Family

Oh, the garden ways are lonely!
Winds that bluster, winds that shout,
Battle with the strong laburnum,
Toss the sad brown leaves about.
In the gay herbaceous border,
Now a scene of wild disorder,
The last dear hollyhock has flamed his
crimson glory out.

Yet, upon this night of longing,
Souls are all abroad, they say.
Will they come, the dazzling blossoms,
That were here but yesterday?
Will the ghosts of radiant roses
And my sheltered lily-closes
Hold once more their shattered fragrance
now November's on her way?

Wallflowers, surely you'll remember,
Pinks, recall it, will you not?
How I loved and watched and tended,
Made this ground a hallowed spot:
Pansies, with the soft meek faces,
Harebells, with a thousand graces:
D...

Aristonoë, the fading shepherdess,
Gathers the young girls round her in a ring,
Teaching them wisdom of love,
What to say, how to dress,
How frown, how smile,
How suitors to their dancing feet to bring,
How in mere walking to beguile,
What words cunningly said in what a way
Will draw man's busy fancy astray,
All the alphabet, grammar and syntax of love.

The garden smells are sweet,
Daisies spring in the turf under the high-heeled feet,
Dense, dark banks of laurel grow
Behind the wavering row
Of golden, flaxen, black, brown, auburn heads,
Behind the light and shimmering dresses
Of these unreal, modern shepherdesses;
And gaudy flowers in formal patterned beds
Vary the dim long vistas of the park,
Far as the eye can see,
Till at the fore...

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

"Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;
Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads,

They've a way of whispering to me fellow-wight who yet abide -
In the muted, measured note
Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide:

"We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
Unsuccesses to success,
- Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.

"No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has...

"I was walking, dearest mother,
    This morning, by the brook,
And tired at last I rested me
    Within a shady nook.

"There all was still and lonely,
    And suddenly I heard
A little voice,--a sweeter one
    Than note of any bird.

"I looked above, around me,
    I saw not whence it came;
And yet that tone of music
    Was calling me by name.

"The violet beside me
    Bloomed with its purple cup,
And a tiny face, so lovely,
    Amidst its leaves peeped up.

"Again the silver music,--
    The voice I loved to hear,--
Upon its sweet breath floated,
    And bade me not to fear.

"'I am the elf,' it whispered,
    'Who in the violet dwells,
And every blossom hides one
    Within its fragrant cells.<...

What do poets want with gold,
Cringing slaves and cushioned ease;
Are not crusts and garments old
Better for their souls than these?

Gold is but the juggling rod
Of a false usurping god,
Graven long ago in hell
With a sombre stony spell,
Working in the world forever.
Hate is not so strong to sever
Beating human heart from heart.
Soul from soul we shrink and part,
And no longer hail each other
With the ancient name of brother
Give the simple poet gold,
And his song will die of cold.
He must walk with men that reel
On the rugged path, and feel
Every sacred soul that is
Beating very near to his.
Simple, human, careless, free,
As God made him, he must be:
For the sweetest song of bird
Is the hidden tenor heard
In the d...

(FROM TYLNEY HALL.)

Still glides the gentle streamlet on,
With shifting current new and strange;
The water that was here is gone,
But those green shadows do not change.

Serene, or ruffled by the storm,
On present waves as on the past,
The mirrored grave retains its form,
The self-same trees their semblance cast.

The hue each fleeting globule wears,
That drop bequeaths it to the next,
One picture still the surface bears,
To illustrate the murmured text.

So, love, however time may flow,
Fresh hours pursuing those that flee
One constant image still shall show
My tide of life is true to thee!

Said Abner, “At last thou art come!
“Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
“Kiss my cheek, wish me well!” Then I wished it,
And did kiss his cheek.
And he, “Since the King, O my friend,
“For thy countenance sent,
Nor drunken nor eaten have we;
Nor until from his tent
Thou return with the joyful assurance
The King liveth yet,
Shall our lip with the honey be brightened,
The water be wet.

“For out of the black mid-tent’s silence,
A space of three days,
No sound hath escaped to thy servants,
Of prayer nor of praise,
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit
Have ended their strife,
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch
Sinks back upon life.

“Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved!
God’s child with his dew
On thy gracious gold hair, and t...

    O far is fled the winter wind,
    And far is fled the frost and snow,
    But the cold scorn on my love's brow
    Hath never yet prepared to go.

    More lasting than ten winters' wind,
    More cutting than ten weeks of frost,
    Is the chill frowning of thy mind,
    Where my poor heart was pledged and lost.

    I see thee taunting down the street,
    And by the frowning that I see
    I might have known it long ere now,
    Thy love was never meant for me.

    And had I known ere I began
    That love had been so hard to win,
    I would have filled my heart with pride,
    Nor left one hope to let love in.

    I would have wrapped it in my breast,
    And pinned it with a silver pin,
    Safe as a bird within its n...

Read At The Two Hundredth Anniversary

Is it a weanling's weakness for the past
That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town,
Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast,

Still keeps our gray old chapel's name of "King's,"
Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings, -
Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown?

Poor harmless emblems! All has shrunk away
That made them gorgons in the patriot's eyes;
The priestly plaything harms us not to-day;
The gilded crown is but a pleasing show,
An old-world heirloom, left from long ago,
Wreck of the past that memory bids us prize,

Lightly we glance the fresh-cut marbles o'er;
Those two of earlier date our eyes enthrall:
The proud old Briton's by the western door,
And hers, the Lady of Colonial days,
...

        (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)



    Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
    Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
    Both arms have mutinied against me--brutes.
    My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

    I tried to peg out soldierly--no use!
    One dies of war like any old disease.
    This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
    I have my medals?--Discs to make eyes close.
    My glorious ribbons?--Ripped from my own back
    In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

    A short life and a merry one, my brick!
    We used to say we'd hate to live dead old,--
    Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,
    And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys
    At least the jokes hurled ...

Oh, happy shades—to me unblest!
Friendly to peace, but not to me!
How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart that cannot rest, agree!


This glassy stream, that spreading pine,
Those alders, quivering to the breeze,
Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine,
And please, if any thing could please.


But fix’d unalterable Care
Foregoes not what she feels within,
Shows the same sadness everywhere,
And slights the season and the scene.


For all that pleased in wood or lawn,
While Peace possess’d these silent bowers,
Her animating smile withdrawn,
Has lost its beauties and its powers.


The saint or moralist should tread
This moss-grown alley musing, slow;
They seek like me the secret shade,
But not like me t...

Many pleasures of youth have been buoyantly sung -
And, borne on the winds of delight, may they beat
With their palpitant wings at the hearts of the Young,
And in bosoms of Age find as warm a retreat! -
Yet sweetest of all of the musical throng,
Though least of the numbers that upward aspire,
Is the one rising now into wavering song,
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.

'Tis a Winter long dead that beleaguers my door
And muffles his steps in the snows of the past:
And I see, in the embers I'm dreaming before,
Lost faces of love as they looked on me last: -
The round, laughing eyes of the desk-mate of old
Gleam out for a moment with truant desire -
Then fade and are lost in a City of Gold,
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.

And t...

Syren of sullen moods and fading hues,
Yet haply not incapable of joy,
Sweet Autumn! I thee hail
With welcome all unfeigned;

And oft as morning from her lattice peeps
To beckon up the sun, I seek with thee
To drink the dewy breath
Of fields left fragrant then,

In solitudes, where no frequented paths
But what thy own foot makes betray thy home,
Stealing obtrusive there
To meditate thy end:

By overshadowed ponds, in woody nooks,
With ramping sallows lined, and crowding sedge,
Which woo the winds to play,
And with them dance for joy;

And meadow pools, torn wide by lawless floods,
Where water-lilies spread their oily leaves,
On which, as wont, the fly
Oft battens in the sun;

Where leans the mossy willow half way oe...

I.

The love that comes and goes like wind or fire
Hath words and wings wherewith to speak and flee.
But love more deep than passion's deep desire,
Clear and inviolable as the unsounded sea,
What wings of words may serve to set it free,
To lift and lead it homeward? Time and death
Are less than love: or man's live spirit saith
False, when he deems his life is more than breath.

II.

No words may utter love; no sovereign song
Speak all it would for love's sake. Yet would I
Fain cast in moulded rhymes that do me wrong
Some little part of all my love: but why
Should weak and wingless words be fain to fly?
For us the years that live not are not dead:
Past days and present in our hearts are wed:
My song can say no more than love hath said.
...

To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that noble pair,
Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison


It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
And let thy looks with gladness shine:
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,
And think—nay, know—thy Morison ’s not dead.
He leap’d the present age,
Possest with holy rage
To see that bright eternal Day
Of which we Priests and Poets say
Such trut...

'Tis gone, with old belief and dream
That round it clung, and tempting scheme
Released from fear and doubt;
And the bright landscape too must lie,
By this blank wall, from every eye,
Relentlessly shut out.

Bear witness ye who seldom passed
That opening, but a look ye cast
Upon the lake below,
What spirit-stirring power it gained
From faith which here was entertained,
Though reason might say no.

Blest is that ground, where, o'er the springs
Of history, Glory claps her wings,
Fame sheds the exulting tear;
Yet earth is wide, and many a nook
Unheard of is, like this, a book
For modest meanings dear.

It was in sooth a happy thought
That grafted, on so fair a spot,
So confident a token
Of coming good; the charm is fled,

With filial duty I address thee, Mother,
Thou dearest tie which this world's wealth possesses;
Endearing name! no language owns another
That half the tenderness and love expresses;
The very word itself breathes the affection,
Which heaves the bosom of a luckless child
To thank thee, for that care and that protection,
Which once, where fortune frowns, so sweetly smil'd.
Ah, oft fond memory leaves its pillow'd anguish,
To think when in thy arms my sleep was sound;
And now my startled tear oft views thee languish,
And fain would drop its honey in the wound:
But I am doom'd the sad reverse to see,
Where the worst pain I feel, is loss of helping thee.

No--'tis not the region where Love's to be found--
    They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
    When she warbled her best--but they've nothing like Love.

Nor is't that pure sentiment only they want,
    Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made--
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
    Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;

That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
    Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,
Where, even tho' the flush of the colors may fly,
    The features still live in their first smiling truth;

That union where all that in Woman is kind,
    With all that in Man most ennoblingly towers,
Grow wreathed into...