Love flew by! Young wedding day,
Peeping through her veil of dew,
Saw him, and her heart went fey —
His wings no shadows threw.

Love flew by! Young day was gone,
Owls were hooting — Whoo-to-whoo!
Happy wedded lay alone,
Who'd vowed that love was true.

Love flies by, and drops a rose —
Drops a rose, a sprig of yew!
Happy these — but ah! for those
Whose love has cried: Adieu!

A health to Kate,
Our Soveraigns Mate,
Of the Royal House of Lisbone:
But the Devil take Hyde,
And the Bishop beside,
Who made her bone his bone.

My love lived there! And now
'Tis but a shell of brick,
New-painted, flowered about —
So far from being quick
As night when stars die out.

From windows gaily wide,
Where once the curtained dark
My heaven used to hide,
The memories wan and stark
Troop down to me outside.

Once, long ago in summer's glow,
We threaded, you and I,
A garden's maze of pleasant ways,
Whose beauty charmed the eye, —
Where violets bent in sweet content,
And pinks stood proud and high.

And from their screen of tender green
Broad pansies, peeping through,
Wore gorgeous dyes like butterflies;
Cool lilies kept the dew,
And fair and tall along the wall
The climbing roses grew.

The velvet bees in fragrant ease,
Lay drunken with perfume,
Song-sparrows made the garden's shade
Their fitting concert-room,

Lorrain he Stole, by Fraud he got Burgundy
Flanders he bought 'ods you Shall pay for't one day.

I.

Early one twilight morn I sought
A favorite woodland shade,
A place where out of idleness
Some profit might be made.

II.

The voices of the little birds
Were musical and loud,
Buried among the twinkling leaves,
A merry, merry crowd.

III.

But when the gallant sun rode up
Into his own broad sky,
The very wood itself did seem
Alive with melody.

IV.

Straw in the street!
My heart, oh! hearken —
Fate thrums its song of sorrow!
The windows darken. . . .
O God of all tomorrow!

Straw in the street!
To wintry sleeping
Turns all our summer laughter.
The brooms are sweeping. . . .
There's naught for me hereafter!

Lamps, lamps! Lamps ev'rywhere!
You wistful, gay, and burning eyes,
You stars low-driven from the skies
Down on the rainy air.

You merchant eyes, that never tire
Of spying out our little ways;
Of summing up our little days
In ledgerings of fire —

Inscrutable your nightly glance,
Your lighting and your snuffing out,
Your flicker through the windy rout,
Guiding this mazy dance.

O watchful, troubled gaze of gold,
Protecting us upon our beats —
You piteous glamour of the streets,
Youthless — and never old!

Far on the deep mid-ocean tossed,
Leagues away from the friendly shore,
In the watery wilderness lost,
Driven and deafened by rush and roar,
Baffled by wind and wave are we;—
What sweet home-spirits may there be
Sadly pondering on our wandering
Wide and wearisome, out at sea!

Lying here in my tossing bed,
I dream of ruin, and rock, and wreck,—
Hearing the slow, continuous tread
Of the sailor who walks the deck,
Keeping his long watch patiently;—
Gentler watchers on shore there be;

Oh! if there be a spot upon the earth
Where ruin hath more lightly laid her hand
Than elsewhere, surely it is this fair place!
Who ever saw decay more beautiful,
Than when she holds her silent court as now
Within the mouldering crypts of Heidelberg?
Nay, one might think that Time himself were awed
By such memorials of man's pomp and power,
So that he walked with somewhat of a soft
And reverential step, as we should tread
Over the ashes of departed friends.
Spirit of Desolation! Men may come
To do thee homage in thy lone retreats,