now I hear some one speaking,
   Oh listen and you will hear.’
It is only the night bird calling
   To her mate in sudden fear.
Only the dead leaves falling;
   The last lone leaves of the year.

‘But now there is some one coming,
   I hear a step on the stair.’
Nay, nay, it is nothing, darling,
   Rest, and be free from care.
I have just been out in the hallway,
   I am sure there is no one there.

Never a knock at the doorway,
   Never a step in the hall,
Yet the King is coming, coming,—
   How lightly his footsteps fall.
A sigh, and a straightening downward—
   And silence is over all.

GO BACK

When winds of March by the springtime bidden
   Over the great earth race and shout,
Forth from my breast where it long hath hidden
   My same old sorrow comes creeping out.

I think each winter—its life is ended,
   For it makes no stir while the snows lie deep.
I say to myself, ‘Its soul has blended
   Into the past where it lay asleep.’

But as soon as the sun, like some fond lover,
   Smiles and kisses the earth’s round cheeks,
This sad, sad sorrow throws off its cover,
   And out of the depths of its anguish, speaks.

In every bud by the wayside springing
   It finds a sword for its half-healed wounds;
In every note that the thrush is singing
   It hears the saddest of minor sounds.

In the cup of gold that the sun is spilling
   It finds, unsweetened, a drop of gall;
It sees through the warp that the Spring is filling,
   The black threads twining in under it all.

Go back, O spring! till pain, forsaking
   These haunts of sorrow, shall sink to rest.
Go back! go back! for my heart is breaking,
   And the same old anguish hurts my breast.

WHY I LOVE HER

Why do I love my sweetheart?  Well
   I really never tried to tell.
I love her mayhap for her smile,
   So innocent and free from guile.

Perhaps I love her for her mien,
   So calmly cheerful and serene;
Or it may be her silken hair,
   First caught and tangled Cupid there.

And since I came to analyse;
   Her chiefest beauty is her eyes.
Her mouth, too, that is Cupid’s bow—
   Perhaps that’s why I love her so.

And now I think of it, her voice
   First made my rusty heart rejoice
And then her hand—’tis my belief
   It quite outvies the lily leaf.

Perhaps I love her for her ways
   That blend in with the sunny days.
Tush—to be brief and plain with you,
   I love her just because I do.

DISCONTENT

Like a thorn in the flesh, like a fly in the mesh,
   Like a boat that is chained to shore,
The wild unrest of the heart in my breast
   Tortures me more and more.
I wot not why, it should wail and cry
   Like a child that is lost at night,
For it knew no grief, but has found relief,
   And it is not touched with blight.

It has had of pleasure full many a measure;
   It has thrilled with love’s red wine;
It has hope and health, and youth’s rare wealth—
   Oh rich is this heart of mine.
Yet it is not glad—it is wild and mad
   Like a billow before it breaks;
And its ceaseless pain is worse than vain,
   Since it knows not why it aches.

It longs to be, like the waves of the sea
   That rise in their might and beat
And dash and lunge, and hurry and plunge,
   And die at the grey rocks’ feet.
It wearies of life and it sickens of strife
   And yet it tires of rest.
Oh!  I know not why it should ache and cry—
   ’Tis a troublesome heart at best.

Though not understood, I think it a good
   And God-like discontent.
It springs from the soul that longs for its goal—
   For the source from which it was sent.
Then surge, O breast, with thy wild unrest—
   Cry, heart, like a child at night,
Till the mystic shore of the Evermore
   Shall dawn on thy eager sight.

A DREAM

In the night I dreamed that you had died,
   And I thought you lay in your winding sheet;
And I kneeled low by your coffin side,
   With my cheek on your heart that had ceased to beat.

And I thought as I looked on your form so still,
   A terrible woe, and an awful pain,
Fierce as vultures that slay and kill,
   Tore at my bosom and maddened my brain.

And then it seemed that the chill of death
   Over me there like a mantle fell,
And I knew by my fluttering, failing breath
   That the end was near, and all was well.

I woke from my dream in the black midnight—
   It was only a dream at worst or best—
But I lay and thought till the dawn of light,
   Had the dream been true we had both been blest.

Better to kneel by your still dead form,
   With my cheek on your breast, and die that way,
Than to live and battle with night and storm,
   And drift away from you day by day.

Better the anguish of death and loss,
   The sharp, quick pain, and the darkness, then,
Than living on with this heavy cross
   To bear about in the world of men.

THE NIGHT

Oh! give me the night, the dark, dark night,
   The night with never a star.
When the stars are veiled and the moon has sailed
   Beyond the horizon’s bar.
When thought grows weary of groping its way
   Through darkness dense and deep,
And buries its head in oblivion’s bed,
   Wrapped warm in the mantle of sleep.

For I hate the night, the moon-white night,
   The night with a pallid face,
When a million eyes from the watchful skies
   Peers into each secret place.
For thought awakes and the old wound aches,
   And Sorrow she cannot rest,
But all night long walks to and fro
   Through the aisles of my troubled breast.

And Memory thinks it her royal hour
   When the heavens glitter and shine;
And she fills the cup of the past well up
   With a bitter and scalding wine.
And she calls for a toast to the ghastly ghost
   Of a joy that used to be.
And that terrible face in the dear old moon
   Stares steadily down at me.
So give me the night, the deep, dark night,
   The night with never a star,
When the skies are veiled and the moon has sailed
   Beyond the horizon’s bar.