Were out of mind with all and clean forgot,
Kinsman and friend and foe: save only one,
Only Natalia. She with tightened breath
Heard his name spoken in reproof’s vain way
And gave her melancholy soul to death.
Foolish Natalia, who in love’s full day
Had spent her grief, had nothing now to give
Of greater woe to her soul’s agonies.
Living she yet had hardly dared to live.
She had wept dry the fountains of her eyes,
And never on her sorrow broke a gleam
Of that assuagement tears on others stream.
Than to gather breath and then pursue her whimJust where it led her, tender, sad, or gay.Her moods seemed all alike to her. But soonWith a little shudder, for the wind was chillAnd we had lingered on there in the moon,She bade me follow, and I bowed my will.The torrent of her words had drowned…
A silent highwayman, and take his allAnd leave him naked, when the night should fallAnd all the road was conjured in a mist.Too well thou keepedst thy unholy tryst,As long ago that eastern seneschalRode all day long to meet at evenfallHim he had fled ere yet the sun uprist.–But I have spent me like a…
O frail disciple of a fair creed givenFor human hope when all the world was blind!What was my profit? Freedom of the mind,A little pleasure of the years, some scarsOf lusty youth, and some few thoughts enshrinedIn worthier record of my manhood’s years.All else is loss, and unredeemed distress;The voiceful seasons uninvited come,And bring their…
With this all right in you, even that of tears.If I have spoken hardly, it will showHow much I loved you. With you disappearsA glory, a romance of many years.What you may be henceforth I will not know.The phantom of your presence on my fearsIs impotent at length for weal or woe.Your past, your present,…
Are dear to me in this October stressOf wind and war and whirling leaves above.They comfort my soul’s Autumn, and they proveHow little time can do, to ban or bless,How much ourselves. You willed the years should moveBack in their cycle. And behold, love, this!–Now, therefore, let us mark this fortunate day,And use it for…
Sparrows come trooping in familiar wayWith head aside beseeching to be fed.A spider too for me has spun her threadAcross the prison rules, and a brave mouseWatches in sympathy the warders’ tread,These two my fellow–prisoners in the house.But about dusk in the rooms oppositeI see lamps lighted, and upon the blindA shadow passes all the…
