u forget,
Dear girl, how often we have met?
And I have gazed into your eyes
And there beheld no sad regret
To cloud the gladness of their skies,
While in your heart--unheard as yet--
Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?--
In years to come, will you forget?
Ah, me! I only pray that when,
In other days, some man of men
Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep
With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken
When love awakens in their deep,--
I only pray some memory then,
Or sad or sweet, you still will keep
Of me and love that might have been.
_Clouds of the
Autumn Night_
Clouds of the autumn night,
Under the hunter's moon,--
Ghostly and windy white,--
Whither, like leaves wild strewn,
Take ye your stormy flight?
Out of the west, where dusk,
From her rich windowsill,
Leaned with a wand of tusk,
Witch-like, and wood and hill
Phantomed with mist and musk.
Into the east, where morn
Sleeps in a shadowy close,
Shut with a gate of horn,
'Round which the dreams she knows
Flutter with rose and thorn.
Blow from the west, oh, blow,
Clouds that the tempest steers!
And with your rain and snow
Bear of my heart the tears,
And of my soul the woe.
Into the east then pass,
Clouds that the night winds sweep!
And on her grave's sear grass,
There where she lies asleep.
There let them fall, alas!
_The Glory
and the Dream_
There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold
Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,
As of a moonlit primrose brimmed with rain,
Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.
Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;--
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veined violets stream;--
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet's dream;
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion--dead this many a year.
_Snow
and Fire_
Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk
And lilies of the morn;
And cactus, holding up a slender tusk
Of fragrance on a thorn;
All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,
Her presence puts to scorn.
For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,
Scentless and chaste of heart;
The moonflower, making spiritual the ai
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