Wind & sea are as playmates
Reviving an ancient affection:
Lovers they are, & the breeze
Combs out the beard of the wave;
Ripples & smoothes to a mirror
Its breast, until old recollection
Dreams of the peace of the vale,
Dance & the pastoral stave.

We are desert leagues apart;
Time is misty ages now
Since the warmth of heart to heart
Chased the shadows from my brow.

Oh, I am so old, meseems
I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
From the long-forgotten prime.

You have come a path of flowers.
What a way was mine to roam!
Many a fallen empire's towers,
Many a ruined heart my home.

No, there is no comfort, none.
All the dewy tender breath
Idly falls when life is done
On the starless brow of death.

Though the dream of love may tire,

So far as I conceive the world's rebuke
To him address'd who would recast her new,
Not from herself her fame of strength she took,
But from their weakness who would work her rue.

‘Behold,’ she cries, so many rages lull'd,
So many fiery spirits quite cool'd down;
Look how so many valours, long undull'd,
After short commerce with me, fear my frown!

‘Thou too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue!’—
The world speaks well; yet might her foe reply:
‘Are wills so weak?—then let not mine wait long!

Ah, brief is Life,
Love's short, sweet way,
With dreamings rife,
And then—Good-day!

And Life is vain—
Hope's vague delight,
Grief's transient pain,
And then—Good-night!

This the true sign of ruin to a race—
It undertakes no march, and day by day
Drowses in camp, or, with the laggard's pace,
Walks sentry o'er possessions that decay;
Destined, with sensible waste, to fleet away;—
For the first secret of continued power
Is the continued conquest;—all our sway
Hath surety in the uses of the hour;
If that we waste, in vain walled town and lofty tower!

When evening comes
I will leave the door open beforehand and then wait
For him who said he would come
To meet me in my dreams.

What am I to do with my Sister?
Whom, like the Judas-tree
Which grows in the moon,
I may see with my eyes
But not touch with my hands?

Unknown love
Is as bitter a thing
As the maiden-lily
Which grows in the thickets
Of the summer moor.

I perished, slain
By love's fierce bliss;
Buried I lay
Her arms within;
I lived again
By her sweet kiss,
And in her eyes
A heaven did win!

A' you 'at smudge at merry teales,
Or at devarshon sheyle,
Or goff and gurn at tuolliments,
Now lend your lugs a wheyle;
For sec an Infair I've been at,
As hes but seldom been,
Whar was sec wallopin' an' wark,
As varra few hev seen
By neeght or day.

Bit furst I'll tell ye how an' why
This parlish bout begun,
An' when an' whar, an' whea they war,
'At meade a' this feyne fun;
Furst, you mun ken, a youthfu' pair,
By frugal thrift exceyted,
Wad hev a breydewain, an' of course
The country roun' inveyted
Agean that day.