Short Poems

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.

The Door of Death is made of gold,
That mortal eyes cannot behold;
But when the mortal eyes are clos'd,
And cold and pale the limbs repos'd,
The soul awakes; and, wond'ring, sees
In her mild hand the golden keys . . .

Frail creatures are we all! To be the best,
Is but the fewest faults to have: —
Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience and the grave.

Cold and still did the forest loom,
As groaning I strayed thro' the midnight gloom.
I woke up the trees in unmannerly fashion,
They only nodded their heads in compassion.

True friendship—true love—the philosopher's stone—
Good people who prize all the three I have known:
And I prized, and have sought them since manhood began,
But I have not yet found them—do all that I can.

Beauteous stars, with golden ray,
Greet my dear one far away;
Tell her, weak and worn I feel,
Sick at heart, but true as steel.

So fair is the world, and so blue the sky,
The airs breathe so balmy and tenderly,
On the meadows the flowers with open eye
Sparkle and gleam where the dewdrops lie,
And men are exulting as I pass by.
But I would lie in the grave's strait bed
And nestle close to a love that is dead.

The violets of her eyes, the rose
That on her cheek so softly glows,
The lilies her white hands disclose—
These bloom as sweetly as before,
But the heart is rotten to the core.

Upon my dearest's pretty eyne
I make the fairest canzoni;
Upon my dearest's mouth so fine
I make the best terza rima;
Upon my dearest's cheek divine
I make the noblest stanze.
And I'd pen her a sonnet, and not a bad one,
On her little heart—if she only had one.

The rose and the lily, the dove and the sun,
With a passionate love I once loved every one.
I love them no more—but I love the completest,
The neatest and meetest, discreetest and sweetest.
She herself is love's well-spring, and other there's none,
For she's rose and she's lily, she's dove and she's sun.