After Reading Shakspere
Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy hands
Or on the edges of the darkness peers,
Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears:
Imagination (lo! the sky expands)
Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,—
Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres,
The rush of light before the hurrying years,
The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands.
Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie light
The dusky vales of Saturn—wood and stream;
But who shall follow on the awful sweep
Of Neptune through the dim and dreadful deep?
Onward he wanders in the unknown night,
And we are shadows moving in a dream.
The Hidden Valley
I stray with Ariel and Caliban:
I know the hill of windy pines—I know
Where the jay’s nest swings in the wild gorge below:
Lightly I climb where fallen cedars span
Bright rivers—climb to a valley under ban,
Where west winds set a thousand bells ablow—
An eerie valley where in the morning glow
I hear the music of the pipes of Pan.
Mysterious horns blow by on the still air—
A satyr steps—a wood-god’s dewy notes
Come faintly from a vale of tossing oats.—
But ho! what white thing in the canyon crossed?
Gods! I shall come on Dian unaware,
Look on her fearful beauty and be lost.
The Poets
Some cry of Sappho’s lyre, of Saadi’s flute,
Comes back across the waste of mortal things:
Men strive and die to reach the Dead Sea fruit—
Only the poets find immortal springs.
Love’s Vigil
Love will outwatch the stars, and light the skies
When the last star falls, and the silent dark devours;
God’s warrior, he will watch the allotted hours,
And conquer with the look of his sad eyes:
He shakes the kingdom of darkness with his sighs,
His quiet sighs, while all the Infernal Powers
Tremble and pale upon their central towers,
Lest, haply, his bright universe arise.