Family

'Tis a little room, my friend;
A baby-walk from end to end;
All the things look sadly real,
This hot noontide's Unideal.
Seek not refuge at the casement,
There's no pasture for amazement
But a house most dim and rusty,
And a street most dry and dusty;
Seldom here more happy vision
Than water-cart's blest apparition,
We'll shut out the staring space,
Draw the curtains in its face.

Close the eyelids of the room,
Fill it with a scarlet gloom:
Lo! the walls on every side
Are transformed and glorified;
Ceiled as with a rosy cloud
Furthest eastward of the crowd,
Blushing faintly at the bliss
Of the Titan's good-night kiss,
Which her westward sisters share,--
Crimson they from breast to hair.
'Tis the faintest lends its dye
To...

    Being his mother - when he goes away
        I would not hold him overlong, and so
        Sometimes my yielding sight of him grows O
    So quick of tears, I joy he did not stay
    To catch the faintest rumor of them!    Nay,
        Leave always his eyes clear and glad, although
        Mine own, dear Lord, do fill to overflow;
    Let his remembered features, as I pray,
    Smile ever on me!    Ah! what stress of love
        Thou givest me to guard with Thee thiswise:
        Its fullest speech ever to be denied
    Mine own - being his mother!    All thereof
        Thou knowest only, looking from the skies
        As when not Christ alone was crucified.

Geraldine, Geraldine,
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream's banks of green
Where first our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Geraldine, Geraldine,
Do you remember how
From th' old bridge we would lean
The bridge that's broken now
To watch the minnows sheen,
And the ripples of the Run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Geraldine, Geraldine
Do you remember too
The old beech-tree, between
Whose roots the wild flowers grew?
Where oft we met at e'en,
When stars were few or none,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Geraldine, Geraldine,
The bark has grown around
The names I cut therein,
And the...

I.

I stood in an ancient garden
With high red walls around;
Over them grey and green lichens
In shadowy arabesque wound.

The topmost climbing blossoms
On fields kine-haunted looked out;
But within were shelter and shadow,
With daintiest odours about.

There were alleys and lurking arbours,
Deep glooms into which to dive.
The lawns were as soft as fleeces,
Of daisies I counted but five.

The sun-dial was so aged
It had gathered a thoughtful grace;
'Twas the round-about of the shadow
That so had furrowed its face.

The flowers were all of the oldest
That ever in garden sprung;
Red, and blood-red, and dark purple
The rose-lamps flaming hung.

Along the borders fringed
With broad thick edges of box

‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land,
‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with sho...

Near the banks of that lone river,
    Where the water-lilies grow,
Breathed the fairest flower that ever
    Bloomed and faded years ago.

Now we met and loved and parted,
    None on earth can ever know--
Nor how pure and gentle-hearted
    Beamed the mourned one years ago!

Like the stream with lilies laden,
    Will life's future current flow,
Till in heaven I meet the maiden
    Fondly cherished years ago.

Hearts that love like mine forget not;
    They're the same in weal or wo;
And that star of memory set not
    In the grave of years ago.

The summer warmth has left the sky,
The summer songs have died away;
And, withered, in the footpaths lie
The fallen leaves, but yesterday
With ruby and with topaz gay.

The grass is browning on the hills;
No pale, belated flowers recall
The astral fringes of the rills,
And drearily the dead vines fall,
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.

Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
Against the dusk of fir and pine,
Last of their floral sisterhood,
The hazel’s yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold of Afric’s mine!

Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail;
But, in the season’s saddest hour,
To skies that weep and winds that wail
Its glad surprisals never fail.

O days grown cold! O life grown ol...

    There were three hills that stood alone
    With woods about their feet.
    They dreamed quiet when the sun shone
    And whispered when the rain beat.

    They wore all three their coronals
    Till men with houses came
    And scored their heads with pits and walls
    And thought the hills were tame.

    Red and white when day shines bright
    They hide the green for miles,
    Where are the old hills gone?    At night
    The moon looks down and smiles.

    She sees the captors small and weak,
    She knows the prisoners strong,
    She hears the patient hills that speak:
    "Brothers, it is not long;

    "Brothers, we stood when they were not
    Ten thousand summers past.
    Brothers, when they are clean forgot

'While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.

'How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.

'Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away;
I, but none other:
God might have let thee stay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.

'I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another
Plucked bitterest fruit to gi...

Look at those sleeping children; softly tread,
Lest thou do mar their dream, and come not nigh
Till their fond mother, with a kiss, shall cry,
'Tis morn, awake! awake! Ah! they are dead!
Yet folded in each other's arms they lie,
So still - oh, look! so still and smilingly,
So breathing and so beautiful, they seem,
As if to die in youth were but to dream
Of spring and flowers! Of flowers? Yet nearer stand -
There is a lily in one little hand,
Broken, but not faded yet,
As if its cup with tears were wet.
So sleeps that child, not faded, though in death,
And seeming still to hear her sister's breath,
As when she first did lay her head to rest
Gently on that sister's breast,
And kissed her ere she fell asleep!
The archangel's trump alone shall wake that slumb...

Near Hastings, on the shingle-beach,
We loitered at the time
When ripens on the wall the peach,
The autumn's lovely prime.
Far off,--the sea and sky seemed blent,
The day was wholly done,
The distant town its murmurs sent,
Strangers,--we were alone.

We wandered slow; sick, weary, faint,
Then one of us sat down,
No nature hers, to make complaint;--
The shadows deepened brown.
A lady past,--she was not young,
But oh! her gentle face
No painter-poet ever sung,
Or saw such saintlike grace.

She past us,--then she came again,
Observing at a glance
That we were strangers; one, in pain,--
Then asked,--Were we from France?
We talked awhile,--some roses red
That seemed as wet with tears,
She gave my sister, and she said,
"G...

Supper removed, the mother sits,
And tells her tales by starts and fits.
Not willing to lose time or toil,
She knits or sews, and talks the while
Something, that may be warnings found
To the young listeners gaping round--
Of boys who in her early day
Strolled to the meadow-lake to play,
Where willows, oer the bank inclined
Sheltered the water from the wind,
And left it scarcely crizzled oer--
When one sank in, to rise no more!
And how, upon a market-night,
When not a star bestowed its light,
A farmer's shepherd, oer his glass,
Forgot that he had woods to pass:
And having sold his master's sheep,
Was overta'en by darkness deep.
How, coming with his startled horse,
To where two roads a hollow cross;
Where, lone guide when a stranger strays,

Long loving, all our love was husbanded
Until one morning on the brown hillside,
One misty Autumn morn when Sun did hide
His radiance, yet was felt. No words we said,
But in one flash transfigured, glorified,
All her heart's tumult beating white and red,
She fell prone on her face and hid her wide
Over-brimmed eyes in dewy fern.
    I prayed,
Then spake, "In us two now is manifest
That throbbing kindred whereof thou art graft
And I the grafted, in this holy place."
She, turning half, with sober shame confest
Discovery, then hid her rosy face.
I read her wilding heart, and my heart laught.

Ah! no, no, it is nothing, surely nothing at all,
Only the wild-going wind round by the garden-wall,
For the dawn just now is breaking, the wind beginning to fall.

        Wind, wind! thou art sad, art thou kind?
        Wind, wind, unhappy! thou art blind,
        Yet still thou wanderest the lily-seed to find.

So I will sit, and think and think of the days gone by,
Never moving my chair for fear the dogs should cry,
Making no noise at all while the flambeau burns awry.

For my chair is heavy and carved, and with sweeping green behind
It is hung, and the dragons thereon grin out in the gusts of the wind;
On its folds an orange lies, with a deep gash cut in the rind.

        Wind, wind! thou art sad, art thou kind?
        Wind, wind, unhappy...