To some unearthly revel Of mimes, a motley crew, 'Twixt Angel-land and Devil, You lured me on, I knew, And lure me still! soft whiling The way with hopes beguiling, While dark Despair sits smiling Behind the eyes of you!
Now nights grow cold and colder, And North the wild vane swings, And round each tree and boulder The driving snow-storm sings-- Come, make my old heart older, O memory of lost things!
Of Hope, when promise sung her Brave songs and I was young, That banquets now on hunger Since all youth's songs are sung; Of Love, who walks with younger Sweethearts the flowers among.
Ah, well! while Life holds levee, Death's ceaseless dance goes on. So let the curtains, heavy About my couch, be drawn-- The curtains, sad and heavy, Where all shall sleep anon.
Night and vast caverns of rock and of iron; Voices like water, and voices like wind; Horror and tempests of hail that environ Shapes and the shadows of two who have sinned.
Wan on the whirlwind, in loathing uplifting Faces that loved once, forever they go, TRISTAM and ISOLT, the lovers, go drifting, The sullen laughter of Hell below.
Her life was bound to crutches: pale and bent, But smiling ever, she would go and come: For of her soul GOD made an instrument Of strength and comfort to an humble home.
Better a life of toil and slow disease That LOVE companions through the patient years, Than one whose heritage is loveless ease, That never knows the blessedness of tears.
Three miles of hill it is; and I Came through the woods that waited, dumb, For the cool _Summer_ dusk to come; And lingered there to watch the sky Up which the gradual sunset clomb.
A tree-toad quavered in a tree; And then a sudden whip-poor-will Called overhead, so wildly shrill, The startled woodland seemed to see How very lone it was and still.
Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight An owl took; and, at sleepy strife, The cricket turned its fairy fife; And through the dead leaves, in the night, Soft rustlings stirred of unseen life.
And in the punk-wood everywhere The inserts ticked, or bored below The rotted bark; and, glow on glow, The gleaming fireflies here and there Lit up their Jack-o'-lantern show.
I heard a vesper-sparrow sing, Withdrawn, it seemed, into the far Slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar; The sunset, softly smouldering Behind gaunt trunks, with its one star.