Twelve Songs , opus 110

The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.

Virtue, how frail it is!
Friendship how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.

While skies are blue and bright, 
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream then -- and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.

Stay near me - do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find I thee,
Historian of my infancy !
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family!

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
 ... 

Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give
To more virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,
Th' other let it sleep with death:
Fitter, where it died to tell,
Than that it lived at all. Farewell.

Ye have been fresh and green,
  Ye have been filled with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
  Where maids have spent their houres.

You have beheld how they
  With wicker arks did come,
To kisse and beare away
  The richer couslips home.

Y'ave heard them sweetly sing.
  And seen them in a round;
Each virgin, like a spring,
  With hony-succles crown'd.

But now, we see none here,
  Whose silv'rie feet did tread,
And with dishevell'd haire,
  Adorn'd this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent
  Your stock, and needy grown,
You left her here to lament
 Your poore estates alone.

In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone,
Upon a wintry height;
It sleeps: around it snows have thrown
A covering of white.

It dreams forever of a Palm
That, far in the Morning-land,
Stands silent in a most sad calm
Midst of the burning sand.

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, —
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy possibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timed leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

A dainty thing's the Villanelle.
Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme,
It serves the purpose passing well.

A double-clappered silver bell
That must be made to clink in chime,
A dainty thing the Villanelle;

And if you wish to flute a spell,
Or ask a meeting 'neath a lime,
It serves the purpose passing well.

You must not ask of it the swell
Of organs grandiose and sublime-
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;

And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
It serves the purpose passing well.

Still fair to see and good to smell
As in the quaintness of its prime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle,
It serves its purpose passing well.

Aloof within the day's enormous dome, 
He holds unshared the silence of the sky. 
Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry 
The eagle's empire and the falcon's home— 
Far down, the galleons of sunset roam;
His hazards on the sea of morning lie;
Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh 
Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam.
And least of all he holds the human swarm— 
Unwitting now that men prepare
To make their dream and its fulfilment one, 
When, poised above the caldrons of the1 storm, 
Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare
His roads between the thunder and the sun.

Never seek to tell thy love 
Love that never told shall be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling between hope and fear --
Ah, she did depart.

Soon as she was gone from me
A boy chanced going by
Silently, invisibly --
He took her with a sigh.

In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships;
And gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell,
Lie nestled in the ocean-flower's bell
With love's old gifts, once kissed by long-drowned lips.
And round some wrought gold cup the sea-grass whips,
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,
When sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell
And seek dim twilight with their restless tips.
So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,
Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,
In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes;
They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold
In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,
The gleam of irrecoverable gold.

I am a woman — therefore I may not 
Call to him, cry to him, 
Fly to him, 
Bid him delay not! 

Then when he comes to me, I must sit quiet; 
Still as a stone — 
All silent and cold. 
If my heart riot — 
Crush and defy it! 
Should I grow bold. 
Say one dear thing to him. 
All my life fling to him, 
Cling to him — 
What to atone 
Is enough for my sinning! 
This were the cost to me. 
This were my winning — 
That he were lost to me. 

Not as a lover 
At last if he part from me, 
Tearing my heart from me, 
Hurt beyond cure — 
Calm and demure 
Then must I hold me, 
In myself fold me. 
Lest he discover; 
Showing no sign to him 
By look of mine to him 
What he has been to me — 
How my heart turns to him, 
Follows him, yearns to him, 
Prays him to love me. 

Pity me, lean to me, 
Thou God above me! 

Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.