Better a life of toil and slow disease
That Love companions through the patient years,
Than one whose heritage is loveless ease,
That never knows the blessedness of tears.
PASSION
The wine-loud laughter of indulged desire
Upon his lips, and, in his eyes, the fire
Of uncontrol, he takes in reckless hands,—
And interrupts with discords,—the sad lyre
Of Love’s deep soul, and never understands.
THE TROGLODYTE
In ages dead, a troglodyte,
At the hollow roots of a monster height,—
That grew from the heart of the world to light,—
I dwelt in caverns: Over me
Were mountains older than the moon;
And forests, vaster than the sea,
And gulfs, that the earthquake’s hand had hewn,
Hung under me. And late and soon
I heard the Dæmon of Change that sighed
A cosmic language of mystery;
Where I sat silent, primeval-eyed,
With the infant Spirit of Prophecy.
Gaunt stars glared down on the Titan peaks;
And the gaunter glare of the cratered streaks
Of the sunset’s ruin heard condor shrieks:
The roar of cataracts hurled in air,
And the hurricane, laying its thunders bare,
And the rush of battling beasts,—whose lair
Was the antechamber of nadir-gloom,—
Were my outworld joys. But who can tell
The awe of the depths whence rose the boom
Of the iron rivers that fashioned Hell!
THE EVANESCENT BEAUTIFUL
Day after day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.
But where are now the glory and the rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the joy, that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?
I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower—something’s lost in me.