I was with thee in Heaven:  I cannot tell
If years or moments, so the sudden bliss,
When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss. 
Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell,
Left only Heaven.  Then from our blue there fell
The dagger’s flash, and did not fall amiss,
For nothing now can rob my life of this,—­
That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well. 
Us, undivided when man’s vengeance came,
God’s half-forgives that doth not here divide;
And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame,
To me ’twere summer, we being side by side: 
This granted, I God’s mercy will not blame,
For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.

SONNET

SCOTTISH BORDER

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills
Whose heather-purple slopes, in glory rolled,
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills? 
Here ’tis enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,
And memory’s glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfils. 
Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen:  before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.

SONNET

ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE

Amid these fragments of heroic days
When thought met deed with mutual passion’s leap,
There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap
What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise. 
They had far other estimate of praise
Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep
In art and action, and whose memories keep
Their height like stars above our misty ways: 
In this grave presence to record my name
Something within me hangs the head and shrinks. 
Dull were the soul without some joy in fame;
Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks,
Like him who, in the desert’s awful frame,
Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx.

THE DANCING BEAR

Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway,
And win their dearest crowns beyond the goal
Of their own conscious purpose; they control
With gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy’s play,
And so our action.  On my walk to-day,
A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll,
When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll,
And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away.
‘Merci, Mossieu!’ the astonished bear-ward cried,
Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slave
Of partial memory, seeing at his side
A bear immortal.  The glad dole I gave
Was none of mine; poor Heine o’er the wide
Atlantic welter stretched it from his grave.