The Goblin Laugh When I behold how men and women grind And grovel for some place of pomp or power, To shine and circle through a crumbling hour, Forgetting the large mansions of the mind, That are the rest and shelter of mankind; And when I see them come with wearied brains Pallid and powerless to enjoy their gains, I seem to hear a goblin laugh unwind. And then a memory sends upon its billow Blow a wild music down a woodland way. Poetry She comes like the hush and beauty of the night, And sees too deep for laughter; Her touch is a vibration and a light A Meeting Softly she came one twilight from the dead, And in the passionate silence of her look Was more than man has writ in any book : And now my thoughts are restless, and a dread Calls them to the Dim Land discomforted; For down the leafy ways her white feet took, Lightly the newly broken roses shookWas it the wind disturbed each rosy head? God! was it joy or sorrow in her face- young? Was it sweet memory or sad that stung Her voiceless soul to wander from its place? What do the dead find in the Silence-grace? Or endless grief for which there is no tongue? Infinite Depths The little pool, in street or field apart, Glasses the deep heavens and the rushing storm; And into the silent depths of every heart, The Eternal throws its awful shadow-form. A Leaf from the Devil's Jest-Book Beside the sewing-table chained and bent, They stitch for the lady, tyrannous and proud For her a wedding-gown, for them a shroud; They stitch and stitch, but never mend the rent Torn in life's golden curtains. Glad Youth went, And left them alone with Time; and now if bowed With burdens they should sob and cry aloud, Wondering, the rich would look from their content. And so this glimmering life at last recedes |