Family

As they who watch by sick-beds find relief
Unwittingly from the great stress of grief
And anxious care, in fantasies outwrought
From the hearth’s embers flickering low, or caught
From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,
Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet
Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why
They scarcely know or ask, so, thou and I,
Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong
In the endurance which outwearies Wrong,
With meek persistence baffling brutal force,
And trusting God against the universe,
We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share
With other weapons than the patriot’s prayer,
Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes,
The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all
Who give their loved on...

Ye offspring of the morning sun,
Ye flowers that deck the smiling plain,
Your lives, in joy and bliss begun,
In Nature's love unchanged remain.
With hues of bright and godlike splendor
Sweet Flora graced your forms so tender,
And clothed ye in a garb of light;
Spring's lovely children weep forever,
For living souls she gave ye never,
And ye must dwell in endless night?

The nightingale and lark still sing
In your tranced ears the bliss of love;
The toying sylphs, on airy wing,
Around your fragrant bosoms rove,
Of yore, Dione's daughter [6] twining
In garlands sweet your cup-so shining,
A pillow formed where love might rest!
Spring's gentle children, mourn forever,
The joys of love she gave ye never,
Ne'er let ye know that feeling...

Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same, late in autumn the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,
The rich coverlid of the grass animals and birds the private untrimm'd bank the primitive apples the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always carry, and that all men carry,
(Know, once for all, avow'd on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lust...

I

In distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
Weep in the public roads, alone.
But such a one, on English ground,
And in the broad highway, I met;
Along the broad highway he came,
His cheeks with tears were wet:
Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;
And in his arms a Lamb he had.

II

He saw me, and he turned aside,
As if he wished himself to hide:
And with his coat did then essay
To wipe those briny tears away.
I followed him, and said, "My friend,
What ails you? wherefore weep you so?"
"Shame on me, Sir! this lusty Lamb,
He makes my tears to flow.
To-day I fetched him from the rock;
He is the last of all my flock,

III

"When I was young, a single...

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should hav...

Must I, who walk alone,
Come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to Each,
In lieu of speech,
In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy, wondering bloss...

A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile,
Alike, while I have holiday.

Why wilt thou go, my harassed heart,
What thought, what scene invites thee now?
What spot, or near or far,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?

There is a spot, mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.

The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome;
But what on earth is half so dear,
So longed for, as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them, how I love them all!

Still, as I mus...

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.


In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.


Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

The camp of high-class spielers,
Who sneered in summer dress,
And doo-dah dilettante,
And scornful “venuses”,
House agents, and storekeepers,
All eager they to “bleed”,
The bards who tackled Manly,
Were plucky bards indeed!

With shops that feared to trust them,
And pubs that looked askance;
And prigs who read their verses,
But gave them not a glance;,
When all were vain and selfish,
And editors were hard,
The bard that stuck to Manly
Was sure a mighty bard.

What mattered floors were barren,
And windows curtainless,
And our life seemed to others
But blackguard recklessness?
We wore our clothes for comfort,
We earned our bread alway,
And beer and good tobacco
Came somehow every day.

Came kindred souls to ...

In trellised shed with clustering roses gay,
And, MARY! oft beside our blazing fire,
When yeas of wedded life were as a day
Whose current answers to the heart's desire,
Did we together read in Spenser's Lay
How Una, sad of soul, in sad attire,
The gentle Una, of celestial birth,
To seek her Knight went wandering o'er the earth.

Ah, then, Beloved! pleasing was the smart,
And the tear precious in compassion shed
For Her, who, pierced by sorrow's thrilling dart,
Did meekly bear the pang unmerited;
Meek as that emblem of her lowly heart
The milk-white Lamb which in a line she led,,
And faithful, loyal in her innocence,
Like the brave Lion slain in her defence.

Notes could we hear as of a faery shell
Attuned to words with sacred wisdom fraught;

I, a princess, king-descended, decked with jewels, gilded, drest,
Would rather be a peasant with her baby at her breast,
For all I shine so like the sun, and am purple like the west.

Two and two my guards behind, two and two before,
Two and two on either hand, they guard me evermore;
Me, poor dove, that must not coo - eagle that must not soar.

All my fountains cast up perfumes, all my gardens grow
Scented woods and foreign spices, with all flowers in blow
That are costly, out of season as the seasons go.

All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace
Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place,
Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face.

Then I have an ivory chair high to sit upon,
Almost like my father's chair, which is an ...

From Mirth's bright circle, from the giddy throng,
How sweet it is to steal away at eve,
To listen to the homeward fisher's song,
Whilst dark the waters of the ocean heave; -

And on the sloping beach to bear the spray
Dash 'gainst some hoary vessel's broken side;
Whilst, far illumin'd by the parting ray,
The distant sail is faintly seen to glide.

Yes, 'tis Reflection's chosen hour; for then,
With pensive pleasure mingling o'er the scene,
Th' erratic mind treads over life again,
And gazes on the past with eye serene.

Those stormy passions which bedimm'd the soul,
That oft have bid the joys it treasur'd fly,
Now, like th' unruffled waves of Ocean, roll
With gentle lapse - their only sound a sigh.

The galling wrong no longer knits the brow...

What is the explanation of the strange silence of American poets
concerning American triumphs on sea and land?
Literary Digest.

Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes?

To laud and eulogize the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?

Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.

'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay,
Not so the battles of our modern day.

Too often now the conquering hero struts
A Gulliver among the Liliputs.

Success no longer rests on skill or fate,
But on the movements of a syndicate.

Of old men fought and deemed it right and just.
To-day the warrior fights because he must,

And in hi...

The spirits of our fathers rise not from every wave,
They left the sea behind them long ago;
It was many years of “slogging,” where strong men must be brave,
For the sake of unborn children, and, maybe, a soul to save,
And the end a tidy homestead, and four panels round a grave,
And, the bones of poor old Someone down below.

Some left happy homes in old lands when they heard the New Land call
(Some were gentlemen and some were social wrecks)
Some left squalor and starvation, they were soldiers one and all,
And their weapons were the cross-cut and the wedges and the maul.
(How we used to run as children when we heard the big trees fall!
While they paused to wipe their faces and their necks.)

They were buried by our uncles where the ground was hard to dig
(It was l...

The world had chafed his spirit proud
    By its wearing, crushing strife,
The censure of the thoughtless crowd
    Had touched a blameless life;
Like the dove of old, from the water's foam,
He wearily turned to the ark of home.

Hopes he had cherished with joyous heart,
    Had toiled for many a day,
With body and spirit, and patient art,
    Like mists had melted away;
And o'er day-dreams vanished, o'er fond hopes flown,
He sat him down to mourn alone.

No, not alone, for soft fingers rest
    On his hot and aching brow,
Back the damp hair is tenderly pressed
    While a sweet voice whispers low:
"Thy joys have I shared, O my husband true,
And shall I not share thy sorrows too?"

Vain task to resist the loving gaze
    That so f...

Fast as the rolling seasons bring
The hour of fate to those we love,
Each pearl that leaves the broken string
Is set in Friendship's crown above.
As narrower grows the earthly chain,
The circle widens in the sky;
These are our treasures that remain,
But those are stars that beam on high.


We miss - oh, how we miss! - his face, -
With trembling accents speak his name.
Earth cannot fill his shadowed place
From all her rolls of pride and fame;
Our song has lost the silvery thread
That carolled through his jocund lips;
Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled,
And all our sunshine in eclipse.

And what and whence the wondrous charm
That kept his manhood boylike still, -
That life's hard censors could disarm
And lead them captive at his w...

Arranging long-locked drawers and shelves
Of cabinets, shut up for years,
What a strange task we've set ourselves!
How still the lonely room appears!
How strange this mass of ancient treasures,
Mementos of past pains and pleasures;
These volumes, clasped with costly stone,
With print all faded, gilding gone;

These fans of leaves from Indian trees,
These crimson shells, from Indian seas,
These tiny portraits, set in rings,
Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things;
Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith,
And worn till the receiver's death,
Now stored with cameos, china, shells,
In this old closet's dusty cells.

I scarcely think, for ten long years,
A hand has touched these relics old;
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears
The growth...