Family

I have been where the roses blow,
    Where the orange ripens its gold,
And the mountains stand with their peaks of snow,
    To fence away the cold,
Where the lime and the myrtle lent
    Their fragrance to the air,
To make the land of my banishment
    More exquisitely fair.

And I heard the ring dove call
    To his mate in the blossoming trees,
And I saw the white waves heave and fall.
    Far away over southern seas.
I listened along the beach,
    By the shore of the shifting sea,
To the waves, till I knew their murmured speech,
    And the message they bore to me.

And I watched the great sails furled.
    Like the wings of some ocean bird,
That brought me, out of another world,
    A warning, and a word;
For still beside m...

Two little girls aged six and nine, the daughters of a lengthsman on the railway at Walloon, near Ipswich, Queensland, were sent on an errand by their parents and it is supposed they were attracted by some water-lilies in a pool near their home. They were found drowned in six feet of water.

He was lengthsman on the railway, and his station scarce deserved
That “pre-eminence in sorrow” of the Majesty he served,
But as dear to him and precious were the gifts reclaimed so soon—
Were the workman’s little daughters who were buried near Walloon.

Speak their names in tones that linger, just as though you held them dear;
There are eyes to which the mention of those names will bring a tear.
Little Kate and Bridget, straying in an autumn afternoon,
Were attracted by the lilies in the water ...

The seed that wasteful autumn cast
To waver on its stormy blast,
Long o'er the wintry desert tost,
Its living germ has never lost.
Dropped by the weary tempest's wing,
It feels the kindling ray of spring,
And, starting from its dream of death,
Pours on the air its perfumed breath.

So, parted by the rolling flood,
The love that springs from common blood
Needs but a single sunlit hour
Of mingling smiles to bud and flower;
Unharmed its slumbering life has flown,
From shore to shore, from zone to zone,
Where summer's falling roses stain
The tepid waves of Pontchartrain,
Or where the lichen creeps below
Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow.

Though fiery sun and stiffening cold
May change the fair ancestral mould,
No winter chills, no ...

O Dearer far than light and life are dear,
Full oft our human foresight I deplore;
Trembling, through my unworthiness, with fear
That friends, by death disjoined, may meet no more!
Misgivings, hard to vanquish or control,
Mix with the day, and cross the hour of rest;
While all the future, for thy purer soul,
With "sober certainties" of love is blest.

That sigh of thine, not meant for human ear,
Tells that these words thy humbleness offend;
Yet bear me up, else faltering in the rear
Of a steep march: support me to the end.

Peace settles where the intellect is meek,
And Love is dutiful in thought and deed;
Through Thee communion with that Love I seek:
The faith Heaven strengthens where 'he' moulds the Creed.

I (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

II

My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the...

When I hear the waters fretting,
When I see the chestnut letting
All her lovely blossom falter down, I think, "Alas the day!"
Once with magical sweet singing,
Blackbirds set the woodland ringing,
That awakes no more while April hours wear themselves away.

In our hearts fair hope lay smiling,
Sweet as air, and all beguiling;
And there hung a mist of bluebells on the slope and down the dell;
And we talked of joy and splendor
That the years unborn would render,
And the blackbirds helped us with the story, for they knew it well.

Piping, fluting, "Bees are humming,
April's here, and summer's coming;
Don't forget us when you walk, a man with men, in pride and joy;
Think on us in alleys shady,
When you step a graceful lady;
For no fairer day have we ...

A rose, as fair as ever saw the North,
Grew in a little garden all alone;
A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth,
Nor fairer garden yet was never known:
The maidens danc'd about it morn and noon,
And learned bards of it their ditties made;
The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon
Water'd the root and kiss'd her pretty shade.
But well-a-day, the gard'ner careless grew;
The maids and fairies both were kept away,
And in a drought the caterpillars threw
Themselves upon the bud and every spray.
God shield the stock! if heaven send no supplies,
The fairest blossom of the garden dies.

Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East - like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming
Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West - like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall ...

Wild Redbreast! hadst thou at Jemima's lip
Pecked, as at mine, thus boldly, Love might say,
A half-blown rose had tempted thee to sip
Its glistening dews; but hallowed is the clay
Which the Muse warms; and I, whose head is grey,
Am not unworthy of thy fellowship;
Nor could I let one thought, one notion slip
That might thy sylvan confidence betray.
For are we not all His without whose care
Vouchsafed no sparrow falleth to the ground?
Who gives his Angels wings to speed through air,
And rolls the planets through the blue profound;
Then peck or perch, fond Flutterer! nor forbear
To trust a Poet in still musings bound.

They may talk of love in a cottage
And bowers of trellised vine,
Of nature bewitchingly simple,
And milkmaids half divine;
They may talk of the pleasure of sleeping
In the shade of a spreading tree,
And a walk in the fields at morning,
By the side of a footstep free!

But give me a sly flirtation
By the light of a chandelier,
With music to play in the pauses,
And nobody very near;
Or a seat on a silken sofa,
With a glass of pure old wine,
And mamma too blind to discover
The small white hand in mine.

Your love in a cottage is hungry,
Your vine is a nest for flies,
Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
And simplicity talks of pies!
You lie down to your shady slumber
And wake with a bug in your ear,
And your damsel that walks i...

Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age;
Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught
Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs.
Oh! there is life that breathes not; Powers there are
That touch each other to the quick in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of. What art Thou, from care
Cast off—abandoned by thy rugged Sire,
Nor by soft Peace adopted; though, in place
And in dimension, such that thou might'st seem
But a mere footstool to yon sovereign Lord,
Huge Cruachan, (a thing that meaner hills
Might crush, nor know that it had suffered harm
Yet he, not loth, in favour of thy claims
To reverence, suspends his own; submitting

Within a vale in distant Saxony,
    In time uncertain, though 'twas long ago.
There dwelt a woman, most unhappily,
    From borrowed trouble, and imagined woe.

Hers was a husband generous, and kind,
    Her children, three, were not of uncouth mold;
Hers was a thatch which mocked at rain and wind;
    Within her secret purse were coins of gold.

The drouth had ne'er descended on her field,
    Nor had distemper sore distressed her kine;
The vine had given its accustomed yield,
    So that her casks were filled with ruddy wine.

Her sheep and goats waxed fat, and ample fleece
    Rewarded every harvest of the shear;
Her lambs all bleated in sequestered peace,
    Nor prowling wolf occasioned nightly fear.

With all she fretted, pined, and ...

    Sweet brook! I've met thee many a summer's day,
    And ventured fearless in thy shallow flood,
    And rambled oft thy sweet unwearied way,
    'Neath willows cool that on thy margin stood,
    With crowds of partners in my artless play--
    Grasshopper, beetle, bee, and butterfly--
    That frisked about as though in merry mood
    To see their old companion sporting by.
    Sweet brook! life's glories then were mine and thine;
    Shade clothed thy spring that now doth naked lie;
    On thy white glistening sand the sweet woodbine
    Darkened and dipt its flowers. I mark, and sigh,
    And muse o'er troubles since we met the last,
    Like two fond friends whose happiness is past.

My mother groaned, my father wept:
Into the dangerous world I leapt,
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swaddling-bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.

1.
The billows on the beach are leaping around it,
The bark is weak and frail,
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
Darkly strew the gale.
Come with me, thou delightful child,
Come with me, though the wave is wild,
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.

2.
They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee;
They have withered the smile and dried the tear
Which should have been sacred to me.
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
And they will curse my name and thee
Because we fearless are and free.

3.
Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still
Near thy sweet mother's anxious...

Through the open door of dreamland
Came a ghost of long ago, long ago.
When I wakened, all unheeding
Was the phantom to my pleading;
For he would not turn and go,
But beside me all the day,
In my work and in my play,
Trod this ghost of long ago, long ago.

Not a vague and pallid phantom
Was this ghost that came to me, followed me:
Though he rose from regions haunted,
Though he came unbid, unwanted,
He was very fair to see.
Like the radiant sun in space
Was the halo round the face
Of that ghost that came to me, followed me.

And he wore no shroud or cere-cloth
As he wandered at my side, close beside:
He was clothed in royal splendour
And his eyes were deep and tender,
While he walked in stately pride;
And he seemed like some g...

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
    My lyre whereof I make my melody.
    I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.

But thou, who soundest in my tune and rhyme,
    Hast tones I wake not, in thy land and sea,
    Loveliness not for me, secrets from me,
Thoughts for another, and another time.

And as, the west wind passed, the south wind alters
    His intimate sweet things, his hues of noon,
    The voices of his waves, sound of his pine,

The meanings of his lost heart,-this thought falters
    In my short song-'Another bard shall tune
    Thee, my one Lyre, to other songs than mine.'

S' io avessi pensato che sì care.

HIS POEMS WERE WRITTEN ONLY TO SOOTHE HIS OWN GRIEF: OTHERWISE HE WOULD HAVE LABOURED TO MAKE THEM MORE DESERVING OF THE FAME THEY HAVE ACQUIRED.


    Had I e'er thought that to the world so dear
The echo of my sighs would be in rhyme,
I would have made them in my sorrow's prime
Rarer in style, in number more appear.
Since she is dead my muse who prompted here,
First in my thoughts and feelings at all time,
All power is lost of tender or sublime
My rough dark verse to render soft and clear.
And certes, my sole study and desire
Was but--I knew not how--in those long years
To unburthen my sad heart, not fame acquire.
I wept, but wish'd no honour in my tears.
Fain would I now taste joy; but that high fair,
Sile...