romantic poems

S HELTER

I HAVE been out where the winds are,
And tossing tops of trees,
And clouds that sweep from rim to rim
Of blue infinities.
And all was a sound and sway there, a surging of unrest:
So now I am wanting silence, and the heart I love best.

Yes, and a quiet book, too,
Of pensive poetry,
In which to let the lines lapse
Away, unlessonedly.

S WALLOWS

I N a room that we love,
Under a lamp,
Whose soft glow falls around,
We sit each night and you read to me,
Through the silence soul-profound.
And black on the yellow frieze of the walls
The swallows fly unchanging;
Round, round, yet never round,
Ranging, — yet never ranging.

We sit and you read, your face aglow,
While amid dreams that start
I watch the swallows
As each follows
The other, swift, apart.
Till oft it seems that your words are birds,

LOVE AND I NFINITY

A CROSS the kindling twilight moon
A late gull wings to rest.
The sea is murmuring underneath
Its vast eternal quest.
The coast-light flashes over the tide
A red and warning eye,
And Oh, the world is very wide,
But you are nigh!

The stars come out from zone to zone,
The wind knows every one
And blows their message to my heart,

In mount or vale, throughout the changeful year,
From all the by-ways of the world, I peer
Into the secret places where they wind
Almost beyond the utmost reach of mind,
And beauty, beauty everywhere I find.

" O why, " I asked, " doth Nature in such wealth
Lavish her jewels, hide them as by stealth,
The wondrous treasures of her artist soul
In opulence outpour, and o'er the whole
Great wilderness of worlds her splendours roll? "

From jungles only to the wild things known,

The choral pines to the wild winds are singing,
A weird Æolian strain,
Aloft their green imperial branches swinging
In sunshine, dark and rain,
Through all the patient centuries outflinging
Their litanies of pain.

Stern atmospheres and lashing storms enfold them
And robes of ancient night;
The rock-sills of the solid planet hold them
And swing them to the light;
They whisper dreams — the dreams the mountains told them,
The great peaks tipped with white.

Dreams of the story of their own creation —

HE ANSWERS AGAIN

I KNOW you love me still, for all the blue
And ardent glances of your tender eyes
Can never feign, or you would not be you;
And yet in your high heart you do despise
The thing I did, and swift resentments rise
That I, unto myself was so untrue,
That I could stain the perfect love I knew,
That I could so defile my life's set prize!
You love me, yes, and yet you hate the sin
Against our love's convincing purity;
I mourn with you for what I might have been,
High priest of loyal Love's security —

HE ANSWERS

You , who have suffered much because I failed,
This bitter anguish you can never know —
To see in eyes you love the utter woe
Of one whose heart unto a cross is nailed.
Must those dear eyes forever be half veiled
As though afraid to meet the cruel blow
Of disillusion? Ah! how faint their glow —
Poor, martyred spirits by their love impaled.
Beloved, I would give my days to this,
Could I but render back the joy you miss,
And lift the load I laid, the deep distress.

SCENE SECOND. — Another P ART OF THE F OREST .

Enter L EFROY , carrying his rifle, and examining a knot of wild flowers .

L EFROY . This region is as lavish of its flowers
As Heaven of its primrose blooms by night.
This is the Arum which within its root
Folds life and death; and this the Prince's Pine,
Fadeless as love and truth — the fairest form
That ever sun-shower washed with sudden rain.
This golden cradle is the Moccasin Flower,
Wherein the Indian hunter sees his hound;

The wall is without a rampart. Because it holds no water,
the moat has calves grazing and frisking in it. So the city
stands. Her father does not think about this, since he
is deluded. And her brothers—Killi of the swift horses
who wears a chaplet lovely to look at
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

No w may we range next to the Ranke of loue
Other Affections , and to doe it right
We must place Favoure there, by which w' approve
Of some thing wherein we conceave delight,
For that it 's good in deede or so in sight:
Herein Loue's obligation doth commence;
Yet favoure may haue force where loue lacks might ,
But without Favoure, Loue is a non ENS ,
For, Favoure waites vpon Love's excellence.

Then Reverence with Favour we may Ranke ,
Bredd by comparing some high Dignitie
With some inferior State (that Fortune sanck)