Short Poems

The fair maid who, the first of May,
Goes to the fields at break of day,
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree,
Will ever after handsome be.

Je vous offre un encens né dans son encensoir,
Une fleur, un parfum qui sera mort ce soir,
Destin de votre rêve aux champs de Césarée.
Il est doux, et la fleur est belle; mais un dieu
Tiendrait moins bien que vous ce frêle sceptre bleu,
Hommage d'un fidèle à votre main sacrée.

I would not have a love wild over-much,
But love with power to do or to refrain;
Love loving Love so well it would not stain
Love's fair white pinions with one brutal touch.

Man's heart is for himself a volume writ
In cipher, having no true key to it;
And other hearts discourse on every side
Language, to which no lips have e'er replied.

According to our measure and extent,
Despite long exile in these regions dim,
We must from God compute our soul's descent,
Seeing the soul on Him alone is bent,
And must in that degree partake of Him.

Above the palace of the cæsars blow
Poppies and buttercups, and rise cool trees:
The palms and pines and slender cypresses.
What pomps and passions buried under these,
Long time agone, such a great while ago!

Hail , Cytherea! whom the favour'd earth
Of Cyprus claims, exulting in thy birth.—
Bright queen! adorn'd with every winning grace,
The smile enchanting and the blooming face.
Goddess! o'er Cyprus' fragrant groves who reign,
And Salamis' high-cultivated plain;
O with thy breath inspire my humble lays,
So shall I sing in sweetest verse thy praise.

In the black jungle of the sky now wakes
The Lightning's writhing brood of fiery snakes,
And lion Thunder from his lair of cloud
Startles the dusky world with challenge loud.

When, but a child, I wandered hence,
Another child—sweet Innocence,
My sister—went with me:
But I have lost her, and am fain
To seek her in the home again
Where we were wont to be.

Servant of God, of thee the world had need,
For this thy glory, this thy triple crown,
Thy soul from out its battlemented creed
Glowed with that love which melts all barriers down.