English

When God creates new worlds in his immensities
He hides his laboratory from man's eyes,
Where light or darkness covers, so intense it is,
And countless eons ripen the surprise.

He shows no haste in trying his experiments,
A million times he makes, remakes, destroys;
In living forms he weaves the cast-off cerements,
To mould the new he uses old alloys.

Upon this earth of ours what endless mysteries!

Viewed with a sceptical eye what more insignificant sight
Offered itself to the world than the Mayflower ready for flight
Over the barren main to a land where savages prowled.
Such an unseaworthy vessel — so small, so cramped, so befouled,
Leaky, exposed to the weather, slow and cumbrous in form,
Most ill-fashioned to sail, unfitted to cope with the storm!
Then such a hireling crew, gathered in from Londiman slums,
Ready for any emprise, no matter what obloquy comes;
Such a cargo of motley equipment for households uptorn,

ON AN ANCIENT ROMAN COIN

How long the years since you were fair and bright?
In what dim vault have you been hid away, —
Coming with air antique to our clear day
From out vast centuries of silent night?
Ah! how your glow gladdened a weary sight
In times remote, when earth beheld the sway
Of some great Caesar, scarred in many a fray,

ZENOBIA

The tawny sands girt high thy ruined fanes,
Bronzed with the hot sun's burning torrid gold,
And lonely are the courts, once wont to hold
The wise and brave, held in thy beauty's chains:
Where orchards bloomed, the sterile, thirsty plains,
For countless leagues in weary sameness rolled,
Sweep wide and desolate. The desert's fold
Now hides the glory of thy fair domains.

CLEOPATRA

Beneath a glorious light, that fondly lies
On ruined temples, and wide sweeping sand,
The Nile, gold fretted, lingers through the land.
Once, long ago, your eager, hungry eyes,
With youth's glad wonder, sought the purple skies,
Across the fields where graceful palm-trees stand,
And saw the pyramids, superbly grand,
Silent and massive from the desert rise.

SAPPHO

Calm with the burden of a great despair,
Amid the starry glory of the night,
Her clear eyes full of death's mysterious light,
The moonbeams wandering through her yellow hair,
Her royal beauty shining cold and fair,
While far away dim sails show soft and white,
And fragrant winds moan 'round the beetling height,
She hears the sea's low sobbing fill the air.

PROSERPINE

Ah, Proserpine, the gods were good to you,
Though Pluto held you in his drear domains,
For it was love who bound you in soft chains,
Making the Styx glow with translucent hue, —
And Hades' cavern roofed with deepening blue, —
And Death's sad king, grand by the bitter pains,
That smote the dwellers on his arid plains, —
And Cerberus a faithful slave and true.

VENUS

This is the face that shone when Greece was free,
And haloed by gray cloud or foaming wave,
Thrilled coward hearts, and made them strong and brave;
For love that ruled supreme, love whose degree
Was greater than the greatest kings could be,
Glowed in the eyes whose brightness was the grave
Of wise resolves, that should poor mortals save
From this imperial goddess of the sea.

There stands your cottage, peeping from the wood
And facing all the splendors of the sea,
On that dear spot where I to-day would be;
Above, below, azure of sky and flood;
Boundless seclusion, boundless solitude;
And in the midst what social feast for me
To choice of speech or silence bidden free,
While winds and waves rock every varying mood!
Through doors and windows wide, through all the house,
What breeze-blown odors sweep of spice and balm,
Hemlock and pine, cedar and wilding rose,
And miles away the scent of meadow mows!

Shut in by clustering roofs and clustering trees,
Though not far off our blue bright river pours
Its full swift volume 'twixt the gracious shores,
How do I long on golden days like these
For the wide vision of the crested seas
Where the fleet swallow circles, dips, and soars;
Where flash the gull's white wings, the fisher's oars,
And sails that shift and darken in the breeze!
Where the white surf along the glistening beach,
And on the black rocks streaming from the spray,
Tosses incessant far as eye can reach,