Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call

She sleeps a charmed sleep:Awake her not.Led by a single star,She came from very farTo seek where shadows areHer pleasant lot.She left the rosy morn,She left the fields of corn,For twilight cold and lornAnd water springs.Through sleep, as through a veil,She sees the sky look pale,And hears the nightingaleThat sadly sings.Rest, rest, a perfect restShed…

And all its sides already understands.There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass’d;Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,With blood…

How still they own their gracious bond, though fedAnd nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—How to their father’s children they shall beIn act and thought of one goodwill; but eachShall for the other have, in silence speech,And in a word complete community?Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,That among souls allied…

Since not for either this stark marriage-sheetAnd the long pauses of this wedding bell;Yet o’er her grave the night and day dispelAt last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;Nor other than dear friends to death may fleetThe two lives left that most of her can tell:So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooedThe…

Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rungOf a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,Fluvia, Mark Antony’s shameless wife, with showOf foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,Bade her sharp needle pierce that god-like tongueWhose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber’s flow.And thou, Cleopatra’s Needle, that hadst thridGreat skirts of Time ere she and Antony hidDead…

Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shellCast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seenWhich had Life’s form and Love’s, but by my spellIs now a shaken shadow intolerable,Of ultimate things unutter’d the frail screen.Mark me, how still I am! But should there dartOne moment through thy soul…

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edgeWhere the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.‘Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.Deep in the sun-search’d growths the dragon-fiyHangs like a blue thread loosen’d from the sky:–So this…

Banks of bright growth, with single blades atopAgainst white sky; and wires—a constant chain—That seem to draw the clouds along with them(Things which one stoops against the light to seeThrough the low window; shaking by at rest,Or fierce like water as the swiftness grows);And, seen through fences or a bridge far off,Trees that in moving…

Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:And one was eyed as the blue vault above:But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hoveI’ the other’s gaze, even as in his whose wandVainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann’dThe unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,Made moan: “Alas O Love, thus…

Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and holdThy sultry hair up from my face; that IMay pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.We’ll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll’d,Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.Now kiss, and think that there are…

Whose head upon my knee to-nightRests for a while, as if grown lightWith all our dances and the soundTo which the wild tunes spun you round:Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queenOf kisses which the blush betweenCould hardly make much daintier;Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hairIs countless gold incomparable:Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs…

Who have not drawn the veil to seeIf still our heaven be lit above.Thou merely, at the day’s last sigh,Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;And I have heard the night-wind cryAnd deemed its speech mine own.A little while a little loveThe scattering autumn hoards for usWhose bower is not yet ruinousNor quite unleaved our…