IMPROMPTUS
“FROM LOVE TO LOVE”
(FOR A WEDDING)
From love to love she passes on this day;
Yet all the love she leaves with her doth stay;
Deep, deep, the new love, in her heart of hearts,
And the old love follows her when she departs:
So is she richer than she was before,
For of true love she hath a mightier store.
“I ASKED YOU TO READ MY POEM”
I asked you to read my poem, so shameless was I,
I not used such boon and service to ask;
This my excuse—when you hear, you will not deny
The prayer of the poet, who saw the soul through the mask.
The singer sails in a sea beyond sight or ken,
And he flings his plummet of song by night and by day;
With his poems he sounds the depths of the souls of men—
In your soul my song I flung to fathom the way.
NAZIMOVA
From every motion, every lovely line,
Breathe art and passion; music from those lips;
The tragic Orient from those lustrous eyes.
A WARRIOR OF TROY
Let other gray-beards mourn the flight of years,
Finding no gains of eld to match its fears;
I have no feud with fate, nor age, nor time,
Who knew great Helen in her golden prime.
THE OBELISK (1881)
Beneath a stone wrenched from Egyptian sands
Six rivers run through six imperial lands;
Nile, Bosphorus, Tiber, Seine, and Thames, till now
The Hudson wears the jewel on her brow.
Land that we love! O be thou, by this sign,
Tho' last, the noblest of the mighty line.
CROWNED ABSURDITIES
I asked me: what in all the world so odd
And laughable to men, and unto God—
The hight of comedy in earthly things?
That lot of little men pretending to be kings!
TO “LITTLE LADY MARGARET”—WITH A BOOK OF POEMS
They who love the poets
Will never lack a friend—
Up the road, and down the road,
And to the very end.
SACRILEGE
Wed, thou, with sweet and silent Death,
Rather than join the prurient throng
Would soil, with foul, empoisoned breath,
The sanctity of song.
TO THE HERO OF A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE
If you wish, go be a pig,
In and out of season;
But do not bore us with a big
Philosophic reason.
