Death

It sings to me, it sings to me,
The shore-blown voice of the blithesome sea!
    Of its world of gladness all untold,
    Of its heart of green, and its mines of gold,
And desires that leap and flee.

It moans to me, it moans to me!
The storm-stirred voice of the restive sea!
    Of the vain dismay and the yearning pain
    For hopes that will never be born again
From the womb of the wavering sea.

It calls to me, it calls to me,
The luring voice of the rebel sea!
    And I long with a love that is born of tears
    For the wild fresh life, and the glorying fears,
For the quest and the mystery.

It wails to me, it wails to me,
Of the deep dark graves in the yawning sea;
    And I hear the voice of a boy that is gone.
    But the lad sl...

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams -
Midsummer days!    Midsummer days!
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise -
Midsummer nights!    O midsummer nights!

The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams -
Midsummer days!    Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze -
Midsummer nights!    O midsummer nights!

There's a music of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hov...

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
I feel I am alone.
I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
Alas! I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought,
And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him: I now would give
My love could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and, when he found
'Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death!
I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,
And this torn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years
Wept he as bitter tears!
Merciful God! such was his latest prayer,
These may she never share.
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
Than daisies ...

    'Tis not by selfish miser's greed
        The great rewards of love are given;
    'Tis not the cynic's haughty creed
        Which gladly makes this world a heaven;
    But tender word and loving deed
        Increase the angel joys of living,
    And mortals gain life's grandest meed
        By acts of giving and forgiving.

    Let warriors bold with armies fight
        Their awful battles brave and gory,
    To reap the harvest of their might
        And fill a gaping world with glory!
    The humble heroes, out of sight,
        Where hidden tears and woes are striving,
    Win victories for truth and right
        By deeds of giving and forgiving.

    Let mighty kings of loyal lands
        Despise the faithful sons of duty,
   ...

I rose, and idly sauntered to the pane,
And on the March-bleak mountain bent my look;
And standing there a sad review I took
Of what the day had brought me. What the gain
To Wisdom's store? What holds had Knowledge ta'en?
I mused upon the lightly-handled book,
The erring thought, and felt a stern rebuke:
"Alas, alas! the day hath been in vain!"

But as I gazed upon the upper blue,
With many a twining jasper ridge up-ploughed,
Sudden, up-soaring, swung upon my view
A molten, rolling, sunset-laden cloud:
My spirit stood, and caught its glorious hue -
"Not lost the day!" it, leaping, cried aloud.

O friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom!—We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.

If all the gentlest-hearted friends I know
Concentred in one heart their gentleness,
That still grew gentler till its pulse was less
For life than pity, I should yet be slow
To bring my own heart nakedly below
The palm of such a friend, that he should press
Motive, condition, means, appliances,

My false ideal joy and fickle woe,
Out full to light and knowledge; I should fear
Some plait between the brows, some rougher chime
In the free voice. O angels, let your flood
Of bitter scorn dash on me! do ye hear
What I say who hear calmly all the time
This everlasting face to face with God?

O wayward rose, why dost thou wreathe so high,
Wasting thyself in sweet-breath'd ecstasy?

"The pulses of the wind my life uplift,
And through my sprays I feel the sunlight sift;

"And all my fibres, in a quick consent
Entwined, aspire to fill their heavenward bent.

"I feel the shaking of the far-off sea,
And all things growing blend their life with me:

"When men and women on me look, there glows
Within my veins a life not of the rose.

"Then let me grow, until I touch the sky,
And let me grow and grow until I die!"

So, every year, the sweet rose shooteth higher,
And scales the roof upon its wings of fire,

And pricks the air, in lovely discontent,
With thorns that question still of its intent.

But when it reached th...

    There was an Indian, who had known no change,
    Who strayed content along a sunlit beach
    Gathering shells.    He heard a sudden strange
    Commingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech.
    For in the bay, where nothing was before,
    Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,
    With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,
    And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.

    And he, in fear, this naked man alone,
    His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,
    His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,
    And stared, and saw, and did not understand,
    Columbus's doom-burdened caravels
    Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land.

I’d a dream to-night
As I fell asleep,
O! the touching sight
Makes me still to weep:
Of my little lad,
Gone to leave me sad,
Ay, the child I had,
But was not to keep.

As in heaven high,
I my child did seek,
There in train came by
Children fair and meek,
Each in lily white,
With a lamp alight;
Each was clear to sight,
But they did not speak.

Then, a little sad,
Came my child in turn,
But the lamp he had,
O it did not burn!
He, to clear my doubt,
Said, half turn’d about,
‘Your tears put it out;
Mother, never mourn.’

I wait and watch: before my eyes
Methinks the night grows thin and gray;
I wait and watch the eastern skies
To see the golden spears uprise
Beneath the oriflamme of day!

Like one whose limbs are bound in trance
I hear the day-sounds swell and grow,
And see across the twilight glance,
Troop after troop, in swift advance,
The shining ones with plumes of snow!

I know the errand of their feet,
I know what mighty work is theirs;
I can but lift up hands unmeet,
The threshing-floors of God to beat,
And speed them with unworthy prayers.

I will not dream in vain despair
The steps of progress wait for me
The puny leverage of a hair
The planet’s impulse well may spare,
A drop of dew the tided sea.

The loss, if loss there be, is...

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? - Are they alive? - Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the...

Whilst thus my pen striues to eternize thee,
Age rules my lines with wrincles in my face,
Where in the Map of all my misery,
Is modeld out the world of my disgrace,
Whilst in despight of tyrannizing times,
Medea like I make thee young againe,
Proudly thou scorn'st my world-outwearing rimes,
And murther'st vertue with thy coy disdaine;
And though in youth, my youth vntimely perrish,
To keepe thee from obliuion and the graue,
Ensuing ages yet my rimes shall cherrish,
Where I entomb'd, my better part shall saue;
    And though this earthly body fade and die
    My name shall mount vpon eternitie.

Where are you sleeping to-night, My Lad,
Above-ground--or below?
The last we heard you were up at the front,
Holding a trench and bearing the brunt;--
    But--that was a week ago.

Ay!--that was a week ago, Dear Lad,
And a week is a long, long time,
When a second's enough, in the thick of the strife,
To sever the thread of the bravest life,
    And end it in its prime.

Oh, a week is long when so little's enough
To send a man below.
It may be that while we named your name
The bullet sped and the quick end came,--
    And the rest we shall never know.

But this we know, Dear Lad,--all's well
With the man who has done his best.
And whether he live, or whether he die,
He is sacred high in our memory;--
    And to God we can leave th...

We know not what lies in us, till we seek;
    Men dive for pearls - they are not found on shore,
The hillsides most unpromising and bleak
    Do sometimes hide the ore.

Go, dive in the vast ocean of thy mind,
    O man! far down below the noisy waves,
Down in the depths and silence thou mayst find
    Rare pearls and coral caves.

Sink thou a shaft into the mine of thought;
    Be patient, like the seekers after gold;
Under the rocks and rubbish lieth what
    May bring thee wealth untold.

Reflected from the vasty Infinite,
    However dulled by earth, each human mind
Holds somewhere gems of beauty and of light
    Which, seeking, thou shalt find.

When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:

"Be still, I am content,
Take back your poor compassion
Joy was a flame in me
Too steady to destroy.
Lithe as a bending reed
Loving the storm that sways her
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy."

'Oh life is wonderful,' she said,
'And all my world is bright;
Can Paradise show fairer skies,
Or more effulgent light?'
(Speak lower, lower, mortal heart,
The jealous gods may hear.)

She turned for answer; but his gaze
Cut past her like a lance,
And shone like flame on one who came
With radiant glance for glance.
(You spoke too loud, O mortal heart,
The jealous gods were near.)

They walked through green and sunlit ways;
And yet the earth seemed black,
For there were three, where two should be;
So runs the world, alack.
(The listening gods, the jealous gods,
They want no Edens here.)

(1860.)


When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country's ills -
The tempest bursting from the waste of Time
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.

Nature's dark side is heeded now -
(Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown) -
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.