the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moonlit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!
Vain is the agony of grief.
’Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt—thou lov’st me not!
But is despair relief?
Awhile let me with thought have done;
And as this brimm’d unwrinkled Rhine,
And that far purple mountain line,
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;
So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue—
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.
Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river’s flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tam’d is their turbulent youthful glow:
Their joy is in their calm.
V
Longing
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me.
Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth.
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say—My love! why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Calais Sands
A thousand knights have rein’d their steeds
To watch this line of sand-hills run,
Along the never-silent Strait,
To Calais glittering in the sun:
To look toward Ardres’ Golden Field
Across this wide aerial plain,
Which glows as if the Middle Age
Were gorgeous upon earth again.
Oh, that to share this famous scene
I saw, upon the open sand,
Thy lovely presence at my side,
Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand!
How exquisite thy voice would come,
My darling, on this lonely air!
How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze
Shake loose some band of soft brown hair!
Yet now my glance but once hath roved
O’er Calais and its famous plain;
To England’s cliffs my gaze is turn’d,
On the blue Strait mine eyes I strain.
Thou comest! Yes, the vessel’s cloud
Hangs dark upon the rolling sea!—
Oh that yon seabird’s wings were mine
To win one instant’s glimpse of thee!
I must not spring to grasp thy hand,
To woo thy smile, to seek thine eye;
But I may stand far off, and gaze,
And watch thee pass unconscious by,
And spell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts,
Mixt with the idlers on the pier.—
Ah, might I always rest unseen,
So I might have thee always near!
To-morrow hurry through the fields
Of Flanders to the storied Rhine!
To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close
Beneath one roof, my queen! with mine.
Urania
I too have suffer’d: yet I know
She is not cold, though she seems so:
She is not cold, she is not light;
But our ignoble souls lack might.
She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,
While we for hopeless passion die;
Yet she could love, those eyes declare,
Were but men nobler than they are.
Eagerly once her gracious ken
Was turn’d upon the sons of men;
But light the serious visage grew—
She look’d, and smiled, and saw them through.
Our petty souls, our strutting wits,
Our labour’d, puny passion-fits—
Ah, may she scorn them still, till we
Scorn them as bitterly as she!
Yet oh, that Fate would let her see
One of some worthier race than we;
One for whose sake she once might prove
How deeply she who scorns can love.
His eyes be like the starry lights—
His voice like sounds of summer nights—
In all his lovely mien let pierce
The magic of the universe.
And she to him will reach her hand,
And gazing in his eyes will stand,
And know her friend, and weep for glee,
And cry—Long, long I’ve look’d for thee.
—
Then will she weep—with smiles, till then,
Coldly she mocks the sons of men.
Till then her lovely eyes maintain
Their gay, unwavering, deep disdain.
Euphrosyne
I must not say that thou wert true,
Yet let me say that thou wert fair.
And they that lovely face who view,
They will not ask if truth be there.
Truth—what is truth? Two bleeding hearts
Wounded by men, by Fortune tried,
Outwearied with their lonely parts,
Vow to beat henceforth side by side.
The world to them was stern and drear;
Their lot was but to weep and moan.
Ah, let them keep their faith sincere,
For neither could subsist alone!
But souls whom some benignant breath
Hath charm’d at birth from gloom and care,
These ask no love—these plight no faith,
For they are happy as they are.
The world to them may homage make,
And garlands for their forehead weave.
And what the world can give, they take:
But they bring more than they receive.
They shine upon the world: Their ears
To one demand alone are coy.
They will not give us love and tears—
They bring us light, and warmth, and joy.
It was not love that heav’d thy breast,
Fair child! it was the bliss within.
Adieu! and say that one, at least,
Was just to what he did not win.
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Straits;—on the French coast, the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch’d sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be
