Courage

How oft on Sundays, when I'd time to tramp,
My rambles led me to a gipsy's camp,
Where the real effigy of midnight hags,
With tawny smoked flesh and tatter'd rags,
Uncouth-brimm'd hat, and weather-beaten cloak,
'Neath the wild shelter of a knotty oak,
Along the greensward uniformly pricks
Her pliant bending hazel's arching sticks;
While round-topt bush, or briar-entangled hedge,
Where flag-leaves spring beneath, or ramping sedge,
Keep off the bothering bustle of the wind,
And give the best retreat she hopes to find.
How oft I've bent me o'er her fire and smoke,
To hear her gibberish tale so quaintly spoke,
While the old Sybil forg'd her boding clack,
Twin imps the meanwhile bawling at her back;
Oft on my hand her magic coin's been struck,
And hoping chink...

PRONE, on my couch I calmly slept
Against my wont.        A little child
Awoke me as he gently crept
And beat my door.    A tempest wild
Was raging-dark and cold the night.
"Have pity on my naked plight,"
He begged, "and ope thy door." - "Thy name?"
I asked admitting him. - "The same
"Anon I'll tell, but first must dry
"My weary limbs, then let me try
"My mois'ened bow." - Despite my fear
The hearth I lit, then drew me near
My guest, and chafed his fingers cold.
"Why fear?" I thought.    "Let me be bold
"No Polyphemus he; what harm
"In such a child? - Then I'll be calm!"
The playful boy drew out a dart,
Shook his fair locks, and to my heart
His shaft he launch'd. - "Love is my name,"
He thankless cried, "I hither came
"To tame thee.    In t...

    Of whispering trees the tongues to hear,
    And sermons of the silent stone;
    To read in brooks the print so clear
    Of motion, shadowy light, and tone--
    That man hath neither eye nor ear
    Who careth not for human moan.

    Yea, he who draws, in shrinking haste,
    From sin that passeth helpless by;
    The weak antennae of whose taste
    From touch of alien grossness fly--
    Shall, banished to the outer waste,
    Never in Nature's bosom lie.

    But he whose heart is full of grace
    To his own kindred all about,
    Shall find in lowest human face,
    Blasted with wrong and dull with doubt,
    More than in Nature's holiest place
    Where mountains dwell and streams run out.

    Coarse cries of strife assa...

Triumph may be of several kinds.
There 's triumph in the room
When that old imperator, Death,
By faith is overcome.

There 's triumph of the finer mind
When truth, affronted long,
Advances calm to her supreme,
Her God her only throng.

A triumph when temptation's bribe
Is slowly handed back,
One eye upon the heaven renounced
And one upon the rack.

Severer triumph, by himself
Experienced, who can pass
Acquitted from that naked bar,
Jehovah's countenance!

I
Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star
Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west,
Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest,
Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar
To fold the fleet in of the winds from far
That stir no plume now of the bland sea’s breast:

II
Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay
Southwestward, far past flight of night and day,
Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher
Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire,
My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way
To find the place of souls that I desire.

III
If any place for any soul there be,
Disrobed and disentrammelled; if the might,
The fire and force that filled with ardent light
The souls whose shadow is half the light we see,
Survive an...

Not bed-time yet! The night-winds blow,
The stars are out, - full well we know
The nurse is on the stair,
With hand of ice and cheek of snow,
And frozen lips that whisper low,
"Come, children, it is time to go
My peaceful couch to share."

No years a wakeful heart can tire;
Not bed-time yet! Come, stir the fire
And warm your dear old hands;
Kind Mother Earth we love so well
Has pleasant stories yet to tell
Before we hear the curfew bell;
Still glow the burning brands.

Not bed-time yet! We long to know
What wonders time has yet to show,
What unborn years shall bring;
What ship the Arctic pole shall reach,
What lessons Science waits to teach,
What sermons there are left to preach.
What poems yet to sing.

What next? we as...

2. Sam. I. 19.

Alas slain is the Head of Israel,
Illustrious Saul whose beauty did excell,
Upon thy places mountainous and high,
How did the Mighty fall, and falling dye?
In Gath let not this things be spoken on,
Nor published in streets of Askalon,
Lest daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
Lest the uncircumcis'd lift up their voice.
O Gilbo Mounts, let never pearled dew,
Nor fruitful showres your barren tops bestrew,
Nor fields of offrings ever on you grow,
Nor any pleasant thing e're may you show;
For there the Mighty Ones did soon decay,
The shield of Saul was vilely cast away.
There had his dignity so sore a foyle,
As if his head ne're felt the sacred oyl.
Sometimes from crimson blood of gastly slain,
The bow of Jonathan ne're turn'd in va...

Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still.
You asked for night: it falls: it is here.
A shadowy atmosphere enshrouds the hill,
to some men bringing peace, to others care.

While the vile human multitude
goes to earn remorse, in servile pleasure’s play,
under the lash of joy, the torturer, who
is pitiless, Sadness, come, far away:

Give me your hand. See, where the lost years
lean from the balcony in their outdated gear,
where regret, smiling, surges from the watery deeps.

Underneath some archway, the dying light
sleeps, and, like a long shroud trailing from the East,
listen, dear one, listen to the soft onset of night.

Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair
Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,
Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,
Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.
A hoary mist rose up and slowly sheathed
The dripping walls and portal granite-stepped,
And sank into the inner court, and crept
From column unto column thickly wreathed.

In that dead hour of darkness before dawn,
When hearts beat fainter, and the hands of death
Are strengthened, - with lips white and drawn
And feverish lids and scarcely moving breath,
The hapless mother, tender Chione,
Beside the earth-cold figure of her child,
After long bursts of weeping sharp and wild
Lay broken, silent in her agony.
At first in waking horror racked and bound
She lay, and then a gradual st...

    I was but a half-grown boy,
    You were a girl-child slight.
    Ah, how weary you were!
    You had led in the bullock-fight . . .
    We slew the bullock at length
    With knives and maces of stone.
    And so your feet were torn,
    Your lean arms bruised to the bone.

    Perhaps 'twas the slain beast's blood
    We drank, or a root we ate,
    Or our reveling evening bath
    In the fall by the garden gate,
    But you turned to a witching thing,
    Side-glancing, and frightened me;
    You purred like a panther's cub,
    You sighed like a shell from the sea.

    We knelt.    I caressed your hair
    By the light of the leaping fire:
    Your fierce eyes blinked with smoke,
    Pine-fumes, that enhanced desire.
    ...

The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
    Lie on the landscape green,
    With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,
    Had dropt her silver bow
    Upon the meadows low.

On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
    When, sleeping in the grove,
    He dreamed not of her love.

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
    Nor voice, nor sound betrays
    Its deep, impassioned gaze.

It comes,--the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,--
    In silence and alone
    To seek the elected one.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sle...

Nella stagion che 'l ciel rapido inchina.

NIGHT BRINGS REPOSE TO OTHERS, BUT NOT TO HIM.


    In that still season, when the rapid sun
Drives down the west, and daylight flies to greet
Nations that haply wait his kindling flame;
In some strange land, alone, her weary feet
The time-worn pilgrim finds, with toil fordone,
Yet but the more speeds on her languid frame;
Her solitude the same,
When night has closed around;
Yet has the wanderer found
A deep though short forgetfulness at last
Of every woe, and every labour past.
But ah! my grief, that with each moment grows,
As fast, and yet more fast,
Day urges on, is heaviest at its close.

When Phoebus rolls his everlasting wheels
To give night room; and from encircling wood,
B...

One with the ruined sunset,
The strange forsaken sands,
What is it waits and wanders
And signs with desperate hands?

What is it calls in the twilight,
Calls as its chance were vain?
The cry of a gull sent seaward
Or the voice of an ancient pain?

The red ghost of the sunset,
It walks them as its own,
These dreary and desolate reaches . . .
But O that it walked alone!

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and ...

Go, little book, and be the looking-glass
Of her dear soul,
The mirror of her moments as they pass,
Keeping the whole;
Wherein she still may look on yesterday
To-day to cheer,
And towards To-morrow pass upon her way
Without a fear.
For yesterday hath never won a crown,
However fair,
But that To-day a better for its own
Might win and wear;
And yesterday hath never joyed a joy,
However sweet,
That this To-day or that To-morrow too
May not repeat.
Think too, To-day is trustee for to-morrow,
And present pain
That's bravely borne shall ease the future sorrow
Nor cry in vain
'Spare us To-day, To-morrow bring the rod,'
For then again
To-morrow from To-morrow still shall borrow,
A little ease to gain:
But bear to-day whate'er To...

I.

A Tortured tree in a huddled hollow,
On whose gnarled boughs three leaves are blowing:
A strip of path that the hunters follow,
That leads to fields of the wind's wild sowing,
And a rain-washed hill with the wild-thorn growing.

II.

And here one day, when the sky was raining,
And the wind came sharp as an Indian-arrow,
And Winter walked on the hills complaining,
I found a blossom of summer yarrow,
In the freezing wet, where the way was narrow.

III.

Its dim white umble was bravely lifted,
Defying Winter and wind and weather,
Facing the rout as they whirled and shifted,
Twisting its blossom and leaves together,
Its fern-fair leaves that were sweet as the heather.

IV.

And I thought, as I saw it there so f...

    I stood upon the Plain,
    That had trembled when the slain,
Hurled their proud, defiant curses at the battle-heated foe,
    When the steed dashed right and left,
    Through the bloody gaps he cleft,
When the bridle-rein was broken, and the rider was laid low.

    What busy feet had trod
    Upon the very sod
Where I marshalled the battalions of my fancy to my aid!
    And I saw the combat dire,
    Heard the quick, incessant fire,
And the cannons' echoes startling the reverberating glade.

    I saw them, one and all,
    The banners of the Gaul
In the thickest of the contest, round the resolute Montcalm;
    The well-attended Wolfe,
    Emerging from the gulf
Of the battle's fiery furnace, like the swelling of a psalm.

    I...

Beside the placid sea that mirrored her
    With the old glory of dawn that cannot die,
The sleeping city began to moan and stir,
    As one that fain from an ill dream would fly;
    Yet more she feared the daylight bringing nigh
Such dreams as know not sunrise, soon or late,---
    Visions of honour lost and power gone by,
    Of loyal valour betrayed by factious hate,
And craven sloth that shrank from the labour of forging fate.

They knew and knew not, this bewildered crowd,
    That up her streets in silence hurrying passed,
What manner of death should make their anguish loud,
    What corpse across the funeral pyre be cast,
    For none had spoken it; only, gathering fast
As darkness gathers at noon in the sun's eclipse,
    A shadow of doom enfolded the...