Family

Thanks for your stanzas, Lucy,
    My sister dear in song!
How many pleasant fancies
    With these sweet numbers throng,
Which, like spring's tuneful brooklets,
    Trip merrily along.

Sometimes, my sportive Lucy,
    Your words will whirl around,
Like foam-beads on the water,
    Or rose-leaves on the ground,
Or waltzers in the ball-room,
    To music's airy sound.

There is, my gentle Lucy,
    In all you say or do,
A bright poetic impulse,
    Original and true,
Which Art can not acquire,
    And Nature gave to you.

The olden fable, Lucy,
    My muse to you would bring:
The bird that can but will not,
    Should be compelled to sing!
The story and its moral
    To modern memories cling.

Awake t...

The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields
Are hung, as if with golden shields,
Bright trophies of the sun!
Like a fair sister of the sky,
Unruffled doth the blue lake lie,
The mountains looking on.

And, sooth to say, yon vocal grove,
Albeit uninspired by love,
By love untaught to ring,
May well afford to mortal ear
An impulse more profoundly dear
Than music of the Spring.

For 'that' from turbulence and heat
Proceeds, from some uneasy seat
In nature's struggling frame,
Some region of impatient life:
And jealousy, and quivering strife,
Therein a portion claim.

This, this is holy; while I hear
These vespers of another year,
This hymn of thanks and praise,
My spirit seems to mount above
The anxieties of human love,

[As Told in 1880.]

Year of '71, children, middle of the fall,
On one fearful night, children, we well-nigh lost our all.
True, it wa'n't no great sum we had to lose that night,
But when a little's all you've got, it comes to a blessed sight.

I was a mighty worker, in them 'ere difficult days,
For work is a good investment, and almost always pays;
But when ten years' hard labor went smokin' into the air.
I doubted all o' the maxims, an' felt that it wasn't fair.

Up from the East we had traveled, with all of our household wares,
Where we had long been workin' a piece of land on shares;
But how a fellow's to prosper without the rise of the land,
For just two-thirds of nothin', I never could understand.

Up from the East we had traveled, me and my folks al...

Smile of the Moon! for I so name
That silent greeting from above;
A gentle flash of light that came
From her whom drooping captives love;
Or art thou of still higher birth?
Thou that didst part the clouds of earth,
My torpor to reprove!

Bright boon of pitying Heaven! alas,
I may not trust thy placid cheer!
Pondering that Time tonight will pass
The threshold of another year;
For years to me are sad and dull;
My very moments are too full
Of hopelessness and fear.

And yet, the soul-awakening gleam,
That struck perchance the farthest cone
Of Scotland's rocky wilds, did seem
To visit me, and me alone;
Me, unapproached by any friend,
Save those who to my sorrow lend
Tears due unto their own.

To night the church-tower bells ...

HE.

Canst thou give, oh fair and matchless maiden,

'Neath the shadow of the lindens yonder,

Where I'd fain one moment cease to wander,
Food and drink to one so heavy laden?

SHE.

Wouldst thou find refreshment, traveller weary,

Bread, ripe fruit and cream to meet thy wishes,

None but Nature's plain and homely dishes,
Near the spring may soothe thy wanderings dreary.

HE.

Dreams of old acquaintance now pass through me,

Ne'er-forgotten queen of hours of blisses.

Likenesses I've often found, but this is
One that quite a marvel seemeth to me!

SHE.

Travellers often wonder beyond measure,

But their wonder soon see cause to smother;

Fair and dark are often like each other...

My father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion!
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!

'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation,
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove
He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.

December 17, 1891.


Blossom and greenness, making all
The winter birthday tropical,
And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall;
We saw them fade, and droop, and fall,
And laid them tenderly away.

White virgin lilies, mignonette,
Blown rose, and pink, and violet,
A breath of fragrance passing by;
Visions of beauty and decay,
Colors and shapes that could not stay,
The fairest, sweetest, first to die.

But still this rustic wreath of mine,
Of acorned oak and needled pine,
And lighter growths of forest lands,
Woven and wound with careful pains,
And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains,
As when it dropped from love's dear hands.

And not unfitly garlanded,
Is he, who, country-born...

That which we had we still possess,
    Though leaves may drop and stars may fall;
No circumstance can make it less,
    Or take it from us, all in all.

That which is lost we did not own;
    We only held it for a day -
A leaf by careless breezes blown;
    No fate could take our own away.

I hold it as a changeless law
    From which no soul can sway or swerve,
We have that in us which will draw
    Whate'er we need or most deserve.

Even as the magnet to the steel
    Our souls are to our best desires;
The Fates have hearts and they can feel -
    They know what each true life requires.

We think we lose when we most gain;
    We call joys ended ere begun;
When stars fade out do skies complain,
    Or glory in the rising s...

This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire
Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.

Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a lover,
Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting
The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;
White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover
Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting
The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing
Into our sooty ga...

Tune - "The winter of life."



I.

    But lately seen in gladsome green,
        The woods rejoiced the day;
    Thro' gentle showers and laughing flowers,
        In double pride were gay:
    But now our joys are fled
        On winter blasts awa!
    Yet maiden May, in rich array,
        Again shall bring them a'.


II.

    But my white pow, nae kindly thowe
        Shall melt the snaws of age;
    My trunk of eild, but buss or bield,
        Sinks in Time's wintry rage.
    Oh! age has weary days,
        And nights o' sleepless pain!
    Thou golden time o' youthfu' prime,
        Why comes thou not again?

Some are laughing, some are weeping;
She is sleeping, only sleeping.
Round her rest wild flowers are creeping;
There the wind is heaping, heaping
Sweetest sweets of Summer's keeping.
By the corn-fields ripe for reaping.

There are lilies, and there blushes
The deep rose, and there the thrushes
Sing till latest sunlight flushes
In the west; a fresh wind brushes
Through the leaves while evening hushes.

There by day the lark is singing
And the grass and weeds are springing;
There by night the bat is winging;
There for ever winds are bringing
Far-off chimes of church-bells ringing.

Night and morning, noon and even,
Their sound fills her dreams with Heaven:
The long strife at lent is striven:
Till her grave-bands shall be riven
...

I.

A woman, fair to look upon,
Where waters whiten with the moon;
While down the glimmer of the lawn
The white moths swoon.

A mouth of music; eyes of love;
And hands of blended snow and scent,
That touch the pearl-pale shadow of
An instrument.

And low and sweet that song of sleep
After the song of love is hushed;
While all the longing, here, to weep,
Is held and crushed.

Then leafy silence, that is musk
With breath of the magnolia-tree,
While dwindles, moon-white, through the dusk
Her drapery.

Let me remember how a heart,
Romantic, wrote upon that night!
My soul still helps me read each part
Of it aright.

And like a dead leaf shut between
A book's dull chapters, stained and dark,
That page,...

Though the torrents from their fountains
Roar down many a craggy steep,
Yet they find among the mountains
Resting-places calm and deep.

Clouds that love through air to hasten,
Ere the storm its fury stills,
Helmet-like themselves will fasten
On the heads of towering hills.

What, if through the frozen centre
Of the Alps the Chamois bound,
Yet he has a home to enter
In some nook of chosen ground:

And the Sea-horse, though the ocean
Yield him no domestic cave,
Slumbers without sense of motion,
Couched upon the rocking wave.

If on windy days the Raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,
Not the less she loves her haven
In the bosom of the cliff.

The fleet Ostrich, till day closes,
Vagrant over desert sands,
Broo...

The Autumn hills are golden at the top,
    And rounded as a poet's silver rhyme;
The mellow days are ruby ripe, that drop
    One after one into the lap of time.

Dead leaves are reddening in the woodland copse,
    And forest boughs a fading glory wear;
No breath of wind stirs in their hazy tops,
    Silence and peace are brooding everywhere.

The long day of the year is almost done,
    And nature in the sunset musing stands,
Gray-robed, and violet-hooded like a nun,
    Looking abroad o'er yellow harvest lands:

O'er tents of orchard boughs, and purple vines
    With scarlet flecked, flung like broad banners out
Along the field paths where slow-pacing lines
    Of meek-eyed kine obey the herdboy's shout;

Where the tired ploughman his d...

When all the world is young, lad,
    And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
    And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
    And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
    And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
    And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
    And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
    The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
    You loved when all was young.

From The Water-Babies.    1862

Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest
And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west,
Should hear no more mine oaten melody;
Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
Unperfect lie, and make no further known
The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle;
Till I have left some record of mine own.
You are the subject now, and, writing you,
I well may versify, not poetize:
Here needs no fiction: for the graces true
And virtues clip not with base flatteries.
Here could I write what you deserve of praise,
Others might wear, but I should win the bays.

I

THE RIVER

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
Silent the swans beside us float
None speaks, none heeds, ah, turn thy head.

Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland:
Ah, let them rest, those eyes, on mine;
On mine let rest that lovely hand.

My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid:
Ah, let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head.

Before I die, before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again:

Before this teas’d o’erlabour’d heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes o...

With a copy of Woolman's journal.



Maiden! with the fair brown tresses
Shading o'er thy dreamy eye,
Floating on thy thoughtful forehead
Cloud wreaths of its sky.

Youthful years and maiden beauty,
Joy with them should still abide,
Instinct take the place of Duty,
Love, not Reason, guide.

Ever in the New rejoicing,
Kindly beckoning back the Old,
Turning, with the gift of Midas,
All things into gold.

And the passing shades of sadness
Wearing even a welcome guise,
As, when some bright lake lies open
To the sunny skies,

Every wing of bird above it,
Every light cloud floating on,
Glitters like that flashing mirror
In the self-same sun.

But upon thy youthful forehead
Something like a ...