Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
And Other Poems
1891
The Ride to the Lady
The First Guest
Silence
Arraignment
The Going Out of the Tide
King Raedwald
Ivo of Chartres
Madonna Pia
Two Moods of Failure
The Story of the "Orient"
A Resurrection
The Glorious Company
The Trumpeter
Comrades
The House of Hate
The Arrowmaker
A Nest in a Lyre
Thisbe
The Spring Beauties
Kinship
Compensation
When Willows Green
At the Parting of the Ways
The Fair Gray Lady
The Encounter.
Summer Hours
Love Unsung
The Wish for a Chaplet
Sonnets:
The Torch Race
To Sleep
Sister Snow
The Contrast
A Mystery
Triumph
In Winter, with the Book we had in Spring
Sere Wisdom
Isolation
The Lost Dryad
The Gifts of the Oak
The Strayed Singer
The Immortal Word
"Now since mine even is come at last,—
For I have been the sport of steel,
And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
And I in saddle roll and reel,—
Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
Of fingering leech I have no need!"
The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
"Nor need I more thy whine and thee!
No time is left my sins to tell;
But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
They bound him strong with leathern thong,
For the ride to the lady should be long.
Day was dying; the poplars fled,
Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,
And made the streams as the streams of hell.
All his thoughts as a river flowed,
Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
Onward flowed to her abode,
Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
(Viewless Death apace, apace,
Rode behind him in that race.)
"Face, mine own, mine alone,
Trembling lips my lips have known,
Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
Under the kisses that make them mine!
Only of thee, of thee, my need!
Only to thee, to thee, I speed!"
The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
In a beam of the moon the Face shone stern.
Far behind had the fight's din died;
The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
The beating hearts of the stars aloof
kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof,
"What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
Not alone with the started sweat.