Family

In the whole wide world there was but one;
Others for others, but she was mine,
The one fair woman beneath the sun.

From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine
Down to the lithe and delicate feet
There was not a curve nor a waving line

But moved in a harmony firm and sweet
With all of passion my life could know.
By knowledge perfect and faith complete

I was bound to her, - as the planets go
Adoring around their central star,
Free, but united for weal or woe.

She was so near and Heaven so far -
She grew my heaven and law and fate,
Rounding my life with a mystic bar

No thought beyond could violate.
Our love to fulness in silence nursed
Grew calm as morning, when through the gate

Of the glimmering east the sun has...

Thy hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright
As in that well-remember'd night
When first thy mystic braid was wove,
And first my Agnes whisper'd love.

Since then how often hast thou prest
The torrid zone of this wild breast,
Whose wrath and hate have sworn to dwell
With the first sin that peopled hell;
A breast whose blood's a troubled ocean,
Each throb the earthquake's wild commotion!
Oh if such clime thou canst endure
Yet keep thy hue unstain'd and pure,
What conquest o'er each erring thought
Of that fierce realm had Agnes wrought!
I had not wander'd far and wide
With such an angel for my guide;
Nor heaven nor earth could then reprove me
If she had lived, and lived to love me.

Not then this world's wild joys had been
To me one savage h...

How pleasing simplest recollections seem!
Now summer comes, it warms me to look back
On the sweet happiness of youth's wild track,
Varied and fleeting as a summer dream:
Here have I paus'd upon the sweeping rack
That specks like wool-flocks through the purple sky;
Here have I careless stooped down to catch
The meadow flower that entertain'd my eye;
And as the butterfly went whirring by,
How anxious for its settling did I watch;
And oft long purples on the water's brink
Have tempted me to wade, in spite of fate,
To pluck the flowers. -Oh, to look back and think,
What pleasing pains such simple joys create!

Tug at the net,
Haul at the net,
Strip off the quivering fish;
Hid in the mist
The winds whist,
Is like my heart's wish.

What is your wish,
Your heart's wish?
Is it for home on the hills?
Strip off the fish,
The silver fish,
Caught by their rosy gills.

How can I know,
I love you so,
Each little thought I get
Is held so,
It dies you know,
Caught in your heart's net.

Tug at your net,
Your heart's net,
Strip off my silver fancies;
Keep them in rhyme,
For a dull time,
Fragile as frost pansies.

Care is a Poet fine:
He works in shade or shine,
And leaves, you know his sign!
No day without its line.

He writes with iron pen
Upon the brows of men;
Faint lines at first, and then
He scores them in again.

His touch at first is light
On Beauty’s brow of white;
The old churl loves to write
On foreheads broad and bright.

A line for young love crossed,
A line for fair hopes lost
In an untimely frost,
A line that means Thou Wast.

Then deeper script appears:
The furrows of dim fears,
The traces of old tears,
The tide-marks of the years.

To him with sight made strong
By suffering and wrong,
The brows of all the throng
Are eloquent with song.

    O you who lose the art of hope,
    Whose temples seem to shrine a lie,
    Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear,
    Who weep that Liberty must die,
    Turn to the little prairie towns,
    Your higher hope shall yet begin.
    On every side awaits you there
    Some gate where glory enters in.

    Yet when I see the flocks of girls,
    Watching the Sunday train go thro'
    (As tho' the whole wide world went by)
    With eyes that long to travel too,
    I sigh, despite my soul made glad
    By cloudy dresses and brown hair,
    Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn
    By thundering commerce, fierce and bare.
    Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be:
    Kings of the grove, their lovers strong.
    Why are they not inspired,...

Hence, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn
’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under Ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heav’n yclep’d Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some Sager sing)
The frolic Wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying,
There, on Beds of Violets blew,
And fresh-blown roses washed in de...

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.

These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Lais! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls.
Under cold rags, their shredded petticoats,

They creep, lashed by the merciless north wind,
Quake from the riot of an omnibus,
Clasp by their sides like relics of a saint
Embroidered bags of flowery design;

They toddle, every bit like marionettes,
Or drag themselves like wounded animals,
Or dance against their will, poor little bells
That a remorseless demon rings! Worn out

They are, yet they have eyes piercing like...

Round the house were lilacs and strawberries
    And foal-foots spangling the paths,
And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries
    Caught dust from the sea's long swaths.

Up the wolds the woods were walking,
    And nuts fell out of their hair.
At the gate the nets hung, balking
    The star-lit rush of a hare.

In the autumn fields, the stubble
    Tinkled the music of gleaning.
At a mother's knees, the trouble
    Lost all its meaning.

Yea, what good beginnings
    To this sad end!
Have we had our innings?
    God forfend!

I.

Here’s the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

II.

Down this side ofthe gravel-walk
She went while her robe’s edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white flox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

III.

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stoope...

The world grows green on a thousand hills -
    By a thousand willows the bees are humming,
And a million birds by a million rills,
    Sing of the golden season coming.
But, gazing out on the sun-kist lea,
    And hearing a thrush and a blue-bird singing,
I feel that the summer is all for me,
    And all for me are the joys it is bringing.

All for me the bumble-bee
    Drones his song in the perfect weather;
And, just on purpose to sing to me,
    Thrush and blue-bird came North together.
Just for me, in red and white,
    Bloom and blossom the fields of clover;
And all for me and my delight
    The wild Wind follows and plays the lover.

The mighty sun, with a scorching kiss
    (I have read, and heard, and do not doubt it)
Has burned up...

Silent was I, and so still,
As day followed day.
Imprisoned until
King Frost worked his will.
Held fast like a vice,
In his cold hand of ice,
For fear kept me silent, and lo
He had wrapped me around and about
with a mantle of snow.

But sudden there spake
One greater than he.
Then my heart was awake,
And my spirit ran free.

At His bidding my bands fell apart, He had burst them asunder.
I can feel the swift wind rushing by me, once more the old wonder
Of quickening sap stirs my pulses -- I shout in my gladness,
Forgetting the sadness,
For the Voice of the Lord fills the air!

And forth through the hollow I go, where in glad April weather,
The trees of the forest break out into singing together.
And here the frail windflowers ...

You waves, though you dance by my feet like children
at play,
Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and
you dart;
In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves
were more gay,
i(When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.)
The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;
My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the-cart
That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold,
i(When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.)
And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when
his oar
Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart,
Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore,
i(When) I i(was) a boy i(with never) a i(crack in my heart.)

These bays be thine; and, tho' not form'd to shine
Clear as thy colour, faultless as thy line,
Yet shall the Muse essay, in humble verse,
Thy merits, lovely Painting! to rehearse.
As when the demon of the winter storm
Robs each sweet flow'ret of its beauteous form,
The Spirit of the stream, in crystal wave,
Sleeps whilst the chilling blasts above him rave,
Till the Sun spreads his animating fires,
And sullen Darkness from the scene retires,
Then mountain-nymphs discard their robes of snow,
And in green mantles smile in roseate glow,
And rivers, loosen'd from their icy chain,
Spread joy and richness thro' the verdant plain,
Thus, in those climes where skies are ever fair,
Each infant Science breath'd a genial air,
Climes where the Earth her stores to all resign...

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, ''Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to vall...

Not far from here, it lies beyond
That low-hilled belt of woods. We'll take
This unused lane where brambles make
A wall of twilight, and the blond
Brier-roses pelt the path and flake
The margin waters of a pond.

This is its fence - or that which was
Its fence once - now, rock rolled from rock,
One tangle of the vine and dock,
Where bloom the wild petunias;
And this its gate, the iron-weeds block,
Hot with the insects' dusty buzz.

Two wooden posts, wherefrom has peeled
The weather-crumbled paint, still rise;
Gaunt things - that groan when someone tries
The gate whose hinges, rust-congealed,
Snarl open: - on each post still lies
Its carven lion with a shield.

We enter; and between great rows
Of locusts winds a grass-grown road;

There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling thro’ the clov’n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus
Stands up and takes the morning: but in front
The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal
Troas and Ilion’s column’d citadel,
The crown of Troas.

Hither came at noon

Mournful Œnone, wandering forlorn
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.
Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck
Floated her hair or seem’d to float in rest.

Sit still, a word, a breath may break
(As light airs stir a sleeping lake)
The glassy calm that soothes my woes,
The sweet, the deep, the full repose.
O leave me not! for ever be
Thus, more than life itself to me!

Yes, close beside thee let me kneel,
Give me thy hand, that I may feel
The friend so true, so tried, so dear,
My heart's own chosen, indeed is near;
And check me not, this hour divine
Belongs to me, is fully mine.

'Tis thy own hearth thou sitt'st beside,
After long absence, wandering wide;
'Tis thy own wife reads in thine eyes
A promise clear of stormless skies;
For faith and true love light the rays
Which shine responsive to her gaze.

Ay, well that single tear may fall;
Ten thousand might mine eyes recall,
Which...