[Written to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World]

(For the thunders could flourish without me)And hid by a rose-hung wall,Forgetting the murder about me;And wrote, from my wound, on the stone,In mirth, half prayer, half play: —‘Send me a picture book,Send me a song, to-day.’I saw him there by the wallWhen I scarce had written the line,In the enemy’s colors dressedAnd the serpent-standard…

And moaning on the cinder-pathThey’re blind amid the rain.Can murmurs of the worms ariseTo higher hearts than mine?I wonder if that gardener hearsWho made the mold all fineAnd packed each gentle seedling downSo carefully in line?I watched the red rose reaching upTo ask him if he heardThose cries that stung the evening earthTill all the…

For she is there in armor clad, today,All the young poets of the wide world say.Which of our freemen did she greet the first,Seeing him come against the fires accurst?Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,Leading to war our youngest and our best.The Yankee to King Arthur’s court returns.The sacred flag of Joan…

Wonderful songs, but born to die!Cries from the infinite human seas,Waves thrice-winged with harmonies.Here I stand on a pier in the foamSeeing the songs to the beach go home,Dying in sand while the tide flows back,As it flowed of old in its fated track.Oh, hurrying tide that will not hearYour own foam children dying nearIs…

All our treasures neither less nor more,Bread alone comes thro’ the guarded door.Cards are foolish in this jail, I think,Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink.She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maidWill not scorn with me this jail-bird trade,Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick,Tho’ he win a button or a stick,Pencil, garter,…

‘Now do you know of AvalonThat sailors call Japan?She holds as rare a chivalryAs ever bled for man.King Arthur sleeps at Nikko hillWhere Iyeyasu lies,And there the broad Pendragon flagIn deathless splendor flies.’‘Nay, minstrel, but the great ships comeFrom out the sunset sea.We cannot greet the souls they bringWith welcome high and free.How can the…