We leave the well-beloved placeWhere first we gazed upon the sky;The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,Will shelter one of stranger race. We go, but ere we go from home,As down the garden-walks I move,Two spirits of a diverse loveContend for loving masterdom. One whispers, `Here thy boyhood sungLong since its matin song, and heardThe […]

Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,The tender blossom flutter down,Unloved, that beech will gather brown,This maple burn itself away; Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,Ray round with flames her disk of seed,And many a rose-carnation feedWith summer spice the humming air; Unloved, by many a sandy bar,The brook shall babble down the plain,At noon or when […]

I climb the hill: from end to endOf all the landscape underneath,I find no place that does not breatheSome gracious memory of my friend; No gray old grange, or lonely fold,Or low morass and whispering reed,Or simple stile from mead to mead,Or sheepwalk up the windy wold; Nor hoary knoll of ash and hawThat hears […]

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,So loud with voices of the birds,So thick with lowings of the herds,Day, when I lost the flower of men; Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling redOn yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fastBy meadows breathing of the past,And woodlands holy to the dead; Who murmurest in the foliaged eavesA song that […]

You leave us: you will see the Rhine,And those fair hills I sail’d below,When I was there with him; and goBy summer belts of wheat and vine To where he breathed his latest breath,That City. All her splendour seemsNo livelier than the wisp that gleamsOn Lethe in the eyes of Death. Let her great Danube […]

My love has talk’d with rocks and trees;He finds on misty mountain-groundHis own vast shadow glory-crown’d;He sees himself in all he sees. Two partners of a married life—I look’d on these and thought of theeIn vastness and in mystery,And of my spirit as of a wife. These two—they dwelt with eye on eye,Their hearts of […]

You say, but with no touch of scorn,Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyesAre tender over drowning flies,You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not: one indeed I knewIn many a subtle question versed,Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first,But ever strove to make it true: Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,At last he beat […]

By night we linger’d on the lawn,For underfoot the herb was dry;And genial warmth; and o’er the skyThe silvery haze of summer drawn; And calm that let the tapers burnUnwavering: not a cricket chirr’d:The brook alone far-off was heard,And on the board the fluttering urn: And bats went round in fragrant skies,And wheel’d or lit […]

How pure at heart and sound in head,With what divine affections boldShould be the man whose thought would holdAn hour’s communion with the dead. In vain shalt thou, or any, callThe spirits from their golden day,Except, like them, thou too canst say,My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast,Imaginations […]

I shall not see thee. Dare I sayNo spirit ever brake the bandThat stays him from the native landWhere first he walk’d when claspt in clay?G No visual shade of some one lost,But he, the Spirit himself, may comeWhere all the nerve of sense is numb;Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. O, therefore from thy […]