The fragile fabric of our dream
Drifts as a feather down life’s stream—
The long defile of empty days
Grim silhouetted, mock my gaze.
Though oft escapes the stifled sigh,
A desert ever broods my eye—
Since you have utterly forgot,
God grant that I remember not!
There are tears sweet, refreshing like dewdrops that rise,
There are tears far too deep for the lakes of the eyes.
There are kisses like thistledown, fitfully sped,
There are kisses that live in the hearts of the dead.
Alone! yes, evermore alone—isolate each his way,
Though hand is echoing to hand vain sophistries of clay,
Within that veilèd, mystic place where bides the inmost soul,
No twain shall pass while tides shall wax, nor changing seasons roll.
Enisled, apart our pilgrimage, despite the arms that twine,
Despite the fusing kiss that wields the magic charm of wine,
Despite the interplay of sigh, the surge of sympathy,
We tread in solitude remote, the trail of destiny!
I called you through the silent night
Across the brooding deep,
I sought you in the shadowland
From out the world—asleep;
No answer echoed to my call,
And now my way I thread
About the lowly mounds that rise
Among the silent dead.
Though voiceless, you will hear my call,
Your soul will heed my cry,
Will rise, and mock the prison where
Your bones recumbent lie.
I’m tired, days and nights to me
Drag on in slow monotony,
With not a single star in sight
To lend a gleam of cheering light.
I’m tired, there are none to care
That I am drifting to despair:
O shadows! take me to your breast
For I am tired—I would rest.
A woman with a burning flame
Deep covered through the years
With ashes. Ah! she hid it deep,
And smothered it with tears.
Sometimes a baleful light would rise
From out the dusky bed,
And then the woman hushed it quick
To slumber on, as dead.
At last the weary war was done
The tapers were alight,
And with a sigh of victory
She breathed a soft—good-night!
Fierce is the conflict—the battle of eyes,
Sure and unerring, the wordless replies,
Challenges flash from their ambushing caves—
Men, by their glances, are masters or slaves.
There’s nothing in the world that clings
As does a memory that stings;
While happy hours fade and pass,
Like shadows in a looking-glass.
The petals of the faded rose
Commingle silently,
One with the atoms of the dust,
One with the chaliced sea.
The essence of my fleeting youth
Caught in the web of time,
Exhales within the springing flowers
Or breathes in love sublime.
Love’s roses I gathered, all dewy, in May,
My heart holds the breath of their attar to-day;
And now, while the blasts of the winter winds ring,
I hear not the tempest, I’m dreaming of Spring.
Oh, my fancy teems with a world of dreams—
They revolve in a glittering fire,
How they twirl and go with the tunes that flow
On the breath of my soul-strung lyre.
Walk within thy own heart’s temple, child, and rest,
What you seek abides forever in thy breast,
Closer than thy folded arm
Is the soul-renewing-balm,
Walk within thy own heart’s temple, child, and rest.
Her life was dwarfed, and wed to blight,
Her very days were shades of night,
Her every dream was born entombed,
Her soul, a bud—that never bloomed.
Whene’er I lift my eyes to bliss,
I stagger blind with pain,
Afar into the folding night
The silence, and the rain.
Whene’er I feel the urge of Spring,
A throbbing, unknown woe
Enfolds me; I am desolate
When love is calling low.
The curtains of twilight are drawn in the west
And vespers are sweet on the air,
While I, through my leafless, ungarlanded way
But pause at the gates of despair.
Good-bye to the hopes that were never fulfilled,
Good-bye to the fond dreams that failed,
Good-bye to my dead that has never been born,
Good-bye to love’s ship that ne’er sailed.
When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on my bier!
The fairest lips are those we kiss,
With greatest ecstasy and bliss;
The brightest eyes, are those that shine,
Unchangingly through changing time;
The greatest love is that we know,
When life is just an afterglow.
With the first blush of morning, my soul is awing,
Away o’er the phantom lands free, wandering,
I seek thee in hamlet, in woodland, and hall,
Till night-shades, enfolding my tired heart, fall.
Yet ever and alway, like the thrush in a tree,
My heart lifts its preluding love-song to thee;
I call through the days, through the long weary years,
And slumber at night-fall, refreshed by my tears.
Roses after rain,
Pleasure after pain,
Happiness will soothe the sigh,
Smiles await the tear-dimmed eye—
Bloom will follow blight,
Daylight trails the night,
Life is sweeter
Love is deeper
In the heart’s twilight!
Behold! the living thrilling lines
That course the blood like madd’ning wines,
And leap with scintillating spray
Across the guards of ecstasy.
The flame that lights the lurid spell
Springs from the soul’s artesian well,
Its fairy filament of art
Entwines the fragments of a heart.
What need have I for memory,
When not a single flower
Has bloomed within life’s desert
For me, one little hour.
What need have I for memory
Whose burning eyes have met
The corse of unborn happiness
Winding the trail regret?
I breathe the lyric of my love
Across the twilit way,
The gentle echoes bear it on
Beyond the edge of day:
All vibrant is
