lost

Out over my study,
All ashen and ruddy,
Sinks the December sun;
And high up over
The chimney’s soot cove,
The winter night wind has begun.

Here in the red embers
I dream old Decembers,
Until the low moan of the blast,
Like a voice out of Ghost-land,


Or memory’s lost-land,
Seems to conjure up wraiths of the past.

Then into the room
Through the firelight and gloom,
Some one steals,—let the night-wind grow bleak,


And ever so coldly,—
Two white arms enfold me,

A pair of blackbirds
warring in the roses,
one or two poppies

losing their heads,
the trampled lawn
a battlefield of dolls.

Branch by pruned branch,
a child has climbed
the family tree

to queen it over us:
we groundlings search
the flowering cherry

till we find her face,
its pale prerogative
to rule our hearts.

Sir Walter Raleigh
trails his comforter
about the muddy garden,

a full-length Hilliard
in miniature hose
and padded pants.

I cannot hold, for though to write were rude,
Yet to be silent were Ingratitude,
And Folly too; for if Posterity
Should never hear of such a one as thee,
And onely know this Age's brutish fame,
They would think Vertue nothing but a Name.
And though far abler Pens must her define,
Yet her Adoption hath engaged mine:
And I must own where Merit shines so clear,
'Tis hard to write, but harder to forbear.
Sprung from an ancient and an honour'd Stem,
Who lent her lustre, and she paid it them;

I

The angels guide him now,
And watch his curly head,
And lead him in their games,
The little boy we led.


II

He cannot come to harm,
He knows more than we know,
His light is brighter far
Than daytime here below.


III

His path leads on and on,
Through pleasant lawns and flowers,
His brown eyes open wide
At grass more green than ours.


IV

With playmates like himself,
The shining boy will sing,
Exploring wondrous woods,

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red
On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;
Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;

Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess'd the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:

The yule-log sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.

As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture's breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;

When I look out on London's teeming streets,
On grim grey houses, and on leaden skies,
My courage fails me, and my heart grows sick,
And I remember that fair heritage
Barter'd by me for what your London gives.
This is not Nature's city: I am kin
To whatsoever is of free and wild,
And here I pine between these narrow walls,
And London's smoke hides all the stars from me,
Light from mine eyes, and Heaven from my heart.

For in an island of those Southern seas
That lie behind me, guarded by the Cross

He has lost him completely.     And now he is seeking
on the lips of     every new lover
the lips of his beloved;     in the embrace
of every new lover     he seeks to be deluded
that he is the same lad,     that it it to him he is yielding.

He has lost him copmletely,     as if he had never been at all.
For he wanted -- so he said --     he wanted to be saved
from the stigmatized,     the sick sensual delight;
from the stigmatized,     sensual delight of shame.
There was still time --     as he said -- to be saved.

Jane looks down at her organdy skirt
As if it somehow were the thing disgraced,
For being there, on the floor, in the dirt,
And she catches it up about her waist,
Smooths it out along one hip,
And pulls it over the crumpled slip.

On the porch, green-shuttered, cool,
Asleep is Bertram that bronze boy,
Who, having wound her around a spool,
Sends her spinning like a toy
Out to the garden, all alone,
To sit and weep on a bench of stone.

Soon the purple dark must bruise