Courage

    1

    Haunter of green intricacies,
    Where the sunlight's amber laces
        Deeps of darkest violet;
    Where the ugly Satyr chases
    Shining Dryads, fair as Graces,
        Whose lithe limbs with dew are wet;
    Piper in hid mountain places,
    Where the blue-eyed Oread braces
        Winds which in her sweet cheeks set
    Of Aurora rosy traces,
    Whiles the Faun from myrtle mazes
        Watcheth with an eye of jet:
    What art thou and these dim races,
    Thou, O Pan! of many faces,
        Who art ruler yet?


    2

    Tell me, piper, have I ever
    Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver
        Trickling music in the trees?
    Where dark hazel copses shiver,
    Have I heard its dronings sever

        I.

O Life! O Death! O God!
Have I not striven?
Have I not known thee, God,
As thy stars know Heaven?
Have I not held thee true,
True as thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue,
Of nights that feel thy dew?
Have I not known thee true,
O God that keepest?


        II.

O God, my father, God!
Didst give me fire
To rise above the clod,
And soar, aspire!
What tho' I strive and strive,
And all my life says live,
The sneerful scorn of men
But beats it down again;
And, O! sun-centered high,
O God! grand poet!
Beneath thy tender sky
Each day new Keatses die,
And thou dost know it!


        III.

They know thee beautiful!
They know thee bitter!
And all their e...

We have worshipped two gods from our earliest youth,
Soul of my soul and heart of me!
Young forever and true as truth
The gods of Beauty and Poesy.

Sweet to us are their tyrannies,
Sweet their chains that have held us long,
For God's own self is a part of these,
Part of our gods of Beauty and Song.

What to us if the world revile!
What to us if its heart rejects!
It may scorn our gods, or curse with a smile,
The gods we worship, that it neglects:

Nothing to us is its blessing or curse;
Less than nothing its hate and wrong:
For Love smiles down through the universe,
Smiles on our gods of Beauty and Song.

We go our ways: and the dreams we dream
People our path and cheer us on;
And ever before is the golden gleam,
The star we...

Chained in the market-place he stood,
A man of giant frame,
Amid the gathering multitude
That shrunk to hear his name,
All stern of look and strong of limb,
His dark eye on the ground:
And silently they gazed on him,
As on a lion bound.

Vainly, but well, that chief had fought,
He was a captive now,
Yet pride, that fortune humbles not,
Was written on his brow.
The scars his dark broad bosom wore,
Showed warrior true and brave;
A prince among his tribe before,
He could not be a slave.

Then to his conqueror he spake,
"My brother is a king;
Undo this necklace from my neck,
And take this bracelet ring,
And send me where my brother reigns,
And I will fill thy hands
With store of ivory from the plains,
And gold-dust from...

Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
When thy flowery hand delivers
All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
And thy great heart beats and quivers,
To revive the days that were,
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!

Take my dust and all my dreaming,
Count my heart-beats one by one,
Send them where the winters perish;
Then some golden noon recherish
And restore them in the sun,
Flower and scent and dust and dreaming,
With their heart-beats every one!

Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow,
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow--
Every migrant is my fellow,
Making northward with the spring.
Loose me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the...

We stood where the fields were tawny,
Where the redolent woodland was warm,
And the summer above us, now lawny,
Was alive with the pulse winds of storm.

And we watched weak wheat waves lighten,
And wince and hiss at each gust,
And the turbulent maples whiten,
And the lane grow gray with dust.

White flakes from the blossoming cherry,
Pink snows of the peaches were blown,
And star-fair blooms of the berry
And the dogwood's flowers were strewn.

And the luminous hillocks grew sullied,
And shadowed and thrilled with alarm,
When the body of the blackness was gullied
With the rapid, keen flame of the storm.

And the birds to dry coverts had hurried,
And the musical rillet ran slow,
And the buccaneer bee was worried,
And the red l...

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said -
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago -
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a r...

To make a fairer,
A kinder, a more constant world than this;
To make time longer
And love a little stronger,

To give to blossoms
And trees and fruits more beauty than they bear,
Adding to sweetness
The aye-wanted completeness,

To say to sorrow,
"Ease now thy bosom of its snaky burden";
(And sorrow brightened,
No more stung and frightened),

To cry to death,
"Stay a little, O proud Shade, thy stony hand";
(And death removing
Left us amazed loving);--

For this and this,
O inward Spirit, arm thyself with power;
Be it thy duty
To give a body to beauty.

Thine to remake
The world in thy hid likeness, and renew
The fading vision
In spite of time's derision.

Be it thine, O spirit,
The worl...

Frosty lies the winter-landscape,
    In the twilight golden-green.
Down the Park's deserted alleys,
    Naked elms stand stark and lean.


Dumb the murmur of the fountain,
    Birds have flown from lawn and hill.
But while yonder star's ascendant,
    Love triumphal reigneth still.


See the keen flame throb and tremble,
    Brightening in the darkening night,
Breathing like a thing of passion,
    In the sky's smooth chrysolite.


Not beneath the moon, oh lover,
    Thou shalt gain thy heart's desire.
Speak to-night!    The gods are with thee
    Burning with a kindred fire.

I
Life, sublime and serene when time had power upon it and ruled its breath,
Changed it, bade it be glad or sad, and hear what change in the world's ear saith,
Shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens the dusk of death.
Suns that sink on the wan sea's brink, and moons that kindle and flame and fade,
Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and see not shade
Rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and moonlight swayed.
So, when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pillowed on Shakespeare's breast,
Hand in hand with him, soon to stand where shine the glories that death loves best,
Passed the light of his face from sight, and sank sublimely to radiant rest.

II
Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voice...

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven
More perfectly will give those nameless joys
Which throb within the pulses of the blood
And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth
Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,
Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits
Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space
When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,
And Heaven is Earth? - will not thy glowing cheek,
Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,
And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame
Of my corporeal nature, through the soul
Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give
The longe...

Far down the reach a creeping mist
Hung dim along the mountain side;
On shadowed water, sleek and whist,
I let the lazy shallop glide.

The ripple scarcely cut the green
That edged the central path of grey.
I drew the oars, and, all unseen,
Gave reverent greeting to the day.

Naked I stood with arms outspread
That opened wide the gates of dream;
Then breathless bent my wondering head
And sprang to meet the silent stream.

I slid and floated like a seal,
And bade my senses revel free,
From cheek to footsole I could feel
Her soft cool hands caressing me.

A noise of tiny wavelets woke,
I quenched my drouth with delicate sips,
And, as I drank, the surface broke
In eager kisses on my lips.

The scented breath of morning...

Within a cavern of man's trackless spirit
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
The splendour of its presence, and the light
Penetrates their dreamlike frame
Till they become charged with the strength of flame.

The rose of Hope, how rich and red
It blooms, and will bloom on, 't is said,
Since Eve, in Eden days gone by,
Plucked it on Adam's heart to lie,
When out of Paradise they fled,
With Sorrow and o'erwhelming Dread,
It was this flower that comforted,
This Rose of Hope, that can not die.
God's Rose of Hope.
When darkness comes, and you are led
To think that Hope at last is dead,
Take down your Bible; read; and try
To see the light; and by and by
Hope's rose will lift again its head
God's Rose of Hope.

WHEN Venus and Hypocrisy combine,
Oft pranks are played that show a deep design;
Men are but men, and friars full as weak:
I'm not by Envy moved these truths to speak.
Have you a sister, daughter, pretty wife?
Beware the monks as you would guard your life;
If in their snares a simple belle be caught:
The trap succeeds: to ruin she is brought.
To show that monks are knaves in Virtue's mask;
Pray read my tale: - no other proof I ask.

A HERMIT, full of youth, was thought around,
A saint, and worthy of the legend found.
The holy man a knotted cincture wore;
But, 'neath his garb: - heart-rotten to the core.
A chaplet from his twisted girdle hung,
Of size extreme, and regularly strung,
On t'other side was worn a little bell;
The hypocrite in ALL, he acted...

In lonely gardens deserted - unseen -
Oh! lovely lilacs of purple and white,
You are dipping down through a mist of green;
For the morning sun's delight.
And the velvet bee, all belted with black,
Drinks deep of the wine which your flagons hold,
Clings close to your plumes while he fills his pack
With a load of burnished gold.

You hide the fences with blossoms of snow,
And sweeten the shade of castle towers;
Over low, grey gables you brightly blow,
Like amethysts turned to flowers.
The tramp on the highway - ragged and bold -
Wears you close to his heart with jaunty air;
You rest in my lady's girdle of gold,
And are held against her hair.

In God's own acre your tender flowers,
Bend down to the grasses and seem to sigh
For those who count ...

O spirit of Life, by whatsoe'er a name
Known among men, even as our fathers bent
Before thee, and as little children came
For counsel in Life's dread predicament,
Even we, with all our lore,
That only beckons, saddens and betrays,
Have no such key to the mysterious door
As he that kneels and prays.

The stern ascension of our climbing thought,
The martyred pilgrims of the soaring soul,
Bring us no nearer to the thing we sought,
But only tempt us further from the goal;
Yea! the eternal plan
Darkens with knowledge, and our weary skill
But makes us more of beast and less of man,
Fevered to hate and kill.

Loves flees with frightened eyes the world it knew,
Fades and dissolves and vanishes away,
And the sole art the sons of men pursue
Is t...

What do I care about the swift newspaper boys.
The approach of the late auto-beasts does not frighten me.
I rest on my moving legs.
My face is wet with rain.
Green remains of the night
Stick to my eyes.
That's the way I like it -
Even as the sharp, secret
Drops of water crack on thousands of walls.
Plop from thousands of roofs.
Hop along shining streets...
And all the sullen houses
Listen to their
Eternal song.
Close behind me the burning night is ruined...
Its smelly corpse burdens my back.
But above me I feel the rushing,
Cool heaven.
Behold - I am in front of a
Streaming church.
Large and quiet it takes me in.
Here I shall stay for a while.
Immersed in its dreams.
Dreams out of gray
Silk that does not shimmer.