Do not as in my earlier days, oppress

Me with their beauty; for the grief that dims

The eye and cheek, hath touched them too, and made Them dearer to me, being more akin.

Death weaves the subtle mystery of joy :

He gives a trembling preciousness to love,
Makes stern eyes dim above a sleeping face
Half-hidden in its cloud of golden curls.

Death is a greater poet far than Love;
The summer light is sweeter for his shade.

The past is very tender at my heart;
Full, as the memory of an ancient friend
When once again we stand beside his grave.
Raking amongst old papers thrown in haste
'Mid useless lumber, unawares I came

On a forgotten poem of my youth.

I went aside and read each faded page

Warm with dead passion, sweet with buried Junes,

Filled with the light of suns that are no more.

I stood like one who finds a golden tress
Given by loving hands no more on earth,

And starts, beholding how the dust of years,
Which dims all else, has never touched its light.
I stood before the grave-door of the past,

And to these eyes my yet unmouldered youth
Came forth like Lazarus. Thou swallow, Love,
Which thus revisit'st thine accustomed eaves,

Return, return to climes beyond the sea!
This ruined nest can never nurse thy young;
Thy twitter, and thy silver-flashing breast,
But mock me with the days that are no more.

I have been bold enough to send you this, Though little of the Poet's shaping art

Is in these sheets, and nothing more was sought Than that most sweet relief which dwells in verse

To a new spirit o'er which tyrannized,

Like a musician o'er an instrument,

The sights and sounds of the majestic world.

I

You knew me when my fond and ignorant youth

Was an unwindowed chamber of delight,

Deaf to all noise, sweet as a rose's heart:

A sudden earthquake rent it to the base,
And through the rifts of ruin sternly gleamed
An apparition of grey windy crag,

Black leagues of forest roaring like a sea,

And far lands dim with rain. There was my world

And place for evermore.

When forth I went

I took my gods with me, and set them up

Within my foreign home. What love I had,

What admiration and keen sense of joy,

Unspent in verse, has been to me a stream

Feeding the roots of being; living sap

That dwelt within the myriad boughs of life,

And kept the leaves of feeling fresh and green.

Instead of sounding in the heads of fools,

Like wind within a ruin, it became

A pious benediction and a smile

On all the goings on of human life;

An incommunicable joy in day,

In lone waste places, and the light of stars.

Now as the years wear on, I hunger more To see your face again before I die.

Last night I dreamed I saw a mighty ship
Through a great sea of moonlight bearing on,
Its coil of smoke dissolving into mist

Beyond its shining track; and in my dream
I felt you on your way. May this be true!
Sometimes, in looking back upon my life,
I fear I have mistaken ill for good.
There are no children's voices in my house.
If I have never ventured from the strand,
Been spared the peril of the storm and rock,
I never have returned with merchandise.

I know that She has melted from your sight,
And that a colony of little graves

Makes that far earth as sacred as the sky.

Alone like me—your solitude is not

Empty like mine: lost faces come and go,

I have but thoughts. It may be that you weep,
But I have not a sorrow worth a tear:

Methinks to-night mine seems the harder fate.
The fire I kindled warmed myself alone,

And now, when it is sinking red and low

Within the solemn gloom, there is no hand
To heap on fuel. Therefore let it sink.

Life cannot bring me more than it has brought.
The oft-repeated tale has lost its charm.

I would not linger on to age, and have

The gold of life beat out to thinnest leaf.

Like winds that in the crimson autumn eves
Pipe of the winter snow, my prescient thoughts
Are touched with sadness. Ay, the leaf must fall
And rot in the long rain. The stage is bare,
The actor and the critic have retired,

And through the empty house a hand I know
Is putting out the lights; 'twill soon be dark.