English

Dreary snows are all around us in the gardens,
And the starlit frosty sky is chilly blue.
On the silent stream the stifling cold ice hardens:
The moon shivers at the air it travels through.
Yet the sweetest of the seasons is the winter:
Winter well may smile at summer's ardent scorn.
When the air was keen with many an icy splinter,
Love with summer at the heart of him was born.

Love hath summer in his spirit never dying.
Does it matter if the wild wind through the sprays
Dashes, leaving all the tossing branches sighing?

When the leaves are whirling through the forest olden,
Grey and green and brown and crimson dying leaves,
Sodden leaves that only yesterday were golden,
While the autumn wind-swept foliage sways and heaves,
There are ghosts of lovers through the forest questing,
Seeking vainly as their weary footsteps stray,
Haunts they loved when all around the birds were nesting
And the air was sweet with fragrance of the may.

Weary ghosts they are of former happy lovers.
Now they find no mossy carpet for their feet

Grand and glorious is the season of the roses.
Spring has passed, but stronger sunlight gilds the corn.
On the silver stream the lily's head reposes,
And the ripple lifts it tenderly at morn,
Love has deepened, with the deepening of the season.
Love has strengthened, with the passing of the hours.
Love has grown beyond the fear of change or treason.
Love has stolen the glow and glory of the flowers.

Man and woman understand and love each other.
Through the silent leafy summer lanes they wend,

Pour thou thy breath along the rose-hung lanes,
Sweet west wind — pass through fragrant Italy —
Yea, linger over many a perfumed sea
Whose waves the deathless southern sunset stains.
But as for me where the high north wind reigns
I'll reign, and with keen tides of purest breath
Sweep over ice-bound lands and frozen plains
Where all is silent in consummate death: —
But join thou unto mine thy fragrant hand,
And I will with thee seek thy southern land, —
Yea, thou shalt melt and bless my iron-bound north,

Yea, for thou art the fragrant south-west wind,
Its gentle whisper in the summer trees,
Its gentle rustle of the sultry blind
Of summer — what doest thou on mounts that freeze,
Yea, what hast thou, my sweet, to do with these
High rocks that scorn and choke thy summer laughter?
If thou dost venture from thy green calm leas
Then of a surety thy step Death stalks after,
And soon will tremulous shudders shake thy knees
And dissolution thy white body seize:
O south-west wind of mine be wise, nor follow

Under the bright room where they lay,
Deep in the stonework gaunt and grey,
I will build a dungeon grim.
She and her lover (I stabbed him dead,
And his blood-drops splashed her breast with red)
Shall rest in the darkness dim.
Under the bright room where they lay
They shall wait in the dark till the Judgment Day
Flames out upon her and him.

( How it goes ring, ringing, through my brain ,
That foolish light old swift refrain
She was singing when we met in Spain;
“I love you, I love you—” again and again!)

Within a humble London room
A poet lived and wrought:
He saw the sweet spring-blossoms bloom,
But only in his thought.

His eyes were darkened. But his soul
Had power to see the skies:
Of Nature's lore he read the whole
With his heart's loving eyes.

A thousand spirits walk the earth,
Yet have no power to see:
They miss its sorrow, miss its mirth,
Its beauty. Not so he!

For him the sun was full of light,
And blue the clear sea-wave;
The wind-tost woods returned delight

Golden dawn is breaking
Over land and sea:
All the birds are waking:
Does my love love me?

See, the morning's sweetness
At the window-pane!
Summer's full completeness
Has returned again.

In my heart all flowers
Seem to blossom now:
Bloom of woodbine-bowers;
Buds of apple-bough.

Hardly can I fancy
What is most in bloom, —

I.

God recreates the earth and air,
And makes the vast blue waters fair,
And makes the earth's wide meadows green
For every genius therein born;
For each regards the past with scorn
As if it had not been!

Each genius, by his birthright grand,
Inherits sea and sky and land;
For each God clothes all stars anew
In fiery splendour. — Shakespeare's dead!

Sometimes, when music sounds,
Towards some strange palace I am led
Where meet, methinks, the dead:
I travel through enchanted grounds.

Within those palace-walls, bright-eyed,
They dance, converse, — as love or music leads
But I, within the darkness, left outside,
Shiver, and hear the hoarse wind through the reeds.