Family

Dead leaves are deep in all our forest walks;
    Their brightest tints not all extinguished yet,
    Shine redly glimmering through the dewy wet;
    And whereso'er thy musing foot is set,
The fragrant cool-wort lifts its emerald stalks.

How kindly nature wraps secure and warm,
    In the fallen mantle of her summer pride,
    These lovely tender things that peep and hide,
    Whom unawares thy curious eye hath spied,
For the long night of winter's frost and storm.

Still keeps the deer-berry its vivid green,
    Set in its glowing calyx like a gem;
    While hung above, a marvellous diadem
    Of tawny gold, the bittersweet's gray stem,
Strung with its globes of murky flame is seen.

The foot sinks ankle-deep in velvet moss,
    The shroud of...

No foreign tribute from a stranger-hand,
Mother, I bring thee, whom not Heaven's songs
Would as an alien reach.... Ah, but how far
From Heaven's least heavenly is the changing note
And changing fancy of these fitful cries!
Mother, forgive them, as the best of me
Has ever pleaded only for thy pardon,
Not for thy praise.
Mother, there is a love
Men give to wives and children, lovers, friends;
There is a love which some men give to God.
Ah! between this, I think, and that last love,
Last and too-late-discovered love of God,
There shines--and nearer to the love of God--
The love a man gives only to his mother,
Whose travail of dear thought has never end
Until the End. Oh that my mouth had words
Comfortable as thy kisses to the boy
Who loved while he forg...

Peace! Let me go, or ere it be too late;
    Dip not your arrows in the honey-mead;
    Paint not the wound through which my heart doth bleed;
Leave me unmock'd, unpitied to my fate--
Peace! Let me go.

Think you that words can smooth my rugged track?
    Words heal the stab your soft white hands have made,
    Or stir the burthen on my bosom laid?
Winds shook not Earth from Atlas' bended back--
Peace! Let me go.

What though it be the last time we shall meet--
    Raise your white brow, and wreathe your raven hair,
    And fill with music sweet the summer air;
Not this again shall draw me to your feet--
Peace! Let me go.

No laurels from my vanquish'd heart shall wave
    Round your triumphant beauty as you go,
    Not thus adorn'd work ou...

Death! that struck when I was most confiding.
In my certain faith of joy to be,
Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing
From the fresh root of Eternity!

Leaves, upon Time's branch, were growing brightly,
Full of sap, and full of silver dew;
Birds beneath its shelter gathered nightly;
Daily round its flowers the wild bees flew.

Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom;
Guilt stripped off the foliage in its pride
But, within its parent's kindly bosom,
Flowed for ever Life's restoring tide.

Little mourned I for the parted gladness,
For the vacant nest and silent song,
Hope was there, and laughed me out of sadness;
Whispering, "Winter will not linger long!"

And, behold! with tenfold increase blessing,
Spring adorned the beau...

"O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

"If your great gaunt eyes so importune
Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,
Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!"

"Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
Than all the living folk there be;
But alas, there is no such joy for me!"

"Ah she was one you loved, no doubt,
Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
And when she passed, all your sun went out?"

"Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
Whom all the others were ranked above,
Whom during her life I thought nothing of."

How my heart yearns towards my friends at home!
Poor suffering souls, whose lives are like the trees,
Bent, crushed, and broken in the storm of life!
A whirlwind of existence seems to roam
Through some poor hearts continually. These
Have neither rest nor pause; one day is rife
With tempest, and another dashed with gloom;
And the few rays of light that might illume
Their thorny path are drenched with tearful rain.
Yet these pure souls live not their lives in vain;
For they become as spiritual guides
And lights to others; rising with the tides
Of their full being into higher spheres,
Brighter and brighter still through all the coming years.

Though young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.

Who knows a woman's wild caprice?
'It played with Goethe's silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's "niece"
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her lord's Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies, -
The musky daughter of the Nile,
With plaited hair and almond eyes.

Might...

    A well-thumbed book
    like a well-thumbed life,
    "whilst you walk this earth"
    yet nothing is "afoot",
    as so many small boys
    throwing stones through the funeral parlour
    glass door.

    A cake-walk? Being alive and interacting
    across the face of the multitude is terrible
    algebra running into unfathomable sums.
    "Doing your sums", my grade school teacher
    used to say and I still am. Whippersnapper,
    learning lessons in a strange stamina
    sort of way.

    One of the multitude died last night &
    is now "resting" in a large, Victorian parlour.
    Even the walls grimace. I went by, caught a peek
    at the assemblage chasing thru rain to see his
    last hurrah. Look, "parlour" can be deadly s...

(Written in the shadow of 1872.)


Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heaven’s dome with different eyes
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs
I wrote a song in which I strove
To shadow forth thy strain of woe,
Dark widowed sister of the grove!
Twelve wasted years ago.

But youth was then too young to find
Those high authentic syllables,
Whose voice is like the wintering wind
By sunless mountain fells;
Nor had I sinned and suffered then
To that superlative degree
That I would rather seek, than men,
Wild fellowship with thee!

But he who hears this autumn day
Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme,
Is one whose hair was shot with grey
By Grief instead of Time.
He has no need, like m...

The curse of Adam, the old curse of all,
Though I inherit in this feverish life
Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought, in Care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall
I taste, through thee, my Eve, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise! - how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame,
Of this fair earth, and its delightful bow'rs,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flow'rs; -
But oh! as many and such tears are ours,
As only should be shed for guilt and shame!

’Tis said that when
The hands of men
Tamed this primeval wood,
And hoary trees with groans of woe,
Like warriors by an unknown foe,
Were in their strength subdued,
The virgin Earth
Gave instant birth
To springs that ne’er did flow
That in the sun
Did rivulets run,
And all around rare flowers did blow
The wild rose pale
Perfumed the gale
And the queenly lily adown the dale
(Whom the sun and the dew
And the winds did woo),
With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.

So when in tears
The love of years
Is wasted like the snow,
And the fine fibrils of its life
By the rude wrong of instant strife
Are broken at a blow
Within the heart
Do springs upstart
Of which it doth now know,
And strange, sweet dreams,...

Once agean welcome! oh, what is ther grander,
When years have rolled by sin' yo left an old friend?
An what cheers yor heart, when yo far away wander,
As mich as the thowts ov a welcome at th' end?
Yo may goa an be lucky, an win lots o' riches;
Yo may gain fresh acquaintance as onward yo rooam;
But tho' wealth may be temptin, an honor bewitches,
Yet they're nowt when compared to a welcome back hooam.

Pray, who hasn't felt as they've sat sad an lonely,
They'd give all they possessed for the wings ov a dove,
To fly far away, just to catch a seet only
Ov th' friends o' ther childhood, the friends 'at they love.
Hope may fill the breast when some old spot we're leavin,
Bright prospects may lure us throo th' dear land away,
But it's joy o' returnin at sets one's breast...

Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,
Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame!
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,
She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.

Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes,
And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains;
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives
Will declare it 's all nonsense insuring your lives.

Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please,
Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese,
And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies,"
To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.

Ye healers of men, for a moment decline
Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line;
While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go
The ol...

Mary, ah me! gentle Mary,
    Can it be you're lying there,
Pale and still, and cold as marble,
    You that was so young and fair.

Seemeth it as yestereven,
    When the golden autumn smiled,
On our meeting, gentle Mary,
    You were then a very child.

Busy fingers, flitting footsteps,
    Never resting all day long;
Shy and bashful, and the sweet voice
    Ever breaking into song

Always gentle, kind and thoughtful,
    Blameless and so free from art,
'Twas no wonder one so lovely
    Found a place within my heart.

You, while life was in its spring time,
    Made the Scripture Mary's choice;
Jesus saw you, loved you, called you,
    And you listened to His voice.

Ever patient and rejoicing,
    Shielded t...

And one, perchance, will read and sigh:
"What aimless songs! Why will he sing
Of nature that drags out her woe
Through wind and rain, and sun, and snow,
From miserable spring to spring?"
    Then put me by.

And one, perhaps, will read and say:
"Why write of things across the sea;
Of men and women, far and near,
When we of things at home would hear -
Well, who would call this poetry?"
    Then toss away.

A hopeless task have we, meseems,
At this late day; whom fate hath made
Sad, bankrupt heirs of song; who, filled
With kindred yearnings, try to build
A tower like theirs, that will not fade,
    Out of our dreams.

"Nah, Matty! what meeans all this fuss?
Tha'rt as back'ard as back'ard can be;
Ther must be some reason, becoss
It used to be diff'rent wi' thee.

Aw've nooaticed, 'at allus befoor
If aw kussed thi, tha smiled an lukt fain;
Ther's summat nooan reight, lass, aw'm sewer,
Tha seems i' soa gloomy a vein.

If tha's met wi' a hansomer chap,
Aw'm sewer aw'll net stand i' thi way;
But tha mud get a war, lass, bi th' swap, -
If tha'rt anxious aw'll nivver say nay.

But tha knows 'at for monny a wick
Aw've been savin mi brass to get wed;
An aw'd meant thee gooin wi' me to pick
Aght some chairs an a table an bed.

Aw offer'd mi hand an mi heart;
An tha seemed to be fain to ha booath;
But if its thi wish we should part,
To beg on thi, na...

THE POET SINGS TO HIS POET

From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn,
    We two are sundered always, sweet.
A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn
    And the cold sea-shore when we meet.
    The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet.

We are not day and night, my Fair,
    But one.    It is an hour of hours.
And thoughts that are not otherwhere
    Are thought here 'mid the blown sea-flowers,
    This meeting and this dusk of ours.

Delight has taken Pain to her heart,
    And there is dusk and stars for these.
Oh, linger, linger!    They would not part;
    And the wild wind comes from over-seas
    With a new song to the olive trees.

And when we meet by the sounding pine
    Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother.
And when t...

Why do I love my sweetheart?    Well
    I really never tried to tell.
I love her mayhap for her smile,
    So innocent and free from guile.

Perhaps I love her for her mien,
    So calmly cheerful and serene;
Or it may be her silken hair,
    First caught and tangled Cupid there.

And since I came to analyse;
    Her chiefest beauty is her eyes.
Her mouth, too, that is Cupid's bow -
    Perhaps that's why I love her so.

And now I think of it, her voice
    First made my rusty heart rejoice
And then her hand -'tis my belief
    It quite outvies the lily leaf.

Perhaps I love her for her ways
    That blend in with the sunny days.
Tush -to be brief and plain with you,
    I love her just because I do.