Old warder of these buried bones,And answering now my random strokeWith fruitful cloud and living smoke,Dark yew, that graspest at the stones And dippest toward the dreamless head,To thee too comes the golden hourWhen flower is feeling after flower;But Sorrow—fixt upon the dead, And darkening the dark graves of men,—What whisper’d from her lying lips?Thy […]

XXXVIIIWith weary steps I loiter on,Tho’ always under alter’d skiesThe purple from the distance dies,My prospect and horizon gone. No joy the blowing season gives,The herald melodies of spring,But in the songs I love to singA doubtful gleam of solace lives. If any care for what is hereSurvive in spirits render’d free,Then are these songs […]

Urania speaks with darken’d brow:`Thou pratest here where thou art least;This faith has many a purer priest,And many an abler voice than thou. ‘Go down beside thy native rill,On thy Parnassus set thy feet,And hear thy laurel whisper sweetAbout the ledges of the hill.’ And my Melpomene replies,A touch of shame upon her cheek:`I am […]

Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join,Deep-seated in our mystic frame,We yield all blessing to the nameOf Him that made them current coin; For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,Where truth in closest words shall fail,When truth embodied in a taleShall enter in at lowly doors. And so the Word had breath, and wroughtWith human hands the […]

Yet if some voice that man could trustShould murmur from the narrow house,`The cheeks drop in; the body bows;Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:’ Might I not say? `Yet even here,But for one hour, O Love, I striveTo keep so sweet a thing alive:’But I should turn mine ears and hear The moanings […]

My own dim life should teach me this,That life shall live for evermore,Else earth is darkness at the core,And dust and ashes all that is; This round of green, this orb of flame,Fantastic beauty such as lurksIn some wild Poet, when he worksWithout a conscience or an aim. What then were God to such as […]

O thou that after toil and stormMayst seem to have reach’d a purer air,Whose faith has centre everywhere,Nor cares to fix itself to form, Leave thou thy sister when she prays,Her early Heaven, her happy views;Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuseA life that leads melodious days. Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine,Her hands […]

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,Nor other thought her mind admitsBut, he was dead, and there he sits,And he that brought him back is there. Then one deep love doth supersedeAll other, when her ardent gazeRoves from the living brother’s face,And rests upon the Life indeed. All subtle thought, all curious fears,Borne down by […]

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,And home to Mary’s house return’d,Was this demanded—if he yearn’dTo hear her weeping by his grave? ‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’There lives no record of reply,Which telling what it is to dieHad surely added praise to praise. From every house the neighbours met,The streets were fill’d with joyful sound,A […]

With trembling fingers did we weaveThe holly round the Christmas hearth;A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. At our old pastimes in the hallWe gambol’d, making vain pretenceOf gladness, with an awful senseOf one mute Shadow watching all. We paused: the winds were in the beech:We heard them sweep the winter land;And […]