I have chosen to place here poems that I have not found elsewhere on the web. They are transcribed
from texts found at Henry Ransom Humanities Research Center
AN IDYLL
Where is my love? ye careless shepherds, say
Where have they laid him ere the break of day?
By what wild mere among the windy reeds?
In what deep flowery margent of still meads?
Is he too all forlorn?
In some cold cave of morn
Lies he forsaken and alone?
He for whose loss I make my moan,
wandering of life neglected, left
‘Mid glad men love-elate
In outer gloom, of hope bereft,
And unregenerate!
O where is he? cold-blooded shepherds say
Where have ye laid him ere to dawn of day?
For all my seeking upon land or sea
Cannot bring back my own soul’s love to me.
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HYMENEUS TO HESPERUS
Shine forth, my star! The day is dead,
Thy shepherd waits for thee!
Come ere the lamps of heaven are fed!
Shine forth ere dusky night hath spread
Her purple canopy!
I gaze into the liquid gold
That bathes yon shadowy mountains;
I gaze into the azure cold,
Whose deep transparent caverns hold
The starlight’s hidden fountains.
I watch thy love-beams wider grow
Through all their steadfast gleaming;
I see them pant, dilate, and grow,
I feel them on my forehead flow,
and round my dark hair streaming.
Thy kisses melt my languid lips,
My limbs are lost in thine;
The chariot on the hill-brow dips;
I mount, I glide, and lo! it slips
Down to a realm divine!
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GREEK ALLGORIES
I
Upon the plinth of marble white
In sleep reclines Hermaphrodite;
A Satyr bent above him seems
To incubate those golden dreams.
What means the mythus? Living lust
Would fain in one cup merge the must
Of pleasure pressed from maid and boy,
The maddening wine of double joy:
Be he, who hath both sexes, can
Only in dreams become a man,
In dreams a maid, condemned to kiss
In butter dreams a barren bliss.
II
Over the wave Narcissus bends,
The cold and glassy wave, that lends
wan glamour to his face;
He heeds not wanton maids a-maying,
Nor amorous men with passion praying
For honey-sweet embrace.
For who hath found a joy intense,
A bliss transcending mortal sense,
In self-begotten dreams,
Will seek not lips or maiden’s breast,
But pines by Fancy’s streams.
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(selected sections from) THE INNOVATORS
I.
Woe unto those who, swerving from the ways
of kindly custom, set their soul’s desire
on rapt imagination’s wavering fire;
uncertain of whether the light that lures their gaze
Be dawn’s star orient in the heavens of praise
Or phosphorus exhalation from earth’s mire
Where husks of creeds, lost lives, foiled hopes expire
Outcasts from home, faith’s Pariahs, in the maze
Of doubt and fear they journey ‘neath the dark skies
Lone and despair-bewildered; like a child,
who, wondering lost at eve in the forest wild,
sees through the grey latticed boughs a smoldering glare
and knows not whether it be the swart moon-rise,
or bale-files beaconing from a demon’s lair.
II.
Woe unto those on whom Love’s lamp hath shone
With beckoning lustre o’er the untravelled seas
Luring Leander through wild waves that freeze
In light malign ‘neath waning moonbeams wan!
From life’s firm shore they plunge, and struggle on
Breasting black breakers crested with a breeze
That whispers to mermaiden’s palaces
Deep in the darkness of oblivion.
Hero for them trims her unhallowed oil
In towers unconsecrate; and who can say
If, having battled with tempest’s play,
They shall behold beauty new-born arise
With heaven’s immortal light in loving eyes,
Or through blind whirlpools drift, a siren’s spoil?
V.
Is the sage, madman, malefactor, fool,
Murderer or martyr, the world’s scorn or pride,
In Bedlam cells gagged and despised to bide,
Or crowned with bays give laws from wisdom’s stool,
Who sets his dauntless intellect to school,
And with Samson’s might flings far and wide
The treasonous withes wherewith his soul was tied,
Hurling defiance at hoar’s custom rule?
Answer, Calliope! How oft hast thou
Graven thy hero’s history of flame
In symbols of derision, hatred, shame
Which, when the crown of thorns had bruised his brow,
Turned to fair characters of deathless fame,
Titles to which earth’s proudest empires bow?
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MIDNIGHT AT BAIAE
A DREAM FRAGMENT OF IMPERIAL ROME
("the following is the literal verse-transcript of a dream actually dreamed by me")
Darkling I steal, and with hushed footsteps slow
Thread the dim palace; between painted walls
And pillared aisles and perfumed plants arrow.
Whither? ah, where? Keen as a sword-edge falls
Light from yon slender portal. Onward still
I am lured spell-bound through the noiseless halls.
Still onward. Sense and thought and shrinking will
Compelled by irresistible control,
Grope toward yon shining slit that sharp and chill
Gleams like the lode-star of my shimmering soul.
Yet I would fain draw back; all is so dark,
So ominously tranquil; and the goal
Toward which I tend is but one steady spark,
Cleaving like the dream-drowned twilight terrible.
What noise? Nay startle not. The watch-dogs
bark
Far off in farm-yards where men slumber well.
Here stillness broods; save when a cricket chirrs,
Or wheeling on slant wing the black bat fell
Utters her thin shrill scream. No night wind stirs
The sleeping foliage of those stately bays.
Forward I venture. On warm silky furs
My feet fall muffled now; and now I raise
The latchet of the door that stands ajar.
Light floods but dazzles not my frozen gaze.
What is within I reckon. Near and far,
Things small and great, sights wonderful and
strange,
Alike in equal vision, on that bar
Of blackness standing, with fixed eyes I range.
It is a narrow room; walls high and straight
Enclose it. Yonder lights that counterchange
Shadow with lustre, scarce can penetrate
The fretwork of high rafters rough with gold.
The lamps are silver: Satyrs love-elate
Upraising cressets; phallic horns that hold
Creamed essence, amber oil. From gloom pro-
found
Lean shapes of mutual heroes, lovers old,
Glimmering with hues auroral on the ground
Of ebon blackness. Hylas, Hyacinth,
And heaven-rapt Ganymede: I know them:
crowned
With lilies dew-bedrenched,
Of jasper droops Uranian love,a god
Wrought of bruised bronze for some labyrinth
Of Acadèmic grove where sages trod;
Bare, breathless, in his beauty, here Love smiled,
Making more grim the ghastly solitude.
Midmost the chamber was a table piled
With fruits and flowers. Thereon there blazed a
Cup,
Carven of sardonyx, where Maenads wild
With wine and laughter, shrieking, seemed to sup
The blood of mangled Pentheus. It was full
Of dark Falernian; the draught bubbling up
From tawny into crimson, rich and cool,
Glowed in the bowl untasted. Wreathes of rose,
Pure as lithe Shepard lads in Paestum pull,
Circled two sculptured murrhine cups; but those
Were void, no wine-spilth made their wreaths more
red.
Then was a ware how, neath the flaming rows
Of cressets, a flat ivory couch was spread.
Smooth Tyrian silks and gauzes hyaline
Clung clasped with jeweled buckles to the bed.
Thereon lay stretched a fair nude form supine;
An alabaster youth serenely laid
In slumber. Honey-pale and sleek and fine
Were his limbs: and o’er his breasts there played
The lambent smiles of lamplight. But a pool
Of blood, low down, along the pavement strayed.
There, where blue cups of lotus lilies cool
With reeds into mosaic rings were bent,
The black blood grew and curdled; for the wool
Whereon his cloudy curls were pillowed, sent
Thick drops slow-dripping down the ivory rim;
Yet was raiment ruffled not nor rent.
In trance I crept, and closer gazed at him.
A me! from side to side his throat was gashed
With some keen blade; and every noble limb
With marks of crisped fingers marred and lashed
Told the fierce strain of tyrannous lust that here
Life’s crystal vase of youth divine had dashed.
It is enough. Those glazed eyes, wide and clear;
Those lips by forceful kisses bruised; that cheek
Where on foul teeth-dints blackened; the tense
Fear
Of that white innocent forehead; -- vain and weak
Are words, unutterably weak and vain
To paint how madly eloquent, how meek
Were those mute signs of dire soul-shattering pain.
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