Odors endeared; down avenues in bloomThe chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe;The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound;And through the streets, like veins when they abound,The lust for pleasure throbs itself away.Here let me live, here let me still pursuePhantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, —Thy strange allurements,…
I have gone forth alone and been contentTo make you mistress only of my thought.And I have blessed the fate that was so kindIn my life’s agitations to includeThis moment’s refuge where my sense can findRefreshment, and my soul beatitude.Oh, be my gentle love a little while!Walk with me sometimes. Let me see you smile.Watching…
The bridle of his winged courser loosed,And clapped his spurs into the creature’s flanks;High in the air, even to the topmost banksOf crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse,And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx,And now across the sea he shaped his course,Till gleaming far below lay Erin’s emerald shores.There round Hibernia’s fabled realm…
Thine image from the waves of blissful soundRose and thy sudden light illumined me.And in the country, leaf and flower and airWould alter and the eternal shape emerge;Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,And Joy to wait at the horizon’s verge.The little cloud-gaps in the east that filledGray afternoons with bits of tenderest…
Up at his attic sill the South wind cameAnd days of sun and storm but never peace.Along the town’s tumultuous arteriesHe heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame:Each night the whistles in the bay, the sameWhirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars:For smoke that half obscured, the circling starsBurnt like his youth with but a…
Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, —In cloud and far horizon to desire.His life was nursed in beauty, like the streamBorn of clear showers and the mountain dew,Close under snow-clad summits where they gleamForever pure against heaven’s orient blue.Within the city’s shades he walked at last.Faint and more faint in sad recessionalDown the…
But, gazing once more on your winsome face,To worship there Ideal Loveliness.On that pure shrine that has too long ignoredThe gifts that once I brought so frequentlyI lay this votive offering, to recordHow sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me.Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thingBy futile prayers and vapid psalm-singingTo vent in crowded…
Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red.The courts where revel rang deep grass and mossCover, and tangled vines have overgrownThe gate where banners blazoned with a crossRolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon.Decay consumes it. The old causes fade.And fretting for the contest many a heartWaits their Tyrtaeus…
But Paris for the smoothness of the pathsThat lead the heart unto the heart’s delight. . . .Fair loiterer on the threshold of those daysWhen there’s no lovelier prize the world displaysThan, having beauty and your twenty years,You have the means to conquer and the ways,And coming where the crossroads separateAnd down each vista glories…
That oft as Fortune from ten thousand showsOne from the train of Love’s true courtiersStraightway on him who gazes, unawares,Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows,Reft by that sight of purpose and repose,Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.Then on the soul from some ancestral placeFloods back remembrance of its heavenly birth,When, in the light…
