Family

    I.

    A gentle wind, of western birth
    On some far summer sea,
    Wakes daisies in the wintry earth,
    Wakes hopes in wintry me.

    The sun is low; the paths are wet,
    And dance with frolic hail;
    The trees--their spring-time is not yet--
    Swing sighing in the gale.

    Young gleams of sunshine peep and play;
    Clouds shoulder in between;
    I scarce believe one coming day
    The earth will all be green.

    The north wind blows, and blasts, and raves,
    And flaps his snowy wing:
    Back! toss thy bergs on arctic waves;
    Thou canst not bar our spring.


    II.

    Up comes the primrose, wondering;
    The snowdrop droopeth by;
    The holy spirit of the spring
    ...

"With a cold and wintry noon-light.
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with t e sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping.
For the largess, base and small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter
Honor's wealth for party's place;
Step by step on Freedom's charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace;
For to-day's ...

    It is no winter night comes down
        Upon our hearts, dear friends of old;
    But a May evening, softly brown,
        Whose wind is rather cold.

    We are not, like yon sad-eyed West,
        Phantoms that brood o'er Time's dust-hoard,
    We are like yon Moon--in mourning drest,
        But gazing on her lord.

    Come nearer to the hearth, sweet friends,
        Draw nigher, closer, hand and chair;
    Ours is a love that never ends,
        For God is dearest there!

    We will not talk about the past,
        We will not ponder ancient pain;
    Those are but deep foundations cast
        For peaks of soaring gain!

    We, waiting Dead, will warm our bones
        At our poor smouldering earthly fire;
    And ta...

With short, sharp, violent lights made vivid,
To southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to nor’ward,
And the rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
And waifs wreck’d seaward and wasted shoreward
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

A grim, grey coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men,
Where the batter’d hull and the broken mast lie,
They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wander’d here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
God surely loved us a little then.

The skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
The blue sea over th...

He who could view the book of destiny,
And read whatever there was writ of thee,
O charming youth, in the first opening page,
So many graces in so green an age,
Such wit, such modesty, such strength of mind,
A soul at once so manly and so kind;
Would wonder, when he turn'd the volume o'er,
And after some few leaves should find no more,
Nought but a blank remain, a dead void space,
A step of life that promised such a race.
We must not, dare not think, that Heaven began
A child, and could not finish him a man;
Reflecting what a mighty store was laid
Of rich materials, and a model made:
The cost already furnish'd; so bestow'd,
As more was never to one soul allow'd:
Yet after this profusion spent in vain,
Nothing but mouldering ashes to remain,
I guess n...

The rage for writing has spread far and wide,
Letters on letters now are multiplied,
And every mortal, who can hold a pen,
Aspires in haste to teach his fellow men.
Paper in wasted reams, and seas of ink.
Prove how they write who never learned to think;
Some who have talents--some who have not sense;
Some who to decency make no pretence;
But, skilled in arts which better men deceive,
They spread the slander which they don't believe.
A township turned to scribblers is a sight!
Venting their malice all in black and white,
And with, apparently, no other aim
Than merely to be foaming out their shame.
--My own, my beautiful, my pride,
I must lament where strangers will deride,
O'er thy degenerate sons whose strife and hate
Will make thee as a desert desolate

“ Ceste insigne fable et tragicque comedie.”
- RABELAIS.

I.

The sun was down, and twilight grey
Filled half the air; but in the room,
Whose curtain had been drawn all day,
The twilight was a dusky gloom:
Which seemed at first as still as death,
And void; but was indeed all rife
With subtle thrills, the pulse and breath
Of multitudinous lower life.



II.

In their abrupt and headlong way
Bewildered flies for light had dashed
Against the curtain all the day,
And now slept wintrily abashed;
And nimble mice slept, wearied out
With such a double night’s uproar;
But solid beetles crawled about
The chilly hearth and naked floor.



III.

And so throughout the twilight hour
That ...

    'A cup for hope!' she said,
In springtime ere the bloom was old:
The crimson wine was poor and cold
    By her mouth's richer red.

    'A cup for love!' how low,
How soft the words; and all the while
Her blush was rippling with a smile
    Like summer after snow.

    'A cup for memory!'
Cold cup that one must drain alone:
While autumn winds are up and moan
    Across the barren sea.

    Hope, memory, love:
Hope for fair morn, and love for day,
And memory for the evening grey
    And solitary dove.

My heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain,
The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten,
After the stillness, will spring come again?

Serene descent, as a red leaf's descending
When there is neither wind nor noise of rain,
But only autum air and the unending
Drawing of all things to the earth again.

So be it, let the snow fall deep and cover
All that was drunken once with light and air.
The earth will not regret her tireless lover,
Nor he awake to know she does not care.

Life is not sweet. One day it will be sweet
    To shut our eyes and die:
Nor feel the wild flowers blow, nor birds dart by
    With flitting butterfly,
Nor grass grow long above our heads and feet,
Nor hear the happy lark that soars sky high,
Nor sigh that spring is fleet and summer fleet,
    Nor mark the waxing wheat,
Nor know who sits in our accustomed seat.

Life is not good. One day it will be good
    To die, then live again;
To sleep meanwhile: so not to feel the wane
Of shrunk leaves dropping in the wood,
Nor hear the foamy lashing of the main,
Nor mark the blackened bean-fields, nor where stood
    Rich ranks of golden grain
Only dead refuse stubble clothe the plain:
Asleep from risk, asleep from pain.

The year grows still again, the surging wake
Of full-sailed summer folds its furrows up,
As after passing of an argosy
Old Silence settles back upon the sea,
And ocean grows as placid as a cup.
Spring, the young morn, and Summer, the strong noon,
Have dreamed and done and died for Autumn's sake:
Autumn that finds not for a loss so dear
Solace in stack and garner hers too soon -
Autumn, the faithful widow of the year.

Autumn, a poet once so full of song,
Wise in all rhymes of blossom and of bud,
Hath lost the early magic of his tongue,
And hath no passion in his failing blood.
Hear ye no sound of sobbing in the air?
'Tis his. Low bending in a secret lane,
Late blooms of second childhood in his hair,
He tries old magic, like a dotard mage;
Tries ...

AN ANECDOTE OF HELICON.

Once the nine all weeping came
To the god of song
"Oh, papa!" they there exclaim
"Hear our tale of wrong!

"Young ink-lickers swarm about
Our dear Helicon;
There they fight, manoeuvre, shout,
Even to thy throne.

"On their steeds they galop hard
To the spring to drink,
Each one calls himself a bard
Minstrels only think!

"There they how the thing to name!
Would our persons treat
This, without a blush of shame,
We can ne'er repeat;

"One, in front of all, then cries,
'I the army lead!'
Both his fists he wildly plies,
Like a bear indeed!

"Others wakes he in a trice
With his whistlings rude;
But none follow, though he twice
Has those sounds renewed.

"He'll r...

Nella stagion che 'l ciel rapido inchina.

NIGHT BRINGS REPOSE TO OTHERS, BUT NOT TO HIM.


    In that still season, when the rapid sun
Drives down the west, and daylight flies to greet
Nations that haply wait his kindling flame;
In some strange land, alone, her weary feet
The time-worn pilgrim finds, with toil fordone,
Yet but the more speeds on her languid frame;
Her solitude the same,
When night has closed around;
Yet has the wanderer found
A deep though short forgetfulness at last
Of every woe, and every labour past.
But ah! my grief, that with each moment grows,
As fast, and yet more fast,
Day urges on, is heaviest at its close.

When Phoebus rolls his everlasting wheels
To give night room; and from encircling wood,
B...

A midnight black with clouds is in the sky;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth,
I lie and listen to her mighty voice:
A voice of many tones, sent up from streams
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen,
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far
Into the ni...

Meeting Of The Berkshire Horticultural Society, At Stockbridge, September 13,1854

Scarce could the parting ocean close,
Seamed by the Mayflower's cleaving bow,
When o'er the rugged desert rose
The waves that tracked the Pilgrim's plough.

Then sprang from many a rock-strewn field
The rippling grass, the nodding grain,
Such growths as English meadows yield
To scanty sun and frequent rain.

But when the fiery days were done,
And Autumn brought his purple haze,
Then, kindling in the slanted sun,
The hillsides gleamed with golden maize.

The food was scant, the fruits were few
A red-streak glistening here and there;
Perchance in statelier precincts grew
Some stern old Puritanic pear.

Austere in taste, and tough at core,
Its unr...

Has sorrow thy young days shaded,
    As clouds o'er the morning fleet?
Too fast have those young days faded,
    That, even in sorrow, were sweet?
Does Time with his cold wing wither
    Each feeling that once was dear?--
Then, child of misfortune, come hither,
    I'll weep with thee, tear for tear.

Has love to that soul, so tender,
    Been like our Lagenian mine,[1]
Where sparkles of golden splendor
    All over the surface shine--
But, if in pursuit we go deeper,
    Allured by the gleam that shone,
Ah! false as the dream of the sleeper,
    Like Love, the bright ore is gone.

Has Hope, like the bird in the story,[2]
    That flitted from tree to tree
With the talisman's glittering glory--
    Has Hope been ...

    Love your own, kiss your own.
        Love your own mother, hinny,
    For if she was dead and gone,
        You'd ne'er get such another, hinny.