Family

The sun was hid all day by clouds,
    The rain fell softly down;
A cold gray mist hung o'er the earth,
    And veiled the silent town.

Behind the clouds a sunbeam crept
    With restless wings of gold;
The skies above were bright and warm,
    The earth below was cold.

It glanced along the heavy clouds,
    Then sought to glide between;
But ah! they gathered closer still,
    With fierce and angry mien.

The dancing ray grew strangely still,
    Just like some weary bird,
That droops upon a lonely shore,
    And sings its song unheard.

For on the earth the drooping flowers
    Were longing for the light;
And children with their watching eyes
    Could trace no sunbeam's flight.

At last an angel, wand'ring by,

1.

Parent of golden dreams, Romance!
Auspicious Queen of childish joys,
Who lead'st along, in airy dance,
Thy votive train of girls and boys;
At length, in spells no longer bound,
I break the fetters of my youth;
No more I tread thy mystic round,
But leave thy realms for those of Truth.


2.

And yet 'tis hard to quit the dreams
Which haunt the unsuspicious soul,
Where every nymph a goddess seems,
Whose eyes through rays immortal roll;
While Fancy holds her boundless reign,
And all assume a varied hue;
When Virgins seem no longer vain,
And even Woman's smiles are true.


3.

And must we own thee, but a name,
And from thy hall of clouds descend?
Nor find a Sylph in every dame,
A Pylades [1]<...

    Because the days are long for you and me,
        I make this song to lighten their slow time,
    So that the weary waiting fruitful be
        Or blossomed only by my limping rhyme.
                The days are very long
        And may not shortened be by any chime
        Of measured words or any fleeting song.
    Yet let us gather blossoms while we wait
    And sing brave tunes against the face of fate.

    Day after day goes by: the exquisite
        Procession of the variable year,
    Summer, a sheaf with flowers bound up in it,
        And autumn, tender till the frosts appear
                And dry the humid skies;
        And winter following on, aloof, austere,
        Clad in the garments of a frore sunrise;
    And spring again.    Ma...

On the wind of January
    Down flits the snow,
Travelling from the frozen North
    As cold as it can blow.
Poor robin redbreast,
    Look where he comes;
Let him in to feel your fire,
    And toss him of your crumbs.

On the wind in February
    Snowflakes float still,
Half inclined to turn to rain,
    Nipping, dripping, chill.
Then the thaws swell the streams,
    And swollen rivers swell the sea: -
If the winter ever ends
    How pleasant it will be!

In the wind of windy March
    The catkins drop down,
Curly, caterpillar-like,
    Curious green and brown.
With concourse of nest-building birds
    And leaf-buds by the way,
We begin to think of flowers
    And life and nuts some day.

With the gusts o...

Between wheatfield and corn,
Between hedgerow and thorn,
Between pasture and tree,
Where's my sweetheart
Tell it me!

Sweetheart caught I

Not at home;
She's then, thought I.

Gone to roam.
Fair and loving

Blooms sweet May;
Sweetheart's roving,

Free and gay.

By the rock near the wave,
Where her first kiss she gave,
On the greensward, to me,
Something I see!
Is it she?

Sweetest of all childlike dreams
In the simple Indian lore
Still to me the legend seems
Of the shapes who flit before.

Flitting, passing, seen and gone,
Never reached nor found at rest,
Baffling search, but beckoning on
To the Sunset of the Blest.

From the clefts of mountain rocks,
Through the dark of lowland firs,
Flash the eyes and flow the locks
Of the mystic Vanishers!

And the fisher in his skiff,
And the hunter on the moss,
Hear their call from cape and cliff,
See their hands the birch-leaves toss.

Wistful, longing, through the green
Twilight of the clustered pines,
In their faces rarely seen
Beauty more than mortal shines.

Fringed with gold their mantles flow
On the slopes of westering knolls;
I...

"Dumque virent genua
Et decet, obducta solvatur fonte senectus."

The muse of boyhood's fervid hour
Grows tame as skies get chill and hazy;
Where once she sought a passion-flower,
She only hopes to find a daisy.
Well, who the changing world bewails?
Who asks to have it stay unaltered?
Shall grown-up kittens chase their tails?
Shall colts be never shod or haltered?

Are we "The Boys" that used to make
The tables ring with noisy follies?
Whose deep-lunged laughter oft would shake
The ceiling with its thunder-volleys?
Are we the youths with lips unshorn,
At beauty's feet unwrinkled suitors,
Whose memories reach tradition's morn, -
The days of prehistoric tutors?

"The Boys" we knew, - but who are these
Whose heads might serve for Plu...

I.
All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.

II.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music’s wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

III.
My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion, Heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? ’Tis well!
Lose who may, I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they!

1.

Unfelt unheard, unseen,
I've left my little queen,
Her languid arms in silver slumber lying:
Ah! through their nestling touch,
Who, who could tell how much
There is for madness, cruel, or complying?

2.

Those faery lids how sleek!
Those lips how moist! they speak,
In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds:
Into my fancy's ear
Melting a burden dear,
How "Love doth know no fullness, nor no bounds."

3.

True, tender monitors!
I bend unto your laws:
This sweetest day for dalliance was born!
So, without more ado,
I'll feel my heaven anew,
For all the blushing of the hasty morn.

Nature's imperfect child, to whom
The world is wrapt in viewless gloom,
Can unresisted still impart
The fondest wishes of his heart.

And he, to whose impervious ear
The sweetest sounds no charms dispense,
Can bid his inmost soul appear
In clear, tho' silent, eloquence.

But we, my Julia, not so blest,
Are doom'd a diff'rent fate to prove, -
To feel each joy and hope supprest
That flow from pure, but hidden, love.

Two loves came up a long, wide aisle,
And knelt at a low, white gate;
One -- tender and true, with the shyest smile,
One -- strong, true, and elate.

Two lips spoke in a firm, true way,
And two lips answered soft and low;
In one true hand such a little hand lay
Fluttering, frail as a flake of snow.

One stately head bent humbly there,
Stilled were the throbbings of human love;
One head drooped down like a lily fair,
Two prayers went, wing to wing, above.

God blest them both in the holy place,
A long, brief moment the rite was done;
On the human love fell the heavenly grace,
Making two hearts forever one.

Between two lengthening rows of smiles,
One sweetly shy, one proud, elate,
Two loves passed down the long, wide aisles,
W...

Gay was the Maid of Ocram
As lady eer might be
Ere she did venture past a maid
To love Lord Gregory.
Fair was the Maid of Ocram
And shining like the sun
Ere her bower key was turned on two
Where bride bed lay for none.

And late at night she sought her love--
The snow slept on her skin--
Get up, she cried, thou false young man,
And let thy true love in.
And fain would he have loosed the key
All for his true love's sake,
But Lord Gregory then was fast asleep,
His mother wide awake.

And up she threw the window sash,
And out her head put she:
And who is that which knocks so late
And taunts so loud to me?
It is the Maid of Ocram,
Your own heart's next akin;
For so you've sworn, Lord Gregory,
To come and let me in.

Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig,
What juncture of the apple and the yew,
Surmount their bones; but speak what none ha've
heard.
The miracle that gave them such a death
Transfigured to pure substance what had once
Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join
There is no touching here, nor touching there,
Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole;
For the intercourse of angels is a light
Where for its moment both seem lost, consumed.
Here in the pitch-dark atmosphere above
...

        Deep, Love, yea, very deep.
    And in the dark exiled,
I have no sense of light but still to creep
And know the breast, but not the eyes. Thy child
Saw ne'er his mother near, nor if she smiled;
    But only feels her weep.

        Yet clouds and branches green
    There be aloft, somewhere,
And winds, and angel birds that build between,
As I believe--and I will not despair;
For faith is evidence of things not seen.
    Love! if I could be there!

I will be patient, dear.
    Perchance some part of me
Puts forth aloft and feels the rushing year
And shades the bird, and is that happy tree
Then were it strength to serve and not appear,
    And bliss, though blind, to be.

I have written, long years I have written,
For the sake of my people and right,
I was true when the iron had bitten
Deep into my soul in the night;
I wrote not for praise nor for money,
I craved but the soul and the pen,
And I felt not the sting in the honey
Of writing the kindness of men.

You read and you saw without seeing,
My work seemed a trifle apart,
While the truth of things thrilled through my being,
And the wrong of things murdered my heart!
Cast out, and despised and neglected,
And weak, and in fear, and in debt,
My songs, mutilated! rejected!
Shall ring through the Commonwealth yet!

And you to the pure and the guileless,
And the peace of your comfort and pride,
You have mocked at my bodily vileness,
You have tempted and ca...

Then its O! for a wife, sich a wife as aw know!
Who's thowts an desires are pure as the snow,
Who nivver thinks virtue a reason for praise,
An who shudders when tell'd ov this world's wicked ways.

Shoo isn't a gossip, shoo keeps to her hooam,
Shoo's a welcome for friends if they happen to come;
Shoo's tidy an cleean, let yo call when yo may,
Shoo's nivver upset or put aght ov her way.

At morn when her husband sets off to his wark,
Shoo starts him off whistlin, as gay as a lark;
An at neet if he's weary he hurries straight back,
An if worried forgets all his cares in a crack.

If onny naybor is sick or distressed,
Shoe sends what shoo can an allus her best;
An if onny young fowk chonce to fall i' disgrace,
They fly straight to her and they tell her ...

Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.

You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men’s hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.

Weep ye not, ye children dear,

That as yet ye are unborn:
For each sorrow and each tear

Makes the father's heart to mourn.

Patient be a short time to it,

Unproduced, and known to none;
If your father cannot do it,

By your mother 'twill be done.