Courage

Up came the young Centaur-colts from the plains they were fathered in,
Curious, awkward, afraid.
Burrs on their hocks and their tails, they were branded and gathered in
Mobs and run up to the yard to be made.

Starting and shying at straws, with sidlings and plungings,
Buckings and whirlings and bolts;
Greener than grass, but full-ripe for their bridling and lungings,
Up to the yards and to Chiron they bustled the colts...

First the light web and the cavesson; then the linked keys
To jingle and turn on the tongue. Then, with cocked ears,
The hours of watching and envy, while comrades at ease
Passaged and backed, making naught of these terrible gears.

Next, over-pride and its price at the low-seeming fence
Too oft and too easily taken, the world-beheld fall!<...

There stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from the place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung.
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.
He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,
And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on; and when, with weariness o’er-spent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,
The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, s...

Though care and strife
Elsewhere be rife,
Upon my word I do not heed 'em;
In bed I lie
With books hard by,
And with increasing zest I read 'em.

Propped up in bed,
So much I've read
Of musty tomes that I've a headful
Of tales and rhymes
Of ancient times,
Which, wife declares, are "simply dreadful!"

They give me joy
Without alloy;
And isn't that what books are made for?
And yet--and yet--
(Ah, vain regret!)
I would to God they all were paid for!

No festooned cup
Filled foaming up
Can lure me elsewhere to confound me;
Sweeter than wine
This love of mine
For these old books I see around me!

A plague, I say,
On maidens gay;
I'll weave no compliments to tell 'em!
Vain fool I were,
Di...

"Below the Mill Dam" - Traffics and Discoveries


Thrones, Powers, Dominions, Peoples, Kings,
Are changing 'neath our hand.
Our fathers also see these things
But they do not understand.

By they are by with mirth and tears,
Wit or the works of Desire,
Cushioned about on the kindly years
Between the wall and the fire.

The grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked,
Standeth no more to glean;
For the Gates of Love and Learning locked
When they went out between.

All lore our Lady Venus bares,
Signalled it was or told
By the dear lips long given to theirs
And longer to the mould.

All Profit, all Device, all Truth,
Written it was or said
By the mighty men of their mighty youth,
Which is mighty being dead.

I

LOVE'S DAWN


Still thine eyes haunt me; in the darkness now,
The dreamtime, the hushed stillness of the night,
I see them shining pure and earnest light;
And here, all lonely, may I not avow
The thrill with which I ever meet their glance?
At first they gazed a calm abstracted gaze,
The while thy soul was floating through some maze
Of beautiful divinely-peopled trance;
But now I shrink from them in shame and fear,
For they are gathering all their beams of light
Into an arrow, keen, intense and bright,
Swerveless and starlike from its deep blue sphere,
Piercing the cavernous darkness of my soul,
Burning its foul recesses into view,
Transfixing with sharp agony through and through
Whatever ls not brave and clean and whole.
And yet I w...

    On -
    Thro' the gleaming gray
    I ran to the storm and clang -
    To the red, red hill where the great tree swayed -
    And scattered bells like autumn leaves.
    How the red bells rang!
    My breath within my breast
    Was held like a diver's breath -
    The leaves were tangled locks of gray -
    The boughs of the tree were white and gray,
    Shaped like scythes of Death.
    The boughs of the tree would sweep and sway -
    Sway like scythes of Death.
    But it was beautiful!
    I knew that all was well.
    A thousand bells from a thousand boughs
    Each moment bloomed and fell.
    On the hill of the wind-swept tree
    There were no bells asleep;
    They sang beneath my trailing wings
    Like rivers sweet and stee...

    Content Primroses,
    With hearts at rest in your thick leaves' soft care,
    Peeping as from his mother's lap the child
    Who courts shy shelter from his own open air!--
    Hanging Harebell,
    Whose blue heaven to no wanderer ever closes,
    Though thou still lookest earthward from thy domed cell!--
    Fluttering-wild
    Anemone, so well
    Named of the Wind, to whom thou, fettered-free,
    Yieldest thee, helpless--wilfully,
    With Take me or leave me,
    Sweet Wind, I am thine own Anemone!--
    Thirsty Arum, ever dreaming
    Of lakes in wildernesses gleaming!--
    Fire-winged Pimpernel,
    Communing with some hidden well,
    And secrets with the sun-god holding,
    At fixed hour folding and unfolding!--
    How ...

Fire and wild light of hope and doubt and fear,
Wind of swift change, and clouds and hours that veer
As the storm shifts of the tempestuous year;
Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Hope sits yet hiding her war-wearied eyes,
Doubt sets her forehead earthward and denies,
But fear brought hand to hand with danger dies,
Dies and is burnt up in the fire of fight.

Hearts bruised with loss and eaten through with shame
Turn at the time’s touch to devouring flame;
Grief stands as one that knows not her own name,
Nor if the star she sees bring day or night.

No song breaks with it on the violent air,
But shrieks of shame, defeat, and brute despair;
Yet something at the star’s heart far up there
Burns as a beacon in our shipwrecked sight.

O s...

Isabelle has gold, and lands,
Fate gave her a fair lot;
Like the white lilies of the field
Her soft hands toil not.
I gaze upon her splendor
Without an envious sigh;
I have no wealth in lands and gold,
And yet sweet peace have I.

I know the blue sky smiles as bright
On the low field violet,
As on the proud crest of the pine
On loftiest mountain set.
I am content - God loveth all,
And if He tenderly
The sparrow guides, He knoweth best
The place where I should be.

Her violet velvet curtains trail
Down to the floor,
But brightly God's rich sunshine streams
Into my cottage door;
And not a picture on her walls,
Hath beauty unto me,
Like that which from my window frame
I daily lean to see.

She has known such ...

I cannot tell the story of Dorothy Q. more simply in prose than I have told it in verse, but I can add something to it. Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. The son of the latter, Josiah Quincy, the first mayor of Boston bearing that name, lived to a great age, one of the most useful and honored citizens of his time. The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up.

Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that...

(Musa loquitur.)

I hung my verses in the wind,
Time and tide their faults may find.
All were winnowed through and through,
Five lines lasted sound and true;
Five were smelted in a pot
Than the South more fierce and hot;
These the siroc could not melt,
Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
And the meaning was more white
Than July's meridian light.
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five hundred did survive?

I

Ere-while of Musick, and Ethereal mirth,
Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring,
And joyous news of heav'nly Infants birth,
My muse with Angels did divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,
In Wintry solstice like the shortn'd light
Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

II

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my Harpe to notes of saddest wo,
Which on our dearest Lord did sease er'e long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so,
Which he for us did freely undergo.
Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.

III

He sov'ran Priest stooping his regall head
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fles...

Darlings of June and brides of summer sun,
Chill pipes the stormy wind, the skies are drear;
Dull and despoiled the gardens every one:
What do you here?

We looked to see your gracious blooms arise
Mid soft and wooing airs in gardens green,
Where venturesome brown bees and butterflies
Should hail you queen.

Here is no bee nor glancing butterfly;
They fled on rapid wings before the snow:
Your sister lilies laid them down to die,
Long, long ago.

And here, amid the slowly dropping rain,
We keep our Easter feast, with hearts whose care
Mars the high cadence of each lofty strain,
Each thankful prayer.

But not a shadow dims your joyance sweet,
No baffled hope or memory darkly clad;
You lay your whiteness at the Lord's dear feet,

The day is done, and the darkness
    Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
    From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
    Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
    That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
    That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
    As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
    Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
    And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
    Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
    Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
    The...

Dear, had the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim “I know you both,
“Have recognized your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you: live in peace!”
How many precious months and years
Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,
The world, and what it fears?


How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,
Society’s true ornament,
Ere we dared wander, nights like this,
Thro’ wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
And feel the Boulevart break again
To warmth and light and bliss?


I know! the world proscribes not love;
Allows my finger to caress
Your lips’ contour and downiness,
Provided it supply a glove.
The world’s good word! the Institute!<...

Gnatho, Satyr, homing at dusk,
Trotting home like a tired dog,
By mountain slopes 'twixt the junipers
And flamed oleanders near the sea,
Found a girl-child asleep in a fleece,
Frail as wax, golden and rose;
Whereat at first he skipt aside
And stayed him, nosing and peering, whereto
Next he crept, softly breathing,
Blinking his fear. None was there
To guard; the sun had dipt in the sea,
Faint fire empurpled the flow
Of heaving water; no speck, no hint
Of oar or wing on the main, on the deep
Sky, empty as a great shell,
Fainting in its own glory. This thing,
This rare breath, this miracle--
Alone with him in the world! His
To wonder, fall to, with craning eyes
Fearfully daring; next, since it moved not,
Stooping, to handle, to stroke, to peer...

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.

The gray grass is scarce dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago,
It seems forever,
Since first I saw thee glance,
With all thy dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a linp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate h...

Night, and the heavens beam serene with peace,
Like a pure heart benignly smiles the moon.
Oh, guard thy blessed beauty from mischance,
This I beseech thee in all tender love.
See where the Storm his cloudy mantle spreads,
An ashy curtain covereth the moon.
As if the tempest thirsted for the rain,
The clouds he presses, till they burst in streams.
Heaven wears a dusky raiment, and the moon
Appeareth dead - her tomb is yonder cloud,
And weeping shades come after, like the people
Who mourn with tearful grief a noble queen.
But look! the thunder pierced night's close-linked mail,
His keen-tipped lance of lightning brandishing;
He hovers like a seraph-conqueror. -
Dazed by the flaming splendor of his wings,
In rapid flight as in a whirling dance,
The black cl...