Family

    Just Home and Love! the words are small
    Four little letters unto each;
    And yet you will not find in all
    The wide and gracious range of speech
    Two more so tenderly complete:
    When angels talk in Heaven above,
    I'm sure they have no words more sweet
    Than Home and Love.

    Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess
    Which of the two were best to gain;
    Home without Love is bitterness;
    Love without Home is often pain.
    No! each alone will seldom do;
    Somehow they travel hand and glove:
    If you win one you must have two,
    Both Home and Love.

    And if you've both, well then I'm sure
    You ought to sing the whole day long;
    It doesn't matter if you're poor
    With these to make divine...

Weeping, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight;
MYRA, too sincere for feigning,
Fears th' approaching bridal night.

Yet, why impair thy bright perfection?
Or dim thy beauty with a tear?
Had MYRA followed my direction,
She long had wanted cause of fear.

In Vanity Fair, as we bow and smile,
    As we talk of the opera after the weather,
As we chat of fashion and fad and style,
    We know we are playing a part together.
You know that the mirth she wears, she borrows;
She knows you laugh but to hide your sorrows;
We know that under the silks and laces,
And back of beautiful, beaming faces,
Lie secret trouble and grim despair,
        In Vanity Fair.

In Vanity Fair, on dress parade,
    Our colours look bright and our swords are gleaming;
But many a uniform's worn and frayed,
    And most of the weapons, despite their seeming,
Are dull and blunted and badly battered,
And close inspection will show how tattered
And stained are the banners that float above us.
Our comrades hate, while they swear to love...

Among the green bushes the songs of the thrushes
Are answering each other in music and glee,
While the magpies and rooks, in woods, hedges, near brooks,
Mount their Spring dwellings on every high tree.
There meet me at eve, love, we'll on grassy banks lean love,
And crop a white branch from the scented may tree,
Where the silver brook wimples and the rosy cheek dimples,
Sweet will the time of that courting hour be.

We'll notice wild flowers, love, that grow by thorn bowers, love,
Though sinful to crop them now beaded with dew;
The violet is thine, love, the primrose is mine, love,
To Spring and each other so blooming and true.
With dewdrops all beaded, the feather grass seeded,
The cloud mountains turn to dark woods in the sky;
The daisy bud closes, while sleep th...

Is then the final page before me spread,
Nor further outlet left to mind or heart?
Presumptuous Book! too forward to be read,
How can I give thee licence to depart?
One tribute more: unbidden feelings start
Forth from their coverts; slighted objects rise;
My spirit is the scene of such wild art
As on Parnassus rules, when lightning flies,
Visibly leading on the thunder's harmonies.

All that I saw returns upon my view,
All that I heard comes back upon my ear,
All that I felt this moment doth renew;
And where the foot with no unmanly fear
Recoiled--and wings alone could travel--there
I move at ease; and meet contending themes
That press upon me, crossing the career
Of recollections vivid as the dreams
Of midnight, cities, plains, forests, and mighty s...

Hark where the bells toll, chiming, dull and steady,
The clock's slow hand hath reached the appointed time.
Well, be it so prepare, my soul is ready,
Companions of the grave the rest for crime!
Now take, O world! my last farewell receiving
My parting kisses in these tears they dwell!
Sweet are thy poisons while we taste believing,
Now we are quits heart-poisoner, fare-thee-well!

Farewell, ye suns that once to joy invited,
Changed for the mould beneath the funeral shade;
Farewell, farewell, thou rosy time delighted,
Luring to soft desire the careless maid,
Pale gossamers of gold, farewell, sweet dreaming
Fancies the children that an Eden bore!
Blossoms that died while dawn itself was gleaming,
Opening in happy sunlight never more.

Swanlike the robe ...

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
    To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
    To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O'er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
    To stay at home is best.

You ask me what--since we must part--
You shall bring home to me;
Bring back a pure and faithful heart,
As true as mine to thee.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I only ask for thee,
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
My love, bring back to me!

You talk of gems from foreign lands,
Of treasure, spoil, and prize.
Ah, love! I shall not search your hands,
But look into your eyes.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I only ask for thee,
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
My love, bring back to me!

You speak of glory and renown,
With me to share your pride,
Unbroken faith is all the crown
I ask for as your bride.
I ask not wealth nor fame,
I only ask for thee,
Thyself--and that dear self the same--
My love, bring back to me!

Winter is fallen early
On the house of Stare;
Birds in reverberating flocks
Haunt its ancestral box;
Bright are the plenteous berries
In clusters in the air.

Still is the fountain's music,
The dark pool icy still,
Whereupon a small and sanguine sun
Floats in a mirror on,
Into a West of crimson,
From a South of daffodil.

'Tis strange to see young children
In such a wintry house;
Like rabbits' on the frozen snow
Their tell-tale footprints go;
Their laughter rings like timbrels
'Neath evening ominous:

Their small and heightened faces
Like wine-red winter buds;
Their frolic bodies gentle as
Flakes in the air that pass,
Frail as the twirling petal
From the briar of the woods.

Above them silence lours,<...

Three sang of love together: one with lips
    Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips;
    And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow
    Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show;
And one was blue with famine after love,
    Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately
    Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife;
One famished died for love. Thus two of three
    Took death for love and won him after strife;
One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee:
    All on the threshold, yet all short of life.

1819-1891

Thou shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir
That filled our groves with music till the day
Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire,
And evening listened for thy lingering lay.

But thou hast found thy voice in realms afar
Where strains celestial blend their notes with thine;
Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier star
Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we resign.

How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat
Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours!
Where shall she find an eye like thine to greet
Spring's earliest footprints on her opening flowers?

Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret
For him who read the secrets they enfold?
Shall the proud spangles of the field forget
The verse that lent new glory to th...

Weeping for another's woe,
Tears flow then that would not flow
When our sorrow was our own,
And the deadly, stiffening blow
Was upon our own heart given
In the moments that have flown!

Cringing at another's cry
In the hollow world of grief
Stills the anguish of our pain
For the fate that made us die
To our hopes as sweet as vain;
And our tears can flow again!

One storm blows the night this way,
But another brings the day.

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through
A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love's living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down
Upon the heated sod:
It seemed as if my body pressed
The very ground she trod.

I lay, and thought; and in a trance
She came and stood me by
The same, even to the marvellous ray
That used to light her eye.

"You draw me, and I come to you,
My faithful one," she said,
In voice that had the moving tone
It bore ere breath had fled.

She said: "'Tis seven years since I died:
Few now remember me;
My husband clasps another bride;
My children's love has she.

"My brethren, sisters, and my friends
Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
Till I...

If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
    But who can answer, or who can trust,
    No dreams would harry the windblown dust?

Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
    Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
    Had I done aught better or otherwise?

Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
    But time for silence and song is done,
    You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!

W...

My Fair, no beauty of thine will last
    Save in my love's eternity.
    Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,
Are lost for ever-their moment past-
    Except the few thou givest to me.

Thy sweet words vanish day by day,
    As all breath of mortality;
    Thy laughter, done, must cease to be,
And all thy dear tones pass away,
    Except the few that sing to me.

Hide then within my heart, oh, hide
    All thou art loth should go from thee.
    Be kinder to thyself and me.
My cupful from this river's tide
    Shall never reach the long sad sea.

Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high,
In the glowing August sky,
Quenching all her neighbor stars,
Save the steady flame of Mars.
White as silver shines the sea,
Far-off sails like phantoms be,
Gliding o'er that lake of light,
Vanishing in nether night.
Heavy hangs the tasseled corn,
Sighing for the cordial morn;
But the marshy-meadows bare,
Love this spectral-lighted air,
Drink the dews and lift their song,
Chirp of crickets all night long;
Earth and sea enchanted lie
'Neath that moon-usurped sky.


To the faces of our friends
Unfamiliar traits she lends -
Quaint, white witch, who looketh down
With a glamour all her own.
Hushed are laughter, jest, and speech,
Mute and heedless each of each,
In the glory wan we sit,<...

When evening's shadowy fingers fold
The flowers of every hue,
Some shy, half-opened bud will hold
Its drop of morning's dew.

Sweeter with every sunlit hour
The trembling sphere has grown,
Till all the fragrance of the flower
Becomes at last its own.

We that have sung perchance may find
Our little meed of praise,
And round our pallid temples bind
The wreath of fading bays.

Ah, Poet, who hast never spent
Thy breath in idle strains,
For thee the dewdrop morning lent
Still in thy heart remains;

Unwasted, in its perfumed cell
It waits the evening gale;
Then to the azure whence it fell
Its lingering sweets exhale.

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sign'd, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle fo the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion.
He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh.

Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger;
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.

Never again, in my green sunny bowers,
Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!

E...