not all of maidens’ hair.
The Dead Hand
The witch lady walked along the strand,
Heard a roaring of the sea,
On the edge of a pool saw a dead man’s hand,
Good thing for a witch lady!
Lightly she stepped across the rocks,
Came where the dead man lay:
Now pretty maid with your merry mocks,
Now I shall have my way!
On a finger shone a sapphire blue
In the heart of six rubies red:
Come back to me, my promise true,
Come back, my ring, she said.
She took the dead hand in the live,
And at the ring drew she;
The dead hand closed its fingers five,
And it held the witch lady.
She swore the storm was not her deed,
Dark spells she backward spoke;
If the dead man heard he took no heed,
But held like a cloven oak.
Deathly cold, crept up the tide,
Sure of her, made no haste;
Crept up to her knees, crept up each side,
Crept up to her wicked waist.
Over the blue sea sailed the bride
In her love’s own sailing ship,
And the witch she saw them across the tide
As it rose to her lying lip.
Oh, the heart of the dead and the hand of the dead
Are strong hasps they to hold!
Fled the true dove with the kite’s new love,
And left the false kite with the old.
To Lady Noel Byron
Men sought, ambition’s thirst to slake,
The lost elixir old
Whose magic touch should instant make
The meaner metals gold.
A nobler alchymy is thine
Which love from pain doth press:
Gold in thy hand becomes divine,
Grows truth and tenderness.
To Garibaldi, with a Book
When at Philippi, he who would have freed
Great Rome from tyrants, for the season brief
That lay ’twixt him and battle, sought relief
From painful thoughts, he in a book did read,
That so the death of Portia might not breed
Unmanful thoughts, and cloud his mind with grief:
Brother of Brutus, of high hearts the chief,
When thou at length receiv’st thy heavenly meed,
And I have found my hoping not in vain,
Tell me my book has wiled away one pang
That out of some lone sacred memory sprang,
Or wrought an hour’s forgetfulness of pain,
And I shall rise, my heart brimful of gain,
And thank my God amid the golden clang.
To the Same
Dead, why defend thee, who in life
For thy worst foe hadst died;
Who, thy own name a word of strife,
Didst silent stand aside?
Grand in forgiveness, what to thee
The big world’s puny prate!
Or thy great heart hath ceased to be
Or loveth still its mate!
The Holy Midnight
Ah, holy midnight of the soul,
When stars alone are high;
When winds are resting at their goal,
And sea-waves only sigh!
Ambition faints from out the will;
Asleep sad longing lies;
All hope of good, all fear of ill,
All need of action dies;
Because God is, and claims the life
He kindled in thy brain;
And thou in him, rapt far from strife,
Diest and liv’st again.
Hard Times
I am weary, and very lonely,
And can but think—think.
If there were some water only
That a spirit might drink—drink,
And arise,
With light in the eyes
And a crown of hope on the brow,
To walk abroad in the strength of gladness,
Not sit in the house, benumbed with sadness—
As now!
But, Lord, thy child will be sad—
As sad as it pleases thee;
Will sit, not seeking to be glad,
Till thou bid sadness flee,
And, drawing near,
With thy good cheer
Awake thy life in me.
Summer Song
Murmuring, ’twixt a murmur and moan,
Many a tune in a single tone,
For every ear with a secret true—
The sea-shell wants to whisper to you.”
“Yes—I hear it—far and faint,
Like thin-drawn prayer of drowsy saint;
Like the muffled sounds of a summer rain;
Like the wash of dreams in a weary brain.”
“By smiling lip and fixed eye,
You are hearing a song within the sigh:
The murmurer has many a lovely phrase—
Tell me, darling, the words it says.”
“I hear a wind on a boatless main
Sigh like the last of a vanishing pain;
On the dreaming waters dreams the moon—
But I hear no words in the doubtful tune.”
“If it tell thee not that I love thee well,
’Tis a senseless, wrinkled, ill-curved shell:
If it be not of love, why sigh or sing?
’Tis a common, mechanical, stupid thing!”
“It murmurs, it whispers, with prophet voice
Of a peace that comes, of a sealed choice;
It says not a word of your love to me,
But it tells me I love you eternally.”
Picture Songs
A pale green sky is gleaming;
The steely stars are few;
The moorland pond is steaming
A mist of gray and blue.
Along the pathway lonely
My horse is walking slow;
Three living creatures only,
He, I, and a home-bound crow!
The moon is hardly shaping
Her circle in the fog;
A dumb stream is escaping
Its prison in the bog.
But in my heart are ringing
Tones of a lofty song;
A voice that I know, is singing,
And my heart all night must long.
Over a shining land—
Once such a land I knew—
Over its sea, by a soft wind fanned,
The sky is all white and blue.
The waves are kissing the shores,
Murmuring love and for ever;
A boat gleams green, and its timeful oars
Flash out of the level river.
Oh to be there with thee
And the sun, on wet sands, my love!
With the shining river, the sparkling sea,
And the radiant sky above!
The autumn winds are sighing
Over land and sea;
The autumn woods are dying
Over hill and lea;
And my heart is sighing, dying,
Maiden, for thee.
The autumn clouds are flying
Homeless over me;
The nestless birds are crying
In the naked tree;
And my heart is flying, crying,
Maiden, to thee.
The autumn sea is crawling
Up the chilly shore;
The thin-voiced firs are calling
Ghostily evermore:
Maiden, maiden! I am falling
Dead at thy door.
The waters are rising and flowing
Over the weedy stone—
Over it, over it
