A WEEK AT PARIS

Stone flags for floor, where daily from their stallsThe human cattle in a circle drivenTread down their pathway to a mire uneven,Pale–faced, sad–eyed, and mute as funerals.Woe to the wretch whose weakness unforgivenFalters a moment in the track or falls!Yet is there consolation. OverheadThe pigeons build and the loud jackdaws talk,And once in the wind’s…

And it might chance to wake and with a start,When nights were still and stars were in the sky,Sit up and muse upon its lonely state,With the same stars to mock at it as then,And certain chords that touched might touch it yet,And griefs find issue and tears come again.I must not venture farther in…

My heart, my life, my tears to thee belong;Yet have I erred, maybe, through too fond thought.One sin, most certainly, I need to atone:The sin of loving thee while yet unwooed.Mine only was this wrong, this guilt alone.The woman tempted thee from ways of good.Forgive me too, ere thy dear pity cease,That I denied thee,…

The passion of my soul as it grew freeWith growing youth, a bird with broken wing,Knew nothing of its strength to dare or do,Or, if it dreamed of battle still to come,That was its secret hidden in the blueOf life’s great vault of tears which was its doom,A duty of revenge some day for blood.Enough!…

What is more mirthful than for those, who sitFar from the great world’s vain imaginings,To mingle in its war of words and wit,A listener here, when Greek meets Greek, Fox Pitt,At question–time in the Queen’s Parliament?‘Tis the arena of old Rome. Here meetMore than mere Dacians on mere slaughter bent.Yonder and close to Mr. Speaker’s…

By instinct of the eye or natural rule,That naked rocks are fairest, or flowers blowBest in their clefts, or that the world of snowHas other glory than of cold and ice.From our mother’s hand we viewed these things belowSenseless as goats which browse a precipice,Till we were taught to know them. With what tearsI con…