Short Poems

LO, SONG and sleep I love. For song's susurrus
Is the soul's wine throughout the weary days:
And silent sleep, restorer of decays,
Smooths from the fretted brow the deepening furrows;
'Tis the true Fountain of Jouvence, unfound
By knight or troubadour in the far forest ground.

With it, the air we breathe intoxicates
Our spirits with unceasing glee: the sky
Rains music from its blue immensity;
Rhyme, rhyme immortal on our utterance waits;
No end, no efflux of our joy can come—
For we are demigods, and earth's Elysium.

Without it, marble-templed cities reaching
Long piers into the sea were but as dens
For untamed beasts—as most unwholesome fens,
Stagnant and damp. Without it, the beseeching
Bosom of Nature, whereon poets lie,
Were but a cromlech gaunt, on which men well might die.

That absolute love which many women feel,
But men how few! Not winds which icily
Breathe freshness underneath a twilight sky,
When swift Apollo's burning chariot-wheel
Flies westward, bear to mortals such delight
As that most perfect love, unselfish, infinite.

That wooing air that wiles the red rose forth
To fling its passionate fragrance everywhere—
To lay its crimson heart all torn and bare
On Summer's altar. Not the bitter north,
Keen-cutting as an Arab scimetar,
But that which feels the touch of Sirius, scorching star.

More of the Garden than the Portico
Was his philosophy who dwelt therein.
He was not fain 'mid the mad world to win
Power or renown from the sparse overflow
Of Fortune's horn. To him three things were fair—
True Love, unfettered Song, and the wooing Summer-air.

This cottage on the mighty forest-verge
Was placed: primeval woodland, where the deer
But seldom might the huntsman's bugle hear.
The great oaks thundered like the ocean-surge
When came a tempest. Alpine hills afar
Caught in the crimson east the lustrous evening star.

A SAFFRON crescent in an opal sky
He watched—while she into her wine-dark hair
Braided white violets—whiter than despair,
And half as sweet as love. There fluttered by
Wings of the merle, gay caroller, who sleeps
Upon a beechen bough in the far forest deeps.

Love which is greater than oneself is like
The glow-worm,
A thing which is impossible to hide
Even though you wrap it up.

when you grow old
even mice avoid you—
how cold it is!