one, with scarlet cap,
The name unfold to me
Of this new minstrel, who can lap
Sleep in his melody?”
Bright grew their scarlet-kerchiefed heads,
As freshening winds had blown,
And from their gently swaying beds
They sang in undertone,
“Oh, he is but a little owl,
The smallest of his kin,
Who sits beneath the midnight’s cowl,
And makes this airy din.”
“Deceitful tongues, of fiery tints,
Far more than this you know—
That he is your enchanted prince,
Doomed as an owl to go;
“Nor his fond play for years hath stopped,
But nightly he unrolls
His silver balls, that, softly dropped,
Ring into golden bowls.”
Sonnet
These Rugged Wintry Days I Scarce Could Bear
These rugged wintry days I scarce could bear,
Did I not know that in the early spring,
When wild March winds upon their errands sing,
Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still air,
Like those same winds, when, startled from their lair,
They hunt up violets and free swift brooks
From icy cares, even as thy clear looks
Bid my heart bloom and sing and break all care:
When drops with welcome rain the April day,
My flowers shall find their April in thine eyes;
But there the rain in dreamy clouds doth stay,
As loath to fall out of those happy skies;
And sure, my love, thou art most like to May,
That comes, with steady sun, when April dies.
Sonnet
In the Deep Flushing of the Western Sky
In the deep flushing of the Western sky,
The new moon stands as she would fain be gone,
And, dropping earthward, greet Endymion:
If Death uplift me, even thus should I,
Companioned by the silver spirits high
And stationed on the sunset’s crimson towers,
Bend longing over earth’s broad stretch of bowers,
To where my love beneath their shades might lie;
For I should weary of the endless blue,
Should weary of my ever-growing light,
If that one soul, so beautiful and true,
Were hidden by earth’s vapors from my sight,
Should wane and wane as changeful planets do,
And move on slowly, wrapt in mine own night.
Sonnet
To ⸻
I love thee—not because thy love for me,
Like a great sunrise, did o’ervault my day
With purple light, and wrought upon my way
The morning dew in fresh emblazonry;
Nor that thou seest all I fain would be,
And thus dost call me by mine angel’s name,
While still my woman’s heart beats free of blame
Beneath the shelter of thy charity.
Oh, no! for wearily upon my soul
Would weigh thy golden crown of unbought praise,
Did I not look beyond the hour’s control,
To where those fruits of perfect virtue raise
Their bloom, that thou erewhile, with prophet eyes,
Didst name mine own, in groves of paradise.
Sonnet
I Love Thee for Thyself Alone—Thyself Alone
I love thee for thyself alone—thyself alone;
For that great soul, whose breath most full and rare,
Shall to humanity a message bear,
Flooding their dreary waste with organ-tone:
The truth that in thine eyes holds starry throne
And coins the words that issue from thy lips;
Heroic courage, that meets no eclipse,
And humbler virtues on thy pathway strewn;—
These love I so, that if they swift uprise
To sure fulfilment in more perfect spheres,
Still will I listen underneath the skies
For thy new song, with seldom-dropping tears,
And midst my daily tasks of love will wait
The angel Death, guardian of Heaven’s gate.
Oh, hue of the Mediterranean sea,
From thy sapphire cradle flash back on me!
Thine is the bluest life that clings
To the weary earth; bright central springs
Bubble up with thine azure, and never fail,
Though the great dome above thee curve cloudy and pale;
When the sunset lingers by Capri’s side
And throws across it a golden fleece,
Thou swellest along in bluest pride,
Stretching on, on, on, to beautiful Greece;
And siren voices drip with the oar;
“Deeper, bend deeper, to learn our lore,
The violet’s secret grows not on the shore.”
And thou, O Como, O purple one,
Did I not watch thee when day was done,
With cheek bent sideway and half-closed eyes,
That wooed from thy beauty a fresh surprise,
As a great broad curtain, dropping down
From the sweet horizon’s ample crown.
A Tyrian curtain, whose edges were wrought
With villas and gardens, and all that thought
Can find most lovely in dwellings of men,
Deep fringes of vineyards all round thee, and then
A dream of great snow-peaks throned over all—
Thy purple is worthy those kings so tall.
In the hills of Scotland, you come upon
Strange waterfalls, that the light of the sun
Glances away from through birches thin;
They fall with a slow and hollow din
Into dark, still pools where you look down deep
To see the black surface; no Lorelei there
Sits singing and combing her golden hair;
But Bunyan’s visions across you creep,
With a haunting feeling of one who came,
Her heart all trembling and stung with shame,
And, bending down to the pool’s black stir,
Saw Giant Despair looking up at her,
And heard him call from the hollow din
Till she, too ready, sank sighing in.
Pour down, O Trenton, thy amber screen
That the pool’s dim surface no more be seen!
Gay reveller, tossing away thy wine,
Thy golden sherry, whose hue divine
Was never sphered in the clustering vine;
’Tis Autumn who feeds thee; her banners she flings
Across thy full sources, and shakes in thy springs
Her whole wealth of colors, leaves orange and red,
Green, purple and mottled, an emperor’s bed
For thy waters to dream on; and when they awake,
Into flashes of gold and of amber they break:
Oh, type of glad youth, forever be hung
With garlands of faces all rosy and young!
Endnotes
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The boys in the streets of Malta string the jasmine blossoms and give or sell them to the passersby. ↩
