with clear eye some hidden shameAnd I be lessen’d in his love? I wrong the grave with fears […]

Be near me when my light is low,When the blood creeps, and the nerves prickAnd tingle; and the heart is sick,And all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frameIs rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;And Time, a maniac scattering dust,And Life, a Fury slinging flame. Be near me when my […]