Amid the florid multitude her face

You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,But your honor ends with your own back-yard;Each man intent on his private goal,You have no feeling for the whole;What singly none would tolerateYou let unpunished hit the state,Unmindful that each man must shareThe stain he lets his country wear,And (what no traveller ignores)That her good name is often yours.You…

With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed,Flowerlike crept o’er with emerald aphides.Single he couched there, to his circling flocksPiping at times some happy shepherd’s tune,Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks,And arched with the blue Asian afternoon.Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coastRolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town,There, a…

All life’s necessities the need to love,Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives.But sometime on an afternoon in spring,When dandelions dot the fields with gold,And under rustling shade a few weeks old‘Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing,Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the powerOf being young and winsome have preparedFor…

Her ermine thus Boadicea bare,So moved amid the multitude Faustine.My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,Be charged with sin if ever before yoursA lesser feeling crossed my mind than hisWho owning grandeur marvels and adores.Nay, rather in my dream-world’s ivory towerI made your image the high pearly sill,And mounting there in many a wistful hour,Burdened…

Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.Before the beauty of the west on fire,The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewedCloud-like arose the image of desire,And cast out peace and maddened solitude.I sought the City and the hopes it held:With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled,As the thick roofs and…

I have no doubt but, like a homing dove,It would return to its dear residence,And through a thousand stars find out the roadBack into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.