Alike I hate to be your debtor, Or write a mere perfunctory letter… For letters, so it seems to me, Our careless quintessence should b… Our real nature’s truant play

As, cleansed of Tiber’s and Obliv… Glow Farnesina’s vaults with shap… That dreamed some exiled artist fr… Back to his Athens and the Muse’s… So these world-orphaned waifs of…

Careless seems the great Avenger; History’€™s lessons but recorded One death-grapple in the darkness ‘€œTwixt old systems and the Word… Truth forever on the scaffold,

The moon shines white and silent On the mist, which, like a tide Of some enchanted ocean, O’er the wide marsh doth glide, Spreading its ghost-like billows

There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing w… Whether to plow, to reap, or sow. Upon an empty tortoise-shell

The century numbers fourscore year… You, fortressed in your teens, To Time’s alarums close your ears… And, while he devastates your peer… Conceive not what he means.

Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far… Beneath the silver evening-star, And yet her heart is ever near.

May is a pious fraud of the almana… A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed wi… Or if, o’er-confident, she trust t… And, with her handful of anemones,

I went to seek for Christ, And Nature seemed so fair That first the woods and fields my… And I was sure to find him there: The temple I forsook,

Thy voice is like a fountain, Leaping up in clear moonshine; Silver, silver, ever mounting, Ever sinking, Without thinking,

Thy love thou sendest oft to me, And still as oft I thrust it back… Thy messengers I could not see In those who everything did lack, The poor, the outcast and the blac…

Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing! To-night the triple Zoroaster Shall my prophet be and master; To-night will I pure Magian be, Hymns to thy sole honor raising,

Luck, my dear Norton, still makes… To mix a mortal with her gifts, Which he may find who duly sifts. Sweets to the sweet,—behold the cl… Why not, then, new things to the g…