Poetry

love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give.

Ecstasy

Not less than this, beloved,
This beaming, highmost ray
That sweeps in royal splendor
Across our perfect day.

Not less than this⁠—far rather
That we should say “adieu,”
With every rose in Eden
Abloom for me and you.

Pledge

With kisses I’ll awake you love
So tenderly at morn,
The pledges of my fealty
Diunally reborn.

We’ll thread life’s way together love,
And when the fading light
Dips softly over western hills
I’ll kiss your eyes good-night.

Your Eyes

Your eyes⁠—
Dark pools, so calm and deep,
A thousand ages in them sleep,
A dreaming world within them lies,
And all my hopes
Of paradise!

Amour

Kiss me!
And let the hours bloom triumphantly
Before life’s little sun has set
And I am old.

Love me!
The day is fleet
And I⁠ ⁠…
Am far too passionate
To die!

Finality

When love’s triumphant day is done,
Go forward! leave me to the night
Beneath the coldly staring stars,
The waiting winter and its blight.

For I would never hold the heart
That mutely quivers to be free,
Unfurl your restless wings⁠—away!
And leave the emptiness to me.

In Love

I lived in Hell the other day
Its fires wrapt me angrily,
But now their horrors fall and fade
Like ghosts that memory has made.

I lived in Hell even today,
How swift the fierce flames die away⁠—
Submerged with kisses, I forget,
With tears upon my pillows yet.

Fiction

Ah! love!
I shall not seek to penetrate
Your webbed gauze
Nor tease my heart
By queries deep,
But hold you tenderly;
The day is evening,
And I must cull my flowers
’Ere dark.

Dead Days

Dead days of rapture and despair
I would your hours exhume,
Renew their wildness once again
Their rigors and perfume.

Break, Break My Heart

Break, break my heart
For love is done,
The pale light trails the dying sun⁠—
And night awaits⁠—no hope⁠—no stars
Darkness
Hide my scars!

Little King

From worshipping I now arise
Stunned and aghast, with open eyes
I see the real, the little you
I thought so gallant, brave and true.

A pity yet is mine, I fear,
Since wherefore comes this falling tear,
For none among your fawning throng
Will love you well, nor love you long.

Romance

When I was young
I used to say:
Romance will come riding by
And I shall surely smile
And play with him awhile.

When I grew older
then I said:
Romance may come riding by
I wonder shall I smile
And play with him awhile?

But now⁠—
Alas! I only say:
Romance never will come by
And I shall never smile
He has been dead the while!

Falling Gods

Confusion, desuetude and gloom,
The travailing of sound,
Fell desolation in my soul,
And agony profound;
The gods are falling heavily
And for all time to be,
And never more my heart shall know
A shrine to Deity!

Armor

You cannot hurt me any more
For I am armored now
And I can look into your face
With cool, unfevered brow.

The tranquil river meets the sea,
My life flows on at rest,
Unurged, untorn, but oh, my God!
I love the old way best!

Divide

Your lightest breath may fan my cheek
Your whisper stir me when you speak,
And yet⁠—
The teeming planets play
Between your heart⁠—and mine
Today.

Return

Now,
Like the pines intoning
Though some solitary gloom,
My errant throughts go pattering
About love’s ancient tomb,
And though no breath of incense rare
Lies round the shattered cup,
A banquet weird, the fragments
Where the ghost of love
May sup.

Song of the Sinner

Just a bit of ashes
Grey, grey ashes⁠—spent⁠—
God! how fierce the fires burned
Down to this content.

Just a bit of ashes,
Not a single spark
Lives in this residuum
Crumbling cold and dark.

Just a bit of ashes⁠—
To the judgment day,
I go with my memories⁠—
Pray, sweet virgin, pray!

Celibacy

Where is the love that might have been
Flung to the far ends of Earth?
In my body stamping around,
In my body like a hound
Leashed and restless⁠—
Biding time!

Offering

I seek no tokens of you dear
I only ask to give
The purple flower of my heart
And you will let it live.

I ask no fealty or plight,
I only pray that you
May find earth’s barren places bright
Perhaps, because it grew.

And when for you the final sun
Moves toward the darkening West,
I shall be lingering to place
Love’s flower on your breast.

Estrangement

Some day I shall be dead, and pride
Which kept me from your feet,
Shall be the burden of the song
My cold lips shall repeat.

And some day when you too shall find
A pillow in the sod,
Would you then spurn an hour with me
Above⁠—where daisies nod?

Recessional

Consider me a memory⁠—a dream
That passed away,
Or yet, a flower that has blown and shattered⁠—
In a day;
For passion sleeps, alas, and keeps no vigil
With the years,
And wakens to no conjuring
Of orison or tears.

Consider me a melody
That served its simple turn,
Or but the residue of fire
That settles in the urn,
For love defies pure reasoning
And undeterred flows
Within⁠—without
The vassal heart!
Its reasoning⁠—
Who knows?

Sepulchre

I have mounded the corpse of my sorrow
And wreathed it with roses fair
That none who may pass on the morrow
May know what lies buried there.

Curtain

When one has lived
’Tis not so hard
To fold the hands,
To say, “Good-night,”
And creep away
Behind the dark;
But ’tis not strange
The heart rebels
When sounds of night
Ring down the day
That was a weary, joyless way
From early dawn
To setting sun:
How eagerly we trail the light
For crumbs of happiness we fend,
And struggle, struggle⁠—to the end!

Afterglow

Through you I entered heaven and hell,
Knew rapture and despair,
I flitted o’er the plains of earth
And scaled each shining stair:
Drank deep the waters of content,
And drained the cup of gall,
Was regal and was impotent,
Was suzerain and thrall.

Now, by Reflection’s placid pool
On evening’s mellowed brow,
I smile across the backward way
And pledge anew my vow;
For every glancing, golden gleam,
I offer gladly⁠—pain!
And I would give a thousand world
To live it all again!

Colophon

Poetry
was compiled from poems published between 1905