And terrible attendants shall be his--
Unutterable things that have no place
In God or Beauty--that compel him on,
Against all hope, where endless horror is.

UNCALLED

As one, who, journeying westward with the sun,
Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,
Far off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,
Circean peaks and vales of Avalon:
And, sinking weary, watches, one by one,
The big seas beat between; and knows it skills
No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills,
This is the helpless end, that all is done:
So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led
In quest of Beauty, and who finds at last
She lies beyond his effort. All the waves
Of all the world between them: While the dead,
The myriad dead, who people all the Past
With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.

LOVE DESPISED

Can one resolve and hunt it from one's heart?
This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell
Of many a life, in ways no tongue can tell,
No mind divine, nor any word impart.
Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart,
The ice of love's disdain, the wint'ry well
Of love's disfavor, love's own fire would quell?
Or school its nature, too, to its own art.
Why will men cringe and cry forever here
For that which, once obtained, may prove a curse?
Why not remember that, however fair,
Decay is wed to Beauty? That each year
Takes somewhat from the riches of her purse,
Until at last her house of pride stands bare?

THE DEATH OF LOVE

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
Love's house is empty and his hearth is cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told.
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls,
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble, and th' immortal gods are mould.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past--
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
The soul that hears; the mind that, utterly lost,
Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.

GERALDINE, GERALDINE

Geraldine, Geraldine,
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream's