daylight passes,
And closes them one by one.

I have asked why it closed at even,
And I know what it wished to say:
There are stars all night in the heaven,
And I am the star of day.

1881.



"WHEN I AM DEAD"


When I am dead, my spirit
Shall wander far and free,
Through realms the dead inherit
Of earth and sky and sea;
Through morning dawn and gloaming,
By midnight moons at will,
By shores where the waves are foaming,
By seas where the waves are still.
I, following late behind you,
In wingless sleepless flight,
Will wander till I find you,
In sunshine or twilight;
With silent kiss for greeting
On lips and eyes and head,
In that strange after-meeting
Shall love be perfected.
We shall lie in summer breezes
And pass where whirlwinds go,
And the Northern blast that freezes
Shall bear us with the snow.
We shall stand above the thunder,
And watch the lightnings hurled
At the misty mountains under,
Of the dim forsaken world.
We shall find our footsteps' traces,
And passing hand in hand
By old familiar places,
We shall laugh, and understand.

1881.



AFTER HEINE


The leaves are falling, falling,
The yellow treetops wave,
Ah, all delight and beauty
Is drawing to the grave.

About the wood's crest flicker
The wan sun's laggard rays,
They are the parting kisses
Of fleeting summer days.

Meseems I should be shedding
The heart's-tears from my eyes,
The day will keep recalling
The time of our good-byes:

I knew that you were dying
And I must pass away,
Oh I was the waning summer,
And you were the wood's decay.

1881.



"THOSE DAYS ARE LONG DEPARTED"


Those days are long departed,
Gone where the dead dreams are,
Since we two children started
To look for the morning star.

We asked our way of the swallow
In his language that we knew,
We were sad we could not follow
So swift the blue bird flew.

We set our wherry drifting
Between the poplar trees,
And the banks of meadows shifting
Were the shores of unknown seas.

We talked of the white snow prairies
That lie by the Northern lights,
And of woodlands where the fairies
Are seen in the moonlit nights.

Till one long day was over
And we grew too tired to roam,
And through the corn and clover
We slowly wandered home.

Ah child! with love and laughter
We had journeyed out so far;
We who went in the big years after
To look for another star;

But I go unbefriended
Through wind and rain and foam,—
One day was hardly ended
When the angel took you home.

1881.



A STAR-DREAM


There was a night when you and I
Looked up from where we lay,
When we were children, and the sky
Was not so far away.

We looked toward the deep dark blue
Beyond our window bars,
And into all our dreaming drew
The spirit of the stars.

We did not see the world asleep—
We were already there!
We did not find the way so steep
To climb that starry stair.

And faint at first and fitfully,
Then sweet and shrill and near,
We heard the eternal harmony
That only angels hear;

And many a hue of many a gem
We found for you to wear,
And many a shining diadem
To bind about your hair;

We saw beneath us faint and far
The little cloudlets strewn,
And I became a wandering star,
And you became my moon.

Ah! have you found our starry skies?
Where are you all the years?
Oh, moon of many memories!
Oh, star of many tears!

1881.



AFTER HEINE


Beautiful fisherman's daughter,
Steer in your bark to the land!
Come down to me over the water
And talk to me hand in hand!
Lay here on my heart those tresses,
For look, what have you to fear
Who are bold with the sea's caresses
Every day in the year?
My heart is at one with the deep
In its storm, in its ebb and flow,
And ah! There are pearls asleep
In cavernous depths below.

1880.



AFTER HEINE


How the mirrored moonbeams quiver
On the waters' fall and rise,
Yet the moon serene as ever
Wanders through the quiet skies.

Like the mirrored moonlight's fretting
Are the dreams I have of you,
For my heart will beat, forgetting
You are ever calm and true.



ENDYMION


She came upon me in the middle day,
Bowed o'er the waters of a mountain mere;
Where dimly mirrored in the ripple's play
I saw some fair thing near.

I saw the waters lapping round her feet,
The widening rings spread, follow out and die,
I saw the mirror and the mirrored meet,
And heard a voice hard by.

So I, Endymion, who lay bathing there,
Half-hidden in the coolness of the lake,
Looked up and swept away my long wild hair,
And knew a goddess spake;

A form white limbed and peerless, far above
The very fairest of imagined things,
The perfect vision of a dream of love
Stepped through the water-rings;

That breathed soft names and drew me to her arms,
White arms and clinging in a long caress,
And won me willing, by the magic charms
Of perfect loveliness:

Till on my breast a throbbing bosom lies;
The dim hills waver and the dark woods roll,
For all the longing of two glorious eyes
Takes hold upon my soul.

Then only when the sudden darkness fell
Upon the silver of the mountain mere,
And through the pine trees of the slanting dell,
The moon