I linger on the threshold of my youth.

A love which is eternal begotten in a day.The ill is long past healing. Why should I speak to–day?For none have ears to hear, and, least of all, she.Alas I shall have lived unseen tho’ ever near,For ever at her side, for ever too alone.I shall have lived my life unknowing and unknown,Asking naught, daring…

All night long at this sad grating,Sleepless like a prisoned bird,Singing low,Singing slow:Come, ah come, love.–Not a word!Love, in vain for thee this tokenDid I tie, poor silken cord,To my window. See, ’tis brokenAnd the strands fly heavenward.All are free,All but me.Come, ah come, love.–Not a word!Lo, the first sad streak of morningCleaves the heaven…

Alone and faint beneath a pitiless sky,And doubting in his heart if he shall bringHis bones back to his kindred or there die,Finds at his feet a treasure suddenlySuch as would make him for all time a king,And so forgets his fears and with keen eyeFalls to a–counting each new precious thing:–So was I when…

Cast in Time’s furrow with the storm winds blowingBears me a wild crop with strange fancies on it.Last year I wore your sole rose in my bonnet.This year–who knows–who, even the All–knowing,What to my vagrant heart, for its undoing,Of weeds shall blossom ere my tears atone it?–New Spring is in the air with new desirings;New…

Health to our friends, ill hap to those we hate,Even love, that glorious paradisal bird,The woman unattained, whose thought has stirredDesire to its last chord importunate;All shall be ours (so runs the common word)If but our patience lag not on our fate.–O, indigent consoling, even if true!Crumbs for the hungry, who thus fasting liveAnd die…

More than the wail of those fair Queens that keptTheir watch for him what months in Avalon!He shall not wake for any mother’s sonNor mother’s daughter of them all in tears,His knights, his ladies. How then for this one,You the last blossom of our world’s lost years?–Ah, let him sleep. For see how in the…