But I have learnt the years, and know the yetLeaf-folded violet.Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretellThe cuckoo’s fitful bell.I wander in a gray time that enclosesJune and the wild hedge-roses.A year’s procession of the flowers doth passMy feet, along the grass.And all you sweet birds silent yet, I knowThe notes that stir you so,Your…
Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;A poet’s face asleep in this grey morn.Now in the midst of the old world forlornA mystic child is set in these still hours.I keep this time, even before the flowers,Sacred to all the young and the…
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,And from the changes of my heart must make thee!O fainting traveller, morn is gray in heaven.Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?And are they calm about the fall of…
Like a west wind across the world I move,Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.The countries change, but not the west-wind daysWhich are my songs. My soft skies shine above,And on all seas the colours of a dove,And on all fields a flash of silver greys.I made the whole world answer to my…
So laxly holds him to her breastThat throbs with flight.He plays with her, and will not sleep.For other playfellows she sighs;An unmaternal fondness keepHer alien eyes.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,And see in them your yet dumb lyre,poets unborn and unrevealed.Singers to come, what thoughts will startTo song? What words of yours be sentThrough man’s soul, and with earth be blent?These words of nature and the heartAwait you like an instrument.Who knows what musical flocks of wordsUpon these…
Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,From root to crowning petal, thine alone.Thine is the place from where the seeds are sownUp to the sky inclosed, with all its showers.But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowersTo keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.For as these come and go, and quit…
Of time and change upon your hapiest fancies.I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.If ever, in time to come, you would explore it–Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year’s pansies,Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;In my unfailing praises now I store it.To guard all joys of yours from Time’s…
The love of thee–and in the blue heaven’s height,And in the dearest passage of a song.Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throngThis breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;But it must never, never come in sight;I must stop short of thee the whole day long.But when sleep comes to close each difficult…
Even the day when we first met.What a great day came and passed,–Unknown then, but known at last.And we met: You knew not me,Mistress of your joys and fears;Held my hand that held the keyOf the treasure of your years,Of the fountain of your tears.For you knew not it was I,And I knew not it…
