Family

As through the forest, disarrayed
By chill November, late I strayed,
A lonely minstrel of the wood
Was singing to the solitude
I loved thy music, thus I said,
When o'er thy perch the leaves were spread
Sweet was thy song, but sweeter now
Thy carol on the leafless bough.
Sing, little bird! thy note shall cheer
The sadness of the dying year.

When violets pranked the turf with blue
And morning filled their cups with dew,
Thy slender voice with rippling trill
The budding April bowers would fill,
Nor passed its joyous tones away
When April rounded into May:
Thy life shall hail no second dawn, -
Sing, little bird! the spring is gone.

And I remember - well-a-day! -
Thy full-blown summer roundelay,
As when behind a broidered screen

Should Phoebus e'er desert my mind,
And should the Nine their aid refuse,
Enchanting Girl! I still could find
A theme in thee, in thee a Muse.

Can Fiction any charms devise
That proudly may with thine compare?
On thee she turns her wondering eyes,
And drops the pencil in despair.

Far sweeter are thy notes to me
Than sweetest poet ever sung;
And true perfection would it be
To sing thy beauties with thy tongue.

Let Phoebus, then, desert my mind!
And let the Nine their aid refuse!
Ever, my Julia! shall I find
In thee a theme, in thee a Muse.

I

Let others sing of gold and gear, the joy of being rich;
But oh, the days when I was poor, a vagrant in a ditch!
When every dawn was like a gem, so radiant and rare,
And I had but a single coat, and not a single care;
When I would feast right royally on bacon, bread and beer,
And dig into a stack of hay and doze like any peer;
When I would wash beside a brook my solitary shirt,
And though it dried upon my back I never took a hurt;
When I went romping down the road contemptuous of care,
And slapped Adventure on the back - by Gad! we were a pair;
When, though my pockets lacked a coin, and though my coat was old,
The largess of the stars was mine, and all the sunset gold;
When time was only made for fools, and free as air was I,
And hard I hit and hard I lived bene...

Red gleams the mountain ridge,
    Slow the stream creeps
Under the old bent bridge,
    And labor sleeps.

There are no restless birds,
    No leaves that stir,
Dusk her gray mantle girds,
    Night's harbinger.

The storm-soul's change and start
    Pause, lull, and cease;
In my unquiet heart
    Is born a peace.

("Dérision! que cet amour boiteux.")

[HERNANI, Act III.]


O mockery! that this halting love
That fills the heart so full of flame and transport,
Forgets the body while it fires the soul!
If but a youthful shepherd cross my path,
He singing on the way - I sadly musing,
He in his fields, I in my darksome alleys -
Then my heart murmurs: "O, ye mouldering towers!
Thou olden ducal dungeon! O how gladly
Would I exchange ye, and my fields and forests,
Mine ancient name, mine ancient rank, my ruins -
My ancestors, with whom I soon shall lie,
For his thatched cottage and his youthful brow!"
His hair is black - his eyes shine forth like thine.
Him thou might'st look upon, and say, fair youth,
Then turn to me, and think that I am old...

Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
The Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
Are made our own;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
By others sown;

To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
H...

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?


What shall be said between us here
Among the downs, between the trees,
In fields that knew our feet last year,
In sight of quiet sands and seas,
This year, Félise?

Who knows what word were best to say?
For last year’s leaves lie dead and red
On this sweet day, in this green May,
And barren corn makes bitter bread.
What shall be said?

Here as last year the fields begin,
A fire of flowers and glowing grass;
The old fields we laughed and lingered in,
Seeing each our souls in last year’s glass,
Félise, alas!

Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep,
Not we, though this be as it is?
For love awake or love asleep
Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss,
A song like this.

I tha...

Softly, softly, Niccolo Amati!
What can put such fancies in your head?
There, go dream of your blue-skied Cremona,
While I ponder something you have said.

Something in that last low lovely cadence
Piercing the green dusk alone and far,
Named a new room in the house of knowledge,
Waiting unfrequented, door ajar.

While you dream then, let me unmolested
Pass in childish wonder through that door,--
Breathless, touch and marvel at the beauties
Soon my wiser elders must explore.

Ah, my Niccolo, it's no great science
We shall ever conquer, you and I.
Yet, when you are nestled at my shoulder,
Others guess not half that we descry.

As all sight is but a finer hearing,
And all color but a finer sound,
Beauty, but the reach of lyric freed...

I.

She comes, the dreamy daughter
Of day and night, a girl,
Who o'er the western water
Lifts up her moon of pearl:
Like some Rebecca at the well,
Who fills her jar of crystal shell,
Down ways of dew, o'er dale and dell,
Dusk comes with dreams of you,
Of you,
Dusk comes with dreams of you.

II.

She comes, the serious sister
Of all the stars that strew
The deeps of God, and glister
Bright on the darkling blue:
Like some loved Ruth, who heaps her arm
With golden gleanings of the farm,
Down fields of stars, where shadows swarm,
Dusk comes with thoughts of you,
Of you,
Dusk comes with thoughts of you.

III.

She comes, and soft winds greet her,
And whispering odors woo;
She is the words and met...

Four fiery steeds impatient of the rein
Whirled us o'er sunless ground beneath a sky
As void of sunshine, when, from that wide plain,
Clear tops of far-off mountains we descry,
Like a Sierra of cerulean Spain,
All light and lustre. Did no heart reply;
Yes, there was One; for One, asunder fly
The thousand links of that ethereal chain;
And green vales open out, with grove and field,
And the fair front of many a happy Home;
Such tempting spots as into vision come
While Soldiers, weary of the arms they wield
And sick at heart of strifeful Christendom,
Gaze on the moon by parting clouds revealed.

I had rather write one word upon the rock
Of ages than ten thousand in the sand.
The rock of ages! lo I cannot reach
Its lofty shoulders with my puny hand:
I can but touch the sands about its feet.
Yea, I have painted pictures for the blind,
And sung my sweetest songs to ears of stone.
What matter if the dust of ages drift
Five fathoms deep above my grave unknown,
For I have sung and loved the songs I sung.
Who sings for fame the Muses may disown;
Who sings for gold will sing an idle song;
But he who sings because sweet music springs
Unbidden from his heart and warbles long,
May haply touch another heart unknown.
There is sweeter poetry in the hearts of men
Than ever poet wrote or minstrel sung;
For words are clumsy wings for burning thought.
The ful...

I am glad that you have come,
    Arthur, from the dusty town;
You must throw aside your cares,
    And relax your legal frown.
Coke and Littleton, avaunt!
    You have ruled him through the day;
In this quiet, sylvan haunt,
    Be content to yield your sway.

It is pleasant, is it not,
    Sitting here beneath the trees,
While the restless wind above
    Ripples over leafy seas?

Often, when the twilight falls,
    In the shadow, quite alone,
I have sat till starlight came,
    Listening to its monotone.
Yet not always quite alone,--
    Brother, let me take the place
Just behind you now the moon
    Shines no longer in my face.

It is near two months ago
    Since I met him, as I think,
By God's mercy, when my hor...

Below the braes o' heather, and far alang the glen,
The road rins southward, southward, that grips the souls o' men,
That draws their fitsteps aye awa' frae hearth and frae fauld,
That pairts ilk freen' frae ither, and the young frae the auld.
And whiles I stand at mornin' and whiles I stand at nicht,
To see it through the gaisty gloom, gang slippin oot o sicht;
There's mony a lad will ne'er come back amang his ain to lie,
An' its lang, lang waitin' till the time gangs by.

An far ayont the bit o' sky that lies abune the hills,
There is the black toon standin' mid the roarin' o' the mills.
Whaur the reek frae mony engines hangs 'atween it and the sun
An the lives are weary, weary, that are just begun.
Doon yon lang road that winds awa' my ain three sons they went,
They ...

    Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
    By woods, and fields of corn,
    Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
    Upon my birthday morn.


    But I within a city, I,
    So full of vague unrest,
    Would almost give my life to lie
    An hour upon upon thy breast.


    To let the wherry listless go,
    And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
    Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
    Like the red harbor-buoy;


    To sit in happy indolence,
    To rest upon the oars,
    And catch the heavy earthy scents
    That blow from summer shores;


    To see the rounded sun go down,
    And with its parting fires
    Light up the windows of the town
    And burn the tapering spires;


    And then to hear...

Farewel dear babe, my hearts too much content,
Farewel sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewel fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto Eternity.
Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh the dayes so soon were terminate;
Sith thou art setled in an Everlasting state.

By nature Trees do rot when they are grown,
And Plumbs and Apples throughly ripe do fall,
And Corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown to have so short a date,
Is by his hand alone that guides nature and fate.

        We were driving home from the "Patriarchs'"
            Molly Lefévre and I, you know;
        The white flakes fluttered about our lamps;
            Our wheels were hushed in the sleeping snow.

        Her white arms nestled amid her furs;
            Her hands half-held, with languid grace,
        Her fading roses; fair to see
            Was the dreamy look in her sweet, young face.

        I watched her, saying never a word,
            For I would not waken those dreaming eyes.
        The breath of the roses filled the air,
            And my thoughts were many, and far from wise.

        At last I said to her, bending near,
            "Ah, Molly Lefévre, how sweet 'twould be,
        To ride on dreaming, all our lives,
          ...

Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower,
Might break thro' clouded memories once again
On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale
Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of song
And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,
When first she peers along the tremulous deep,
Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased away
That shadow of a likeness to the king
Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone!
Queen of the dead no more -...