Family

A violet grew by the river-side,
And gladdened all hearts with its bloom;
While over the fields, on the scented air,
It breathed a rich perfume.
But the clouds grew dark in the angry sky,
And its portals were opened wide;
And the heavy rain beat down the flower
That grew by the river-side.

Not far away in a pleasant home,
There lived a little boy,
Whose cheerful face and childish grace
Filled every heart with joy.
He wandered one day to the river's verge,
With no one near to save;
And the heart that we loved with a boundless love
Was stilled in the restless wave.

The sky grew dark to our tearful eyes,
And we bade farewell to joy;
For our hearts were bound by a sorrowful tie
To the grave of the little boy.
The birds still sing in...

"Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."
And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!"
Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he s...

I.

(Feb. 23, 1869.)

Fair Harvard, dear guide of our youth's golden days;
At thy name all our hearts own a thrill,
We turn from life's .highways, its business, its cares,
We are boys in thy tutelage still.
And the warm blood of youth to our veins, as of yore,
Returns with impetuous flow,
Reviving the scenes and the hopes that were ours
In the vanished, but sweet Long Ago.

Once more through thy walks, Alma Mater, we tread,
And we dream youth's fair dreams once again,
We are heroes in fight for the Just and the Right,
We are knights without fear, without stain;
Its doors in fair prospect the world opens wide,
Its prizes seem easy to win,--
We are strong in our faith, we are bold in our might,
And we long for the race to begin.

Th...

Kusta Ben Luka is my name, I write
To Abd Al-Rabban; fellow-roysterer once,
Now the good Caliph's learned Treasurer,
And for no ear but his.
Carry this letter
Through the great gallery of the Treasure House
Where banners of the Caliphs hang, night-coloured
But brilliant as the night's embroidery,
And wait war's music; pass the little gallery;
Pass books of learning from Byzantium
Written in gold upon a purple stain,
And pause at last, I was about to say,
At the great book of Sappho's song; but no,
For should you leave my letter there, a boy's
Love-lorn, indifferent hands might come upon it
And let it fall unnoticed to the floor.
pause at the Treatise of parmenides
And hide it there, for Caiphs to world's end
Must keep that perfect, as they keep her s...

In my own shire, if I was sad
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far the fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.

Yonder, lightening other loads,
The seasons range the country roads,
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
And these are no...

    I.


Now the dreary winter's over,
Fled with him are grief and pain,
When the trees their bloom recover,
Then the soul is born again.
Spikenard blossoms shaking,
Perfume all the air,
And in bud and flower breaking,
Stands my garden fair.
While with swelling gladness blest,
Heaves my friend's rejoicing breast.
Oh, come home, lost friend of mine,
Scared from out my tent and land.
Drink from me the spicy wine,
Milk and must from out my hand.


Cares which hovered round my brow,
Vanish, while the garden now
Girds itself with myrtle hedges,
    Bright-hued edges
    Round it lie.
    Suddenly
All my sorrows die.
See the breathing myrrh-trees blow,
Aromatic airs enfold me.
While the splendor and the glo...

A fresh young voice that sings to me
So often many a simple thing,
Should surely not unanswered be
By all that I can sing.

Dear voice, be happy every way
A thousand changing tones among,
From little child's unfinished lay
To angel's perfect song.

In dewy woods--fair, soft, and green
Like morning woods are childhood's bower--
Be like the voice of brook unseen
Among the stones and flowers;

A joyful voice though born so low,
And making all its neighbours glad;
Sweet, hidden, constant in its flow
Even when the winds are sad.

So, strengthen in a peaceful home,
And daily deeper meanings bear;
And when life's wildernesses come
Be brave and faithful there.

Try all the glorious magic range,
Worship, forgive, consol...

Here is your parents' dwelling with its curtained windows telling
Of no thought of us within it or of our arrival here;
Their slumbers have been normal after one day more of formal
Matrimonial commonplace and household life's mechanic gear.

I would be candid willingly, but dawn draws on so chillingly
As to render further cheerlessness intolerable now,
So I will not stand endeavouring to declare a day for severing,
But will clasp you just as always - just the olden love avow.

Through serene and surly weather we have walked the ways together,
And this long night's dance this year's end eve now finishes the spell;
Yet we dreamt us but beginning a sweet sempiternal spinning
Of a cord we have spun to breaking - too intemperately, too well.

Yes; last night we danced I...

    Would you be glad of heart and good?
    Would you forget life's toil and care?
    Come, lose yourself in this old wood
    When May's soft touch is everywhere.

    The hawthorn trees are white as snow,
    The basswood flaunts its feathery sprays,
    The willows kiss the stream below
    And listen to its flatteries:

    "O willows supple, yellow, green,
    Long have I flowed o'er stock and stone,
    I say with truth I have not seen
    A rarer beauty than your own!"

    The rough-bark hickory, elm, and beech
    With quick'ning thrill and growth are rife;
    Oak, maple, through the heart of each
    There runs a glorious tide of life.

    Fresh leaves, young buds on every hand,
    On trunk and limb a hint of red,
 ...

I

Where love is life
The roses blow,
Though winds be rude
And cold the snow,
The roses climb
Serenely slow,
They nod in rhyme
We know - we know
Where love is life
The roses blow.

Where life is love
The roses blow,
Though care be quick
And sorrows grow,
Their roots are twined
With rose-roots so
That rosebuds find
A way to show
Where life is love
The roses blow.


II

Nothing came here but sunlight,
Nothing fell here but rain,
Nothing blew but the mellow wind,
Here are the flowers again!

No one came here but you, dear,
You with your magic train
Of brightness and laughter and lightness,
Here is my joy again!


III

I have songs of dancing ple...

(For Robert Cortez Holliday)



If I should live in a forest
    And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
    Would make a home for me.

I'd go where the old oaks gather,
    Serene and good and strong,
And they would not sigh and tremble
    And vex me with a song.

The pleasantest sort of poet
    Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an old white beard and wrinkles
    About his kind old eyes.

For these young flippertigibbets
    A-rhyming their hours away
They won't be still like honest men
    And listen to what you say.

The young poet screams forever
    About his sex and his soul;
But the old man listens, and smokes his pipe,
    And polishes its bowl.

There should be a...

In the rosy light of my day's fair morning,
    Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west,
Ere even a shadow of night gave warning
    When life seemed only a pleasure quest,
Why then all humour and comedy scorning -
    I liked high tragedy best.

I liked the challenge, the fierce fought duel,
    With a death or a parting in every act.
I liked the villain to be more cruel
    Than the basest villain could be in fact:
For it fed the fires of my mind with the fuel
    Of the things that my life lacked.

But as time passed on, and I met real sorrow,
    And she played at night on the stage -my heart,
I found I could not forget on the morrow
    The pain I had felt in her tragic part.
For alas! no longer I needed to borrow
    My grief from the act...

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers
Are lying in field and lane,
With dandelions to tell the hours
That never are told again.
Oh may I squire you round the meads
And pick you posies gay?
-'Twill do no harm to take my arm.
"You may, young man, you may."

Ah, spring was sent for lass and lad,
'Tis now the blood runs gold,
And man and maid had best be glad
Before the world is old.
What flowers to-day may flower to-morrow,
But never as good as new.
-Suppose I wound my arm right round-
" 'Tis true, young man, 'tis true."

Some lads there are, 'tis shame to say,
That only court to thieve,
And once they bear the bloom away
'Tis little enough they leave.
Then keep your heart for men like me
And safe from trustless chaps.
My lov...

It's out and away at break of day,
To frolic and run in the sun-sweet hay:
It's up and out with a laugh and shout
Let the old world know that a boy's about.

It's ho for the creek that the minnows streak,
That the sunbeams dapple, the cattle seek;
For a fishing-pole and a swimming-hole,
Where a boy can loaf and chat with his soul.

It's oh to lie and look at the sky
Through the roof of the leaves that's built so high:
Where all day long the birds make song,
And everything 's right and nothing is wrong.

It's hey to win where the breeze blows thin,
And watch the twinkle of feather and fin:
To lie all day and dream away
The long, long hours as a boy's heart may.

It's oh to talk with the trees and walk
With the winds that whisper to flow...

We were a baker's dozen in the house - six women and six men
    Besides myself; and all of us had known
Those benefits supposed to come from school and church and brush and pen,
    And opportunities of being thrown
In contact with the cultured and the gifted people of the day.
    Being the thirteenth one among six pairs
I deemed it wise to keep apart and let the others have their say:
    And from my vantage-place upon the stairs,
Or in a corner, where I seemed to read, I listened for some word
    That would make life seem sweeter, or cast light
Upon the goal toward which all footsteps wend:    and this was what I heard
    Throughout each day and half of every night.
The men talked business, politics, and trade;
    They told of safe investments, and great chances
...

To-day I was so weary and I lay
    In that delicious state of semi-waking,
When baby, sitting with his nurse at play,
    Cried loud for "mamma," all his toys forsaking.

I was so weary and I needed rest,
    And signed to nurse to bear him from the room.
Then, sudden, rose and caught him to my breast,
    And kissed the grieving mouth and cheeks of bloom.

For swift as lightning came the thought to me,
    With pulsing heart-throes and a mist of tears,
Of days inevitable, that are to be,
    If my fair darling grows to manhood's years;

Days when he will not call for "mamma," when
    The world with many a pleasure and bright joy,
Shall tempt him forth into the haunts of men
    And I shall lose the first place with my boy;

When other ho...

I.

Oh, when I was a tiny boy,
My days and nights were full of joy,
My mates were blithe and kind! -
No wonder that I sometimes sigh,
And dash the tear-drop from my eye,
To cast a look behind!


II.

A hoop was an eternal round
Of pleasure. In those days I found
A top a joyous thing; -
But now those past delights I drop,
My head, alas! is all my top,
And careful thoughts the string!


III.

My marbles - once my bag was stored, -
Now I must play with Elgin's lord,
With Theseus for a taw!
My playful horse has slipt his string,
Forgotten all his capering,
And harness'd to the law!


IV.

My kite - how fast and far it flew!
Whilst I, a sort of Franklin, drew
My pleasure from ...