• Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
• That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
• And by instinct ineffable decree
• Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
• Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
• That 'mid the tide of all emergency
• Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
• Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?

• Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
• 10The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
• The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
• That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
• And in regenerate rapture turns my face
• Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

   

• As the child knows not if his mother's face
• Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem
• What each most is; but as of hill or stream
• At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
• Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
• Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
• And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
• In things long past new features now can trace:—

• Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
• 10 Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
• And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
• And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
• Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
• Those unknown things or these things overknown.

   

• What place so strange,—though unrevealèd snow
• With unimaginable fires arise
• At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
• Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
• Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
• This is the very place which to mine eyes
• Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
• 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.

• City, of thine a single simple door,
• 10 By some new Power reduplicate, must be
• Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
• Even with one presence filled, as once of yore:
• Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
• Thee and thy years and these my words and me.

   

• I said: “Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be:
• Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
• But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
• Sees in the stream its own fecundity
• And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
• At the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
• And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
• And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?”

• I say: “Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun
• 10 Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
• Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
• And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
• Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
• And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.”

   

• Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
• And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
• And now before and now again behind
• Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and
• burns,—
• So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
• No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
• With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
• And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.

• Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
• 10 This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
• To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
• Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from
• them,
• Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
• The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

   

• Sweet stream-fed glen, why say “farewell” to thee
• Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
• The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
• Nay, do thou rather say “farewell” to me,
• Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
• Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe
• By other streams, what while in fragrant youth
• The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

• And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
• 10 When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
• And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
• In hours to come, than when an hour ago
• Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
• And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

   

• What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
• None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
• Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
• These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
• Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
• Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
• Of anguish, while the pit's pollution leaves
• Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

• Night sucks them down, the tribute of the pit,
• 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
• Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
• And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
• To gaze, but, yearning, waits his destined wife,
• The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

   

• The lost days of my life until to-day,
• What were they, could I see them on the street
• Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
• Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
• Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
• Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
• Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
• The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?

• I do not see them here; but after death
• 10 God knows I know the faces I shall see,
• Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
• “I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”
• “And I—and I—thyself,” (lo! each one saith,)
• “And thou thyself to all eternity!”

   

• When first that horse, within whose populous womb
• The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
• Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
• Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home;
• She whispered, “Friends, I am alone; come, come!”
• Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
• And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
• His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

• The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
• 10 There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-
• caves,
• Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
• Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves....
• Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
• Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

   

• That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night,
• O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
• To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
• To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
• Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
• On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
• While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
• Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

• That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
• 10 Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
• Till some one man the happy issue see
• Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
• Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,
• O brother, what brought love to them or thee?

   

• Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
• Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to
• know
• And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
• A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
• Of some inexorable supremacy
• Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
• From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
• Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?

• Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
• 10 The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
• Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
• Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
• Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems,
• shall wage
• Their journey still when his boughs shrink with
• age.

   

• Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
• Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
• Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair,
• So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
• Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
• Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
• It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
• Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled,
• Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
• 10 Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.
• Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
• Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
• Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
• For certain years, for certain months and days.

   

• As when two men have loved a woman well,
• Each hating each, through Love's and Death's
• deceit;
• Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
• And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;
• Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
• At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
• Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
• The two lives left that most of her can tell:—

• So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
• 10 The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
• And Peace before their faces perished since:
• So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
• They roam together now, and wind among
• Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

       

• Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
• From life; and mocking pulses that remain
• When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
• Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
• And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
• On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
• And longed-for woman longing all in vain
• For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
• And wealth, and strength, and power, and plea-
• santness,
• 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
• None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
• Beholding these things, I behold no less
• The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
• The shame that loads the intolerable day.

   

• As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
• Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
• May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,—
• “Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
• Such blessing of mine all coming years should
• bless;”—
• Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
• And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
• The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—

• Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World
• 10 Perchance one hour must cry: “Woe's me, for
• whom
• Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
• Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd:
• While thou even as of yore art journeying,
• All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!”

   

• Great Michael Angelo Michelangelo, with age grown bleak
• And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid
• All grievous memories on his long life shed,
• This worst regret to one true heart could speak:—
• That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
• He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
• His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,—
• Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.

• O Buonarruoti,—good at Art's fire-wheels
• 10 To urge her chariot!—even thus the Soul,
• Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
• Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals
• Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
• What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?