Yet, there is something fateful in thy face:
Say, when the master caught it, didst thou know,
Almost thy name would perish with thy grace,
Thine artifices melt away like snow,
And all the power within this painted space,
Be his alone to hold and haunt us so?
A NOVEMBER DAY
There are no clouds above the world,
But just a round of limpid grey,
Barred here with nacreous lines unfurled,
That seem to crown the autumnal day,
With rings of silver chased and pearled.
The moistened leaves along the ground,
Lie heavy in an aureate floor;
The air is lingering in a swound;
Afar from some enchanted shore,
Silence has blown instead of sound.
The trees all flushed with tender pink
Are floating in the liquid air,
Each twig appears a shadowy link,
To keep the branches mooréd there,
Lest all might drift or sway and sink.
This world might be a valley low,
In some lost ocean grey and old,
Where sea-plants film the silver flow,
Where waters swing above the gold
Of galleons sunken long ago.
OTTAWA
City about whose brow the north winds blow,
Girdled with woods and shod with river foam,
Called by a name as old as Troy or Rome,
Be great as they, but pure as thine own snow;
Rather flash up amid the auroral glow,
The Lamia city of the northern star,
Than be so hard with craft or wild with war,
Peopled with deeds remembered for their woe.