Family

Winters know
Easily to shed the snow,
And the untaught Spring is wise
In cowslips and anemonies.
Nature, hating art and pains,
Baulks and baffles plotting brains;
Casualty and Surprise
Are the apples of her eyes;
But she dearly loves the poor,
And, by marvel of her own,
Strikes the loud pretender down.
For Nature listens in the rose
And hearkens in the berry's bell
To help her friends, to plague her foes,
And like wise God she judges well.
Yet doth much her love excel
To the souls that never fell,
To swains that live in happiness
And do well because they please,
Who walk in ways that are unfamed,
And feats achieve before they're named.

Do you ever think of me? you who died
    Ere our Youth's first fervour chilled,
With your soft eyes and your pulses stilled
    Lying alone, aside,
Do you ever think of me, left in the light,
From the endless calm of your dawnless night?

I am faithful always: I do not say
    That the lips which thrilled to your lips of old
To lesser kisses are always cold;
    Had you wished for this in its narrow sense
    Our love perhaps had been less intense;
But as we held faithfulness, you and I,
    I am faithful always, as you who lie,
    Asleep for ever, beneath the grass,
    While the days and nights and the seasons pass, -
    Pass away.

I keep your memory near my heart,
    My brilliant, beautiful guiding Star,
Till long live over, I too d...

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
T...

I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Through all the years.

My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
But oh, it was my third love
Who gave my soul to me.

To nothing fitter can I thee compare
Than to the son of some rich penny-father,
Who having now brought on his end with care,
Leaves to his son all he had heaped together.
    This new rich novice, lavish of his chest,
To one man gives, doth on another spend;
Then here he riots; yet amongst the rest,
Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.
    Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste:
False friends, thy kindness born but to deceive thee;
Thy love that is on the unworthy placed;
Time hath thy beauty which with age will leave thee.
    Only that little which to me was lent,
    I give thee back when all the rest is spent.

I
Days dawn on us that make amends for many
Sometimes,
When heaven and earth seem sweeter even than any
Man's rhymes.
Light had not all been quenched in France, or quelled
In Greece,
Had Homer sung not, or had Hugo held
His peace.
Had Sappho's self not left her word thus long
For token,
The sea round Lesbos yet in waves of song
Had spoken.

II
And yet these days of subtler air and finer
Delight,
When lovelier looks the darkness, and diviner
The light -
The gift they give of all these golden hours,
Whose urn
Pours forth reverberate rays or shadowing showers
In turn -
Clouds, beams, and winds that make the live day's track
Seem living -
What were they did no spirit give them back
Thanksgiving?

III

I have not felt, o'er seas of sand,
The rocking of the desert bark;
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,
By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark;
Nor pitched my tent at even-fall,
On dust where Job of old has lain,
Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,
The dream of Jacob o'er again.

One vast world-page remains unread;
How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky,
How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread,
How beats the heart with God so nigh
How round gray arch and column lone
The spirit of the old time broods,
And sighs in all the winds that moan
Along the sandy solitudes!

In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,
I have not heard the nations' cries,
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down
Where buried Tyre in ruin lies.
The Christian's prayer I have not said<...

The grass shall never forget this grave.
When homeward footing it in the sun
After the weary ride by rail,
The stripling soldiers passed her door,
Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,
She left her household work undone--
Duly the wayside table spread,
With evergreens shaded, to regale
Each travel-spent and grateful one.
So warm her heart--childless--unwed,
Who like a mother comforted.

Darlings of June and brides of summer sun,
Chill pipes the stormy wind, the skies are drear;
Dull and despoiled the gardens every one:
What do you here?

We looked to see your gracious blooms arise
Mid soft and wooing airs in gardens green,
Where venturesome brown bees and butterflies
Should hail you queen.

Here is no bee nor glancing butterfly;
They fled on rapid wings before the snow:
Your sister lilies laid them down to die,
Long, long ago.

And here, amid the slowly dropping rain,
We keep our Easter feast, with hearts whose care
Mars the high cadence of each lofty strain,
Each thankful prayer.

But not a shadow dims your joyance sweet,
No baffled hope or memory darkly clad;
You lay your whiteness at the Lord's dear feet,

Unwin, I should but ill repay
The kindness of a friend,
Whose worth deserves as warm a lay
As ever friendship penn’d,
Thy name omitted in a page
That would reclaim a vicious age.


A union form’d, as mine with thee,
Not rashly, or in sport,
May be as fervent in degree
And faithful in its sort,
And may as rich in comfort prove,
As that of true fraternal love.


The bud inserted in the rind,
The bud of peach or rose,
Adorns, though differing in its kind,
The stock whereon it grows,
With flower as sweet, or fruit as fair,
As if produced by nature there.


Not rich, I render what I may,
I seize thy name in haste,
And place it in this first essay,
Lest this should prove the last.
‘Tis where it should be—in...

I

The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.

II

No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or promontory sides,
Or the ooze by the strand,
Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,
Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion
Of criss-crossing tides.

III

Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
A whirr, as of wings
Waved by mighty-vanned flies,
Or by night-moths of measureless size,
And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing
Of corporal things.

IV

And they bore to the bluff, and alighted -
A dim-discerned train
O...

Proud were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old,
Your patriot sons, to stem invasive war,
Intrenched your brows; ye gloried in each scar:
Now, for your shame, a Power, the Thirst of Gold,
That rules o'er Britain like a baneful star,
Wills that your peace, your beauty, shall be sold,
And clear way made for her triumphal car
Through the beloved retreats your arms enfold!
Heard Ye that Whistle? As her long-linked Train
Swept onwards, did the vision cross your view?
Yes, ye were startled; and, in balance true,
Weighing the mischief with the promised gain,
Mountains, and Vales, and Floods, I call on you
To share the passion of a just disdain.

All stupor of surprise hath passed away;
    She sees, with clearer vision than before,
A world far off of light and laughter gay,
    Herself alone and lonely evermore.
Folk come and go, and reach her in no wise,
Mere flitting phantoms to her heavy eyes.


All outward things, that once seemed part of her,
    Fall from her, like the leaves in autumn shed.
She feels as one embalmed in spice and myrrh,
    With the heart eaten out, a long time dead;
Unchanged without, the features and the form;
Within, devoured by the thin red worm.


By her own prowess she must stand or fall,
    This grief is to be conquered day by day.
Who could befriend her? who could make this small,
    Or her strength great? she meets it as she may.
A weary struggle a...

When winds of March by the springtime bidden
    Over the great earth race and shout,
Forth from my breast where it long hath hidden
    My same old sorrow comes creeping out.

I think each winter -its life is ended,
    For it makes no stir while the snows lie deep.
I say to myself, 'Its soul has blended
    Into the past where it lay asleep.'

But as soon as the sun, like some fond lover,
    Smiles and kisses the earth's round cheeks,
This sad, sad sorrow throws off its cover,
    And out of the depths of its anguish, speaks.

In every bud by the wayside springing
    It finds a sword for its half-healed wounds;
In every note that the thrush is singing
    It hears the saddest of minor sounds.

In the cup of gold that the sun is spilling...

How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!
Hues of all flow'rs, that in their ashes lie,
Trophied in that fair light whereon they fed, -
Tulip, and hyacinth, and sweet rose red, -
Like exhalations from the leafy mould,
Look here how honor glorifies the dead,
And warms their scutcheons with a glance of gold! -
Such is the memory of poets old,
Who on Parnassus' hill have bloom'd elate;
Now they are laid under their marbles cold,
And turned to clay, whereof they were create;
But god Apollo hath them all enroll'd,
And blazon'd on the very clouds of Fate!

On, loitering Muse, the swift Stream chides us on!
Albeit his deep-worn channel doth immure
Objects immense portrayed in miniature,
Wild shapes for many a strange comparison!
Niagaras, Alpine passes, and anon
Abodes of Naiads, calm abysses pure,
Bright liquid mansions, fashioned to endure
When the broad oak drops, a leafless skeleton,
And the solidities of mortal pride,
Palace and tower, are crumbled into dust!
The Bard who walks with Duddon for his guide,
Shall find such toys of fancy thickly set:
Turn from the sight, enamoured Muse, we must;
And, if thou canst, leave them without regret!

May has come from out the showers,
Sun and splendor in her train.
All the grasses and the flowers
Waken up to life again.
Once again the leaves do show,
And the meadow blossoms blow,
Once again through hills and dales
Rise the songs of nightingales.

Wheresoe'er on field or hillside
With her paint-brush Spring is seen,--
In the valley, by the rillside,
All the earth is decked with green.
Once again the sun beguiles
Moves the drowsy world to smiles.
See! the sun, with mother-kiss
Wakes her child to joy and bliss.

Now each human feeling presses
Flow'r like, upward to the sun,
Softly, through the heart's recesses,
Steal sweet fancies, one by one.
Golden dreams, their wings outshaking,
Now are making
Realms celestial,
...

    A tender song in shadows grew,
    And humble hearts were homes it knew.

    But through its wondrous music stole
    The longings of the human soul;

    The hopes of hosts unsatisfied
    Within its numbers wandered wide;

    And strangely wet with toilsome tears
    It held the yearnings of the years;

    Till millions with their woes oppressed,
    Proclaimed the song of peace and rest;

    Till nations in their troubled ways
    Found comfort in the joyous lays,

    And all the halting race of wrong
    Exalts the loving might of song!

    Ah, song that soothes our many cries
    With fondness of thy lullabies,

    We love, we bless, we scepter thee
    Proud empress of the hearts that be!