Over my neighbor's garden wall
There leans a willow-tree, fair and tall, —

A weeping willow, whose long boughs sigh,
And shiver, and sob, as the winds go by,

Like a sorrowful woman, standing there
With drooping garments and drifting hair.

And its branches move, as it grieving stands,
With a motion that seems like the wringing of hands.

Why does it mourn so, night and day,
And why do its tresses drift this way?

Why does it seem that the striving tree
Has some sad message to speak to me?

On the low wall of my chamber, where the moonbeams fall most brightly,
Mingling with the struggling firelight in a soft, uncertain strife,
Hangs a dear familiar picture, which I sit and gaze at nightly,
Till it seems no more a painting, but a form instinct with life.

'Tis the face of one who early by life's rugged wayside fainted,
And above whose lonesome grave-mound are my bitterest tear-drops shed, —
One who often haunts my dreaming, with her face serene and sainted,
With her bright lips uttering blessings, and a glory round her head.

Once of a mazy afternoon, beside that southern sea,
I watched a shoal of sunny beams come swimming close to me.
Each was a whited candle-flamelet, flickering in air;
Each was a silver daffodil astonied to be there;
Each was a diving summer star, its brightness come to lave;
And each a little naked spirit leaping on the wave.

And while I sat, and while I dreamed, beside that summer sea,
There came the fairest thought of all that ever came to me;
The tiny lives of tiny men, no more they seemed to mean

The smiling sea
And dunes and sky
Dream; and the bee
Goes dreaming by.

In heaven's field
Moon's scimitar
Is drawn to shield
One dreaming star.

The dreaming flowers
And lovers nod.
Serene these hours —
Serene is God.

Beauty is not a set and flawless rule;
She spells the mist, and with a silver wing
Hovers upon the shades of grey and brown
No less than on a rich embroidery.
She is a kind of rhythm, an accord
Of dreaming notes, so vague and mystical
That on a breath irrelevant, they fade.

She subtly whispers her imaginings,
And hath a tender breath more delicate
Than far-blown scent of gorse on distant hills.
If we but catch the glimmer of her wing,
Then witchery! We needs must follow her!...
If never on our path she comes along —

Love!—that love which comes so stealthily,
And takes us up, and twists us as it will—
What fever'd hours of agony 'twill bring!
How oft we wake and cry: “God set me free
Of love—to never love again!” And still
We fall, and clutch it by the knees, and cling
And press our lips—and so, once more are glad!

And if it go, or if it never come,
Through what a grieving wilderness of pain
We travel on! In prisons stripped of light
We blindly grope, and wander without home.
The friendless winds that sweep across the plain—

We traveled through the soundless night
And breathed the fragrant June,
Tumultous fragrance, flooded bright
With an unwaning moon;
Till from the whitened field the wood
Rose dark along the hill, —
And there with sudden joy we stood
To hear thee, whip-poor-will!

O Bird, O Wonder! Long and high
Thy measured question calls!
I marvel, till thy perfect cry
Almost too perfect falls.

What art thou singing, voice divine,
Heart of the poignant night?
What utter loveliness is thine,
Of suffering or delight?

This is my attic room. Sit down, my friend.
My swallow's nest is high and hard to gain;
The stairs are long and steep; but at the end
The rest repays the pain.

For here are peace and freedom; room for speech
Or silence, as may suit a changeful mood:
Society's hard by-laws do not reach
This lofty altitude.

You hapless dwellers in the lower rooms
See only bricks and sand and windowed walls;
But here, above the dust and smoky glooms,
Heaven's light unhindered falls.

So early in the street the shadows creep,

I

Easter in the Pelham hills — Easter late, as Pelham likes —
Northern boughs need time enough to sprout their tardy cones and spikes!
Checkered squares of shimmering green promise faintly, one by one,
Where the orchards, long besieged, surrender to the ardent sun.
From dawn till eve the promise ripens, changing tints from noon to noon,
And through the mist of breathing things nightly climbs the Paschal moon.
Oh, were you now in Amherst, it's walking you'd be now

Down on the lake where the waters sleep
In a trance of leafy gloom,
Rocked ceaselessly by the lulling swell,
In an endless waste of bloom,
The fair white lilies, the bride-like lilies,
Unbosom their rich perfume.

O lovingly, after the stars go out,
And the silent night is done,
When their morning choruses dear and sweet
The wood-birds have begun,
The fond white lilies, the bride-like lilies,
Look up to their lord, the sun.

And a spell like that which the lotus owns,
Steals over the charmed air,