A WEEK AT PARIS

The flowers they set there fall from her fair headWithered, while she, sweet soul, has known no wrong.Forth from her grave miraculously white,And all unstained by the dull earth’s decay,Natalia rises, a last star of night,Just as the dawn is breaking into day.Upon the stones they kneeled them down and prayed,For hearts grow soft with…

–To inherit cheeks a–tingle with such bloodAs wood nymphs blushed, who to the first–blown fluteWent out in endless dancing through the wood.To live, and taste of that immortal foodAfter the wild day’s waste prepared for usBy deathless hands, and straightway be renewed,Like the god’s entrails upon Caucasus.To rise at dawn with eye and brain and…

In summer days for souls which know not guile,Or souls too careless of the vain world’s spiteTo heed its frowning while the heavens smile.In boyhood all our pleasure was in toil,As with bent backs we laboured at the oar;We loved to spend our strength in the turmoilOf speed disputed, conquered, conqueror.But other years brought other…

I like the joyous morning air,And the crowing of the cocks.I like the calm of the early fields,The ducks asleep by the lake,The quiet hour which Nature yieldsBefore mankind is awake.I like the pheasants and feeding thingsOf the unsuspicious morn;I like the flap of the wood-pigeon’s wingsAs she rises from the corn.I like the blackbird’s…

But life’s last indigence which dares not borrowOne garment more of Hope to cheat life’s wind.The mountains which we loved have grown unkind,Nay, voiceless rather. Neither sound nor speechIs heard among them, nor the thought enshrinedOf any deity man’s tears may reach.If I should speak, what echo would there come,Of laughters lost, and dead unanswered…

For I had brought her from the “golden East,”To lie when nights were cold upon my breastAnd sit beside me the long days and purr,Until her whole soul should be lapped in fur,Deep as her claws; a beautiful sleek beast,Which I might love.–But, when I deemed it least,Her topaz eyes were on my stomacher,Athirst for…