Courage

I dreamed and did not seek: to-day I seek
Who can no longer dream;
But now am all behindhand, waxen weak,
And dazed amid so many things that gleam
Yet are not what they seem.

I dreamed and did not work: to-day I work
Kept wide awake by care
And loss, and perils dimly guessed to lurk;
I work and reap not, while my life goes bare
And void in wintry air.

I hope indeed; but hope itself is fear
Viewed on the sunny side;
I hope, and disregard the world that's here,
The prizes drawn, the sweet things that betide;
I hope, and I abide.

I'm twenty-two - I'm twenty-two -
    They gaily give me joy,
As if I should be glad to hear
    That I was less a boy.
They do not know how carelessly
    Their words have given pain,
To one whose heart would leap to be
    A happy boy again.

I had a light and careless heart
    When this brief year began,
And then I pray'd that I might be
    A grave and perfect man.
The world was like a blessed dream
    Of joyous coming years -
I did not know its manliness
    Was but to wake in tears.

A change has on my spirit come,
    I am forever sad;
The light has all departed now
    My early feelings had;
I used to love the morning grey,
    The twilight's quiet deep,
But now like shadows on the sea,
    Upon my thought...

        Oh the elements varied - the exquisite plan -
        That are used in constructing the lovely young man!
        His face he has easily made to possess
        The expression of nothing within to express;
        His hair is oiled glossily back of his ears,
        Atop of his head an equator appears;
        His scanty mustache has symmetrical bends,
        Is groomed with precision, and waxed at both ends;
        His darling complexion, bewitching to see,
        Is powdered the same as a lady's might be.
        And this is the dear whom the newspapers rude
        Have scornfully treated, and christened the    -    - .

        The mental equipment I'll tell, if I can,
        That Nature has given the lovely young man:
        A set of emotions cons...

O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise
    In the young children's eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
    Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell
    The cuckoo's fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
    June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year's procession of the flowers doth pass
    My feet, along the grass.
And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know
    The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
    Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
    I have it all by heart.

I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
    Hidden and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
    Alter his interval.
But not ...

The new-born child of gospel grace,
Like some fair tree when summer’s nigh,
Beneath Emmanuel’s shining face
Lifts up his blooming branch on high.


No fears he feels, he sees no foes,
No conflict yet his faith employs,
Nor has he learnt to whom he owes
The strength and peace his soul enjoys.


But sin soon darts its cruel sting,
And comforts sinking day by day:
What seem’d his own, a self-fed spring,
Proves but a brook that glides away.


When Gideon arm’d his numerous host,
The Lord soon made his numbers less;
And said, “Lest Israel vainly boast,[1]
‘My arm procured me this success.’”


Thus will he bring our spirits down,
And draw our ebbing comforts low,
That, saved by grace, but not our own,

I know her by her angry air,
Her bright black eyes, her bright black hair,
Her rapid laughters wild and shrill,
As laughters of the woodpecker
From the bosom of a hill.
’Tis Kate–she sayeth what she will;
For Kate hath an unbridled tongue,
Clear as the twanging of a harp.
Her heart is like a throbbing star.
Kate hath a spirit ever strung
Like a new bow, and bright and sharp
As edges of the scimitar.
Whence shall she take a fitting mate?
For Kate no common love will feel;
My woman-soldier, gallant Kate,
As pure and true as blades of steel.

Kate saith ‘the world is void of might.’
Kate saith ‘the men are gilded flies.’
Kate snaps her fingers at my vows;
Kate will not hear of lovers’ sighs.
I would I were an armed knight,
Far-famed ...

Found Solitary Among the Hills.


I.

O pansy-violet,
With early April wet,
How frail and pure you look
Lost in this glow-worm nook
Of heaven-holding hills:
Down which the hurrying rills
Fling scrolls of melodies:
O'er which the birds and bees
Weave gossamers of song,
Invisible, but strong:
Sweet music webs they spin
To snare the spirit in.


II.

O pansy-violet,
Unto your face I set
My lips, and - do you speak?
Or is it but some freak
Of fancy, love imparts
Through you unto the heart's
Desire? whispering low
A secret none may know,
But such as sit and dream
By forest-side and stream.


III.

O pansy-violet,
O darling floweret,
Hued like the timid gem
...

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.

When the musicians hide away their faces,
And all the petals of the rose are shed,
And snow is drifting through the happy places,
And the last cricket's heart is cold and dead;
O Joy, where shall we find thee?
    O Love, where shall we seek?
For summer is behind thee,
    And cold is winter's cheek.

Where shall I find me violets in December?
O tell me where the wood-thrush sings to-day!
Ah! heart, our summer-love dost thou remember
Where it lies hidden safe and warm away?
When woods once more are ringing
    With sweet birds on the bough,
And brooks once more are singing,
    Will it be there - thinkst thou?

When Autumn came through bannered woodlands sighing,
We found a place of moonlight and of tears,
And there, with yellow leaves for ...

Part IV

Late Autumn

They who die young are blest. -
    Should we not envy such?
They are Earth's happiest,
    God-loved and favored much! -
They who die young are blest.


1

Sick and sad, propped among pillows, she sits at her window.

'Though the dog-tooth violet come
With April showers,
And the wild-bees' music hum
About the flowers,
We shall never wend as when
Love laughed leading us from men
Over violet vale and glen,
Where the bob-white piped for hours,
And we heard the rain-crow's drum.

Now November heavens are gray;
Autumn kills
Every joy - like leaves of May
In the rills. -
Still I sit and lean and listen
To a voice that has arisen
In my heart - with eyes tha...

YOUTH.

Away, thou swarthy witch! Go forth

From out my house, I tell thee!
Or else I needs must, in my wrath,

Expel thee!
What's this thou singest so falsely, forsooth,
Of love and a maiden's silent truth?

Who'll trust to such a story!

GIPSY.

I sing of a maid's repentant fears,

And long and bitter yearning;
Her levity's changed to truth and tears

All-burning.
She dreads no more the threats of her mother,
She dreads far less the blows of her brother,

Than the dearly loved-one's hatred.

YOUTH.

Of selfishness sing and treacherous lies,

Of murder and thievish plunder!
Such actions false will cause no surprise,

Or wonder.
When they share their booty, both clothes a...

A triple health to Friendship, Science, Art,
From heads and hands that own a common heart!
Each in its turn the others' willing slave,
Each in its season strong to heal and save.

Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need,
Wipes the pale face, and lets the victim bleed.
Science must stop to reason and explain;
ART claps his finger on the streaming vein.

But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last;
Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past.
When both their equal impotence deplore,
When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more,
The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm,
And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm
May 1, 1855.

Go hence, and with this parting kiss,
Which joins two souls, remember this:
Though thou be'st young, kind, soft, and fair
And may'st draw thousands with a hair;
Yet let these glib temptations be
Furies to others, friends to me.
Look upon all, and though on fire
Thou set their hearts, let chaste desire
Steer thee to me, and think, me gone,
In having all, that thou hast none.
Nor so immured would I have
Thee live, as dead and in thy grave;
But walk abroad, yet wisely well
Stand for my coming, sentinel.
And think, as thou do'st walk the street,
Me or my shadow thou do'st meet.
I know a thousand greedy eyes
Will on thy feature tyrannise
In my short absence, yet behold
Them like some picture, or some mould
Fashion'd like thee, which, though 't h...

Fair Happiness, I've courted thee,
And used each cunning art and wile,
Which lovers use with maidens coy,
To win one tender glance or smile.
Thou hast been coy as any maid,
So lofty, distant, stern and cold,
And guarded from a touch of mine,
As miser guards his precious gold.

To win a smile from thee, did seem
A painful, fruitless thing to try,
Thy scornful, thin and cruel lips,
No pity gave thy steely eye.

Thy countenance, so sternly set,
Did seem to say how vain to knock
At thy heart's door, for all within
Was hard, as adamantine rock.

Thus unto me thy visage seem'd,
But faces do not always tell
The feelings of the heart within,
Or thoughts that underneath them dwell.

For e'en at times, I saw thy face
Relax, a...

I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.
The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.
His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.
He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.
He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.
He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.
Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke:
"When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke
Singing of peace. Railing at battle.
Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle.
All the millions of earth have voted for fight.
You are voting for talk, with hands lily white."
He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high,
Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye:
The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old,
With beard of bright silver and garments of gold.
"What will ...

As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a Delphic reed my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away:
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev'd a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

'Let go the Cross' - GERTRUDE RUNSHON.

I heard a strange voice in the distance calling
As from a star an echo might be falling.

It spoke four syllables, concise and brief,
Charged with a God-sent message of relief:

Let go the cross!    Oh, you who cling to sorrow,
Hark to the new command and comfort borrow.

Even as the Master left His cross below
And rose to Paradise, let go, let go.

Forget your wrongs, your troubles and your losses,
For with the tools of thought we build our crosses.

Forget your griefs, all grudges and all fear
And enter Paradise - its gates are near.

Heaven is a realm by loving souls created,
And hell was fashioned by the hearts that hated.

Love, hope and trust; believe all joys are yours,
Life...

To-day the world is wide and fair
With sunny fields of lucid air,
And waters dancing everywhere;
The snow is almost gone;
The noon is builded high with light,
And over heaven's liquid height,
In steady fleets serene and white,
The happy clouds go on.

The channels run, the bare earth steams,
And every hollow rings and gleams
With jetting falls and dashing streams;
The rivers burst and fill;
The fields are full of little lakes,
And when the romping wind awakes
The water ruffles blue and shakes,
And the pines roar on the hill.

The crows go by, a noisy throng;
About the meadows all day long
The shore-lark drops his brittle song;
And up the leafless tree
The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings;
The bluebird dips with flashing w...