Family

When my heart was sad and lonely,
    And had closed its inmost cell
Over the impulsive feelings
    That rule my nation's hearts too well.

When the tie was cut asunder,
    That had bound me to a home,
And I felt the desolation
    Of being in the world alone;

When I first, the veil assuming,
    Masked before a treacherous world,
And the hopes romance expanded
    Reality had sternly furled;

And the touch of disappointment,
    Blighted what was green and fair,
And the spirit's bright revealings
    Are not so hopeful as they were.

Precious are the words of kindness,
    Falling on the heart like dew,
Freshening though, alas for weakness,
    They cannot make things new.

Thoughts come warm from that deep foun...

        All love that has not friendship for its base
    Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
    Though brave its walls as any in the land,
        And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;
        Though skilful and accomplished artists trace
    Most beautiful designs on every hand,
    And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,
        And fountains play in some flow'r-hidden place:

        Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust
    Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall,
    Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,
        Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.
    Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe,
    Needs friendship's solid mason-work below.

"O memory, where is now my youth,
Who used to say that life was truth?"

"I saw him in a crumbled cot
Beneath a tottering tree;
That he as phantom lingers there
Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my joy,
Who lived with me in sweet employ?"

"I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,
Where laughter used to be;
That he as phantom wanders there
Is known to none but me."

"O Memory, where is now my hope,
Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?"

"I saw her in a tomb of tomes,
Where dreams are wont to be;
That she as spectre haunteth there
Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my faith,
One time a champion, now a wraith?"

"I saw her in a ravaged aisle,
Bowed down on bended knee;
That h...

You say you're glad I write - oh, say not so!
    My fount of song, dear friend, 's a bitter well;
And when the numbers freely from it flow,
    'Tis that my heart, and eyes, o'erflow as well.

Castalia, fam'd of yore, - the spring divine,
    Apollo's smile upon its current wears:
Moore and Anacreon, found its waves were wine,
    To me, it flows a sullen stream of tears.

When warm'd with zeal, my rustic Muse
Feels fluttering fain to tell her news,
And paint her simple, lowly views
With all her art,
And, though in genius but obtuse,
May touch the heart.

Of palaces and courts of kings
She thinks but little, never sings,
But wildly strikes her uncouth strings
In some pool cot,
Spreads o'er the poor hen fostering wings,
And soothes their lot.

Well pleased is she to see them smile,
And uses every honest wile
To mend then hearts, their cares beguile,
With rhyming story,
And lend them to then God the while,
And endless glory.

Perchance, my poor neglected Muse
Unfit to harass or amuse,
Escaping praise and loud abuse,
Unheard, unknown,
May feed the moths and wasting dews,
As some hav...

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade
On desolate sea and lonely sand,
Out of the silence and the shade
What is the voice of strange command
Calling you still, as friend calls friend
With love that cannot brook delay,
To rise and follow the ways that wend
Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street
A roaring reach of death and life,
Of vortices that clash and fleet
And ruin in appointed strife,
Hark to it calling, calling clear,
Calling until you cannot stay
From dearer things than your own most dear
Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of ebb and flow,
Out of the sight of lamp and star,
It calls you where the good winds blow,
And the unchanging meadows are:
From faded hopes and hopes agleam,
It ...

AHASUERAS

What were thy thoughts, sweet Esther?    Something passed
Across thy face, that for a moment veiled
Thy soul from mine, and left me desolate.
Thy thoughts were not of me?

ESTHER

    Ay, ALL of thee!
I wondered, if in truth, thou wert content
With me - thy choice.    Was there no other one
Of all who passed before thee at thy court
Whose memory pursues thee with regret?

AHASUERAS

I do confess I much regret that day
And wish I could relive it.

ESTHER

    Oh!    My lord!

AHASUERAS

Yea!    I regret those hours I wasted on
The poor procession that preceded thee.
Hadst thou come first, then all the added wealth

    Of one long day of loving thee were mine -
A boundless for...

O the days gone by! O the days gone by!
The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye;
The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail
As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale;
When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky,
And my happy heart brimmed over, in the days gone by.

In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped
By the honeysuckle tangles where the water-lilies dipped,
And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink,
Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink,
And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry
And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by.

O the days gone by! O the days gone by!
The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the ey...

Wilful we are in our infirmity
Of childish questioning and discontent.
Whate'er befalls us is divinely meant -
Thou Truth the clearer for thy mystery!
Make us to meet what is or is to be
With fervid welcome, knowing it is sent
To serve us in some way full excellent,
Though we discern it all belatedly.
The rose buds, and the rose blooms and the rose
Bows in the dews, and in its fulness, lo,
Is in the lover's hand, - then on the breast
Of her he loves, - and there dies. - And who knows
Which fate of all a rose may undergo
Is fairest, dearest, sweetest, loveliest?

Nay, we are children: we will not mature.
A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears
Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears
In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor
We seem when we...

I.

As down life's morning stream we glide,
Full oft some Flower stoops o'er its side,
And beckons to the smiling shore,
Where roses strew the landscape o'er:
Yet as we reach that Flower to clasp,
It seems to mock the cheated grasp,
And whisper soft, with siren glee,
"My bloom is not oh not for thee!"


II.

Within Youth's flowery vale I tread,
By some entrancing shadow led
And Echo to my call replies
Yet, as she answers, lo, she flies!
And, as I seem to reach her cell
The grotto, where she weaves her spell
The Nymph's sweet voice afar I hear
So Love departs, as we draw near!


III.

Upon a mountain's dizzy height,
Ambition's temple gleams with light:
Proud forms are moving fair within,
And bid u...

When peevish flaws his soul have stirred
    To fretful tears for crossed desires,
Obedient to his mother's word
    My child to banishment retires.

As disappears the moon, when wind
    Heaps miles of mist her visage o'er,
So vanisheth his face behind
    The cloud of his white pinafore.

I cannot then come near my child--
    A gulf between of gainful loss;
He to the infinite exiled--
    I waiting, for I cannot cross.

Ah then, what wonder, passing show,
    The Isis-veil behind it brings--
Like that self-coffined creatures know,
    Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!

Mysterious moment! When or how
    Is the bewildering change begun?
Hid in far deeps the awful now
    When turns his being to the sun!

A light...

Sometimes I hear fine ladies sing,
Sometimes I smoke and drink with men;
Sometimes I play at games of cards,
Judge me to be no strong man then.

The strongest moment of my life
Is when I think about the poor;
When, like a spring that rain has fed,
My pity rises more and more.

The flower that loves the warmth and light,
Has all its mornings bathed in dew;
My heart has moments wet with tears,
My weakness is they are so few.

1.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

2.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with...

I

She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
"O my children, come home!"
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud, -
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"

II

Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
"O my children, come home!"
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail, -
"O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!"

III

She walk...

Why is it that Poetry has never yet been subjected to that process of Dilution which has proved so advantageous to her sister-art Music? The Diluter gives us first a few notes of some well-known Air, then a dozen bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately: thus saving the listener, if not from all risk of recognising the melody at all, at least from the too-exciting transports which it might produce in a more concentrated form. The process is termed "setting" by Composers, and any one, that has ever experienced the emotion of being unexpectedly set down in a heap of mortar, will recognise the truthfulness of this happy phrase.

For truly, just as the genuine Epicure lingers lovingly over a
morsel of supreme Venison, whose every fibre seems to murmur "Excelsior!", yet swallows, ere returning to ...

Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake adream,
Shall live again for me those hours,
When, in its mystery and gleam,
I met her 'mid the flowers.

Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
The sorceries of love and hope
Had made a shining lair.

And daydawn brows, whereover hung
The twilight of dark locks; and lips,
Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled drips.

I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her bosom's moony molds.

Nor of her large limbs' languorous
Win...