Dreams

I.

    O bonnie bird, that in the brake, exultant, dost prepare thee -
    As poets do whose thoughts are true, for wings that will upbear thee -
            Oh! tell me, tell me, bonnie bird,
            Canst thou not pipe of hope deferred?
    Or canst thou sing of naught but Spring among the golden meadows?


II.

    Methinks a bard (and thou art one) should suit his song to sorrow,
    And tell of pain, as well as gain, that waits us on the morrow;
            But thou art not a prophet, thou,
            If naught but joy can touch thee now;
    If, in thy heart, thou hast no vow that speaks of Nature's anguish.


III.

    Oh! I have held my sorrows dear, and felt, tho' poor and slighted,
    The songs we love are those we hea...

Into the darkness and the hush of night
    Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
    And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
    The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light,
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
    The unprofitable splendor and display,
    The agitations, and the cares that prey
    Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
    Molests us; all its records we erase
    From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
    With trivial incidents of time and place,
    And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

I have been, like Puck, I have been, in a trice,
To a realm they call Fool's Paradise,
Lying N.N.E. of the Land of Sense,
And seldom blest with a glimmer thence.
But they wanted not in this happy place,
Where a light of its own gilds every face;
Or if some wear a shadowy brow,
'Tis the wish to look wise,--not knowing how.
Self-glory glistens o'er all that's there,
The trees, the flowers have a jaunty air;
The well-bred wind in a whisper blows,
The snow, if it snows, is couleur de rose,
The falling founts in a titter fall,
And the sun looks simpering down on all.

Oh, 'tisn't in tongue or pen to trace
The scenes I saw in that joyous place.
There were Lords and Ladies sitting together,
In converse sweet, "What charming weather!--

I


The lights are out, and gone are all the guests
That thronging came with merriment and jests
    To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane
In the new house,--into the night are gone;
But still the fire upon the hearth burns on,
    And I alone remain.

    O fortunate, O happy day,
    When a new household finds its place
    Among the myriad homes of earth,
    Like a new star just sprung to birth,
    And rolled on its harmonious way
    Into the boundless realms of space!

So said the guests in speech and song,
As in the chimney, burning bright,
We hung the iron crane to-night,
And merry was the feast and long.


II

And now I sit and muse on what may be,
And in my vision see, or seem to see,
    Throug...

I
Her Courtesy


With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace
She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair
Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.
She would not have us sad because she is lying there,
And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,
Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her
Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit,
Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.

II
Certain Artists bring her Dolls and Drawings




Bring where our Beauty lies
A new modelled doll, or drawing,
With a friend’s or an enemy’s
Features, or maybe showing
Her features when a tress
Of dull red hair was flowing
Over some silken dress
Cut in the Turkish fashion,
Or it may...

Oh, come, Beloved, before my beauty fades,
Pity the sorrow of my loneliness.
I am a Rosebush that the Cypress shades,
No sunbeams find or lighten my distress.

Daily I watch the waning of my bloom.
Ah, piteous fading of a thing so fair!
While Fate, remorseless, weaving at her loom,
Twines furtive silver in my twisted hair.

This noon I watched a tremulous fading rose
Rise on the wind to court a butterfly.
"One speck of pollen, ere my petals close,
Bring me one touch of love before I die!"

But the gay butterfly, who had the power
To grant, refused, flew far across the dell,
And, as he fertilised a younger flower,
The petals of the rose, defrauded, fell.

Such was my fate, thou hast not come to me,
Thine eyes are absent, and thy voice i...

    I

    I find my mind as it were a deep water.

    Sometimes I play with a thought and hammer and bend it,
    Till tired and displeased with that I toss it away,
    Or absently let it slip to the yawning water:
    And down it sinks, forgotten for many a day.

    But a time comes when tide or tempest washes it
    High on the beach, and I find that shape of mine,
    Or I haul it out from the depths on some casual rope,
    Or, passing over that spot in quiet shine,

    I see, where my boat's shadow makes deep the water,
    A patch of colour, far down, from the bottom apart,
    A wavering sign like the gleam from an ancient anchor,
    Brown fixing and fleeting flakes; and I feel my heart

    Wake to a strange excitement; so that I s...

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And f...

DAKRTSI DIOISO POTMON 'APOTMON.

Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees: -
Such lovely ministers to meet
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth: - tame sacrifice
To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore...

    I was sixteen, and I had the most terrible dreams,
    And specks before my eyes, and nervous weakness.
    And I couldn't remember the books I read,
    Like Frank Drummer who memorized page after page.
    And my back was weak, and I worried and worried,
    And I was embarrassed and stammered my lessons,
    And when I stood up to recite I'd forget
    Everything that I had studied.
    Well, I saw Dr. Weese's advertisement,
    And there I read everything in print,
    Just as if he had known me;
    And about the dreams which I couldn't help.
    So I knew I was marked for an early grave.
    And I worried until I had a cough
    And then the dreams stopped.
    And then I slept the sleep without dreams
    Here on the hill by the river.

Black lacqueys at the wide-flung door
    Stand mute as men of wood.
Gleams like a pool the ballroom floor,
            A burnished solitude.
    A hundred waxen tapers shine
    From silver sconces; softly pine
    'Cello, fiddle, mandoline,
            To music deftly wooed,
And dancers in cambric, satin, silk,
With glancing hair and cheeks like milk,
            Wreathe, curtsey, intertwine.

The drowse of roses lulls the air
Wafted up the marble stair.
Like warbling water clucks the talk.
From room to room in splendour walk
Guests, smiling in the æry sheen;
Carmine and azure, white and green,
They stoop and languish, pace and preen
            Bare shoulder, painted fan,
Gemmed wrist and finger, neck of swan;
And still the pluckt s...

At evening it rose in the hollow glade,
Where wild-flowers blushed 'mid silence and shade;
Where, hid from the gaze of the garish noon,
They were slily wooed by the trembling moon.
It rose for the guardian zephyrs had flown,
And left the valley that night alone.
No sigh was borne from the leafy hill,
No murmur came from the lapsing rill;
The boughs of the willow in silence wept,
And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept.
The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute
Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute.
The slender rush o'er the glassy rill,
As a marble shaft, was erect and still,
And no airy sylph on the mirror wave,
A dimpling trace of its footstep gave.
The moon shone down, but the shadows deep
Of the pensile flowers, were hushed in sleep.
The p...

If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
    But who can answer, or who can trust,
    No dreams would harry the windblown dust?

Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
    Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
    Had I done aught better or otherwise?

Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
    But time for silence and song is done,
    You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!

W...

There is a place I search for still,
Sequestered as the world of dreams,
A bushy hollow, and a hill
That whispers with descending streams,
Cool, careless waters, wandering down,
Like Innocence who runs to town,
Leaving the wildwood and its dreams,
And prattling like the forest streams.

But still in dreams I meet again
The child who bound me, heart and hand,
And led me with a wildflower chain
Far from our world, to Faeryland:
Who made me see and made me know
The lovely Land of Long-Ago,
Leading me with her little hand
Into the world of Wonderland.

The years have passed: how far away
The day when there I met the child,
The little maid, who was a fay,
Whose eyes were dark and undefiled
And crystal as a woodland well,
That hold...

    Across the mountains and the hills,
Across the valleys and the swelling seas,
    By lakes and rivers whose deep murmur fills
Earth's dreams with sweet prophetic melodies,
    Together have we come unto this place,
    And here we say farewell a little space:

    You, backward turning through the land,
To tarry 'mid its beauty yet awhile--
    I, o'er the River, to another strand
With cheerful heart, so part we with a smile.
    Shall space have any power o'er god-like souls?
    Love shall bridge o'er the stream that 'twixt us rolls!

    Together wend we to the tide,
And as the first wave wets my foot, we part;--
    E'en now methinks I see the other side;
And, though the stream be swift, a steady heart
    And stalwart arm shall quell its col...

Fancy and Truth--Hippomenes and Atalanta. Mont Blanc.--Clouds.


Even here in this region of wonders I find
That light-footed Fancy leaves Truth far behind;
Or at least like Hippomenes turns her astray
By the golden illusions he flings in her way.

What a glory it seemed the first evening I gazed!
MONT BLANC like a vision then suddenly raised
On the wreck of the sunset--and all his array
    Of high-towering Alps, touched still with a light
Far holier, purer than that of the Day,
    As if nearness to Heaven had made them so bright!
Then the dying at last of these splendors away
From peak after peak, till they left but a ray,
One roseate ray, that, too precious to fly,
    O'er the Mighty of Mountains still glowingly hung,
Like the last sunny ...

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
For there the river comes winding down,
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, “Welcome home!”

And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands o’er;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
’Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel.

Once, in the old Colonial days,
Two hundred years ago and more,
A boat sailed down through the winding ways
Of Hampton River to that low...

You see that porcelain ranged there in the window,
Platters and soup-plates done with pale pink rosebuds,
And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy?
See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges!
They’re works of art, minutely seen and felt,
Each petal done devoutly. Is it failure
To spend your blood like this?

Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal,
My brain unfolding! There you’ll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window,
Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . .

Sometimes my wife comes there to speak to me . . .
Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . .
Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight,
Dilate to...