Hero to Leander


  Oh go not yet, my love,
  The night is dark and vast;
  The white moon is hid in her heaven above,
  And the waves climb high and fast.
  Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again,
  Lest thy kiss should be the last.
  Oh kiss me ere we part;
  Grow closer to my heart.
  My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main.

  Oh joy! 0 bliss of blisses!
  My heart of hearts art thou.
  Come bathe me with thy kisses,
  My eyelids and my brow.
  Hark how the wild rain hisses,
  And the loud sea roars below.

  Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs
  So gladly doth it stir;
  Thine eye in drops of gladness swims.
  I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh;
  Thy locks are dripping balm;
  Thou shalt not wander hence to-night,
  I'll stay thee with my kisses.
  To-night the roaring brine
  Will rend thy golden tresses;
  The ocean with the morrow light
  Will be both blue and calm;
  And the billow will embrace thee with a kiss as soft as mine.

  No western odours wander
  On the black and moaning sea,
  And when thou art dead, Leander,
  My soul must follow thee!
  Oh go not yet, my love
  Thy voice is sweet and low;
  The deep salt wave breaks in above
  Those marble steps below.
  The turretstairs are wet
  That lead into the sea.
  Leander! go not yet.
  The pleasant stars have set:
  Oh! go not, go not yet,
  Or I will follow thee.

The Mystic


  Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones:
  Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye,
  Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn;
  Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
  The still serene abstraction; he hath felt
  The vanities of after and before;
  Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
  The stern experiences of converse lives,
  The linked woes of many a fiery change
  Had purified, and chastened, and made free.
  Always there stood before him, night and day,
  Of wayward vary colored circumstance,
  The imperishable presences serene
  Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,
  Dim shadows but unwaning presences
  Fourfaced to four corners of the sky;
  And yet again, three shadows, fronting one,
  One forward, one respectant, three but one;
  And yet again, again and evermore,
  For the two first were not, but only seemed,
  One shadow in the midst of a great light,
  One reflex from eternity on time,
  One mighty countenance of perfect calm,
  Awful with most invariable eyes.
  For him the silent congregated hours,
  Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath
  Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes
  Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light
  Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all
  Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld)
  Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud
  Which droops low hung on either gate of life,
  Both birth and death; he in the centre fixt,
  Saw far on each side through the grated gates
  Most pale and clear and lovely distances.
  He often lying broad awake, and yet
  Remaining from the body, and apart
  In intellect and power and will, hath heard
  Time flowing in the middle of the night,
  And all things creeping to a day of doom.
  How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
  The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached
  The last, with which a region of white flame,
  Pure without heat, into a larger air
  Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
  Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

The Grasshopper


  I

  Voice of the summerwind,
  Joy of the summerplain,
  Life of the summerhours,
  Carol clearly, bound along.
  No Tithon thou as poets feign
  (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind)
  But an insect lithe and strong,
  Bowing the seeded summerflowers.
  Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel,
  Vaulting on thine airy feet.
  Clap thy shielded sides and carol,
  Carol clearly, chirrup sweet.
  Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete;
  Armed cap-a-pie,
  Full fair to see;
  Unknowing fear,
  Undreading loss,
  A gallant cavalier
  'Sans peur et sans reproche,'
  In sunlight and in shadow,
  The Bayard of the meadow.


  II

  I would dwell with thee,
  Merry grasshopper,
  Thou art so glad and free,
  And as light as air;
  Thou hast no sorrow or tears,
  Thou hast no compt of years,
  No withered immortality,
  But a short youth sunny and free.
  Carol clearly, bound along,
  Soon thy joy is over,
  A summer of loud song,
  And slumbers in the clover.
  What hast thou to do with evil
  In thine hour of love and revel,
  In thy heat of summerpride,
  Pushing the thick roots aside
  Of the singing flowered grasses,
  That brush thee with their silken tresses?
  What hast thou to do with evil,
  Shooting, singing, ever springing
  In and out the emerald glooms,
  Ever leaping, ever singing,
  Lighting on the golden blooms?

Love, Pride and Forgetfulness


  Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb,
  Love laboured honey busily.
  I was the hive and Love the bee,
  My heart the honey-comb.
  One very dark and chilly night
  Pride came beneath and held a light.

  The cruel vapours went through all,
  Sweet Love was withered in his cell;
  Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell,
  Did change them into gall;
  And Memory tho' fed by Pride
  Did wax so thin on gall,
  Awhile she scarcely lived at all,
  What marvel that she died?

Chorus


  The varied earth, the moving heaven,
  The rapid waste of roving sea,
  The fountainpregnant mountains riven
  To shapes of wildest anarchy,
  By secret fire and midnight storms
  That wander round their windy cones,
  The subtle life, the countless forms
  Of living things, the wondrous tones
  Of man and beast are full of strange
  Astonishment and boundless change.

  The day, the diamonded light,
  The echo, feeble child of sound,
  The heavy thunder's griding might,
  The herald lightning's starry bound,
  The vocal spring of bursting bloom,
  The naked summer's glowing birth,
  The troublous autumn's sallow gloom,
  The hoarhead winter paving earth
  With sheeny white, are full of strange
  Astonishment and boundless change.

  Each sun which from the centre flings
  Grand music and redundant fire,
  The burning belts, the mighty rings,
  The murmurous planets' rolling choir,
  The globefilled arch that, cleaving air,
  Lost in its effulgence sleeps,
  The lawless comets as they glare,
  And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps
  In wayward strength, are full of strange
  Astonishment and boundless change.

Lost Hope


  You cast to ground the hope which once was mine,
  But did the while your harsh decree deplore,
  Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine,
  My heart, where Hope had been and was no more.

  So on an oaken sprout
  A goodly acorn grew;
  But winds from heaven shook the acorn out,
  And filled the cup with dew.

The Tears of Heaven


  Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,
  In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep,
  Because the earth hath made her state forlorn
  With selfwrought evils of unnumbered years,
  And doth the fruit of her dishonour reap.
  And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
  Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
  And showering down the glory of lightsome day,
  Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may.

Love and Sorrow


  O Maiden, fresher than the first green leaf
  With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,
  Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee
  That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief
  Doth hold the other half in sovranty.
  Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:
  Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:
  Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine
  My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,
  Issue of its own substance, my heart's night
  Thou canst not lighten even with 'thy' light,
  All powerful in beauty as thou art.
  Almeida, it my heart were substanceless,
  Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side,
  So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,
  But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
  Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep;
  They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.

To A Lady Sleeping


  O Thou whose fringed lids I gaze upon,
  Through whose dim brain the winged dreams are borne,
  Unroof the shrines of clearest vision,
  In honour of the silverflecked morn:
  Long hath the white wave of the virgin light
  Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark.
  Thou all unwittingly prolongest night,
  Though long ago listening the poised lark,
  With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene,
  Over heaven's parapets the angels lean.

Sonnet


  Could I outwear my present state of woe
  With one brief winter, and indue i' the spring
  Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow
  The wan dark coil of faded suffering--
  Forth in the pride of beauty issuing
  A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers,
  Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers
  And watered vallies where the young birds sing;
  Could I thus hope my lost delights renewing,
  I straightly would commend the tears to creep
  From my charged lids; but inwardly I weep:
  Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing:
  This to itself hath drawn the frozen rain
  From my cold eyes and melted it again