Family

And I grew up in patterned tranquility,
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me,
But the voice of the wind I could understand.
But best of all the silver willow.
And obligingly, it lived
With me all my life; it's weeping branches
Fanned my insomnia with dreams.
And strange!--I outlived it.
There the stump stands; with strange voices
Other willows are conversing
Under our, under those skies.
And I am silent...As if a brother had died.

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
    So slowly that no human eye hath power
    To see it move!    Slowly in shine or shower
    The painted ship above it, homeward bound,
Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;
    Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower
    The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,
    A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
    The frontier town and citadel of night!
    The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
    One to the land of promise and of light,
    One to the land of darkness and of dreams!

II

O River of Yesterday, with current swift
    Through chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,

Whose child is this they bring
Into the aisle? -
At so superb a thing
The congregation smile
And turn their heads awhile.

Its eyes are blue and bright,
Its cheeks like rose;
Its simple robes unite
Whitest of calicoes
With lawn, and satin bows.

A pride in the human race
At this paragon
Of mortals, lights each face
While the old rite goes on;
But ah, they are shocked anon.

What girl is she who peeps
From the gallery stair,
Smiles palely, redly weeps,
With feverish furtive air
As though not fitly there?

"I am the baby's mother;
This gem of the race
The decent fain would smother,
And for my deep disgrace
I am bidden to leave the place."

"Where is the baby's father?" -
"In the woods afa...

First in these fields I try the sylvan strains,
Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful plains:
Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring,
While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;
Let vernal airs tho' trembling osiers play,
And Albion's cliffs resound the rural lay.
You, that too wise for pride, too good for pow'r,
Enjoy the glory to be great no more,
And carrying with you all the world can boast,
To all the world illustriously are lost!
O let my Muse her slender reed inspire,
Till in your native shades you tune the lyre:
So when the Nightingale to rest removes,
The Thrush may chant to the forsaken groves,
But, charm'd to silence, listens while she sings,
And all th' aerial audience clap their wings.
Soon as the flocks shook off the nightly dews,
Tw...

I know a cliff, whose steep and craggy brow
O'erlooks the troubled ocean, and spurns back
The advancing billow from its rugged base;
Yet many a goodly rood of land lies deep
Beneath the wild wave buried, which rolls on
Its course exulting o'er the prostrate towers
Of high cathedral--church--and abbey fair,--
Lifting its loud and everlasting voice
Over the ruins, which its depths enshroud,
As if it called on Time, to render back
The things that were, and give to life again
All that in dark oblivion sleeps below:--
Perched on the summit of that lofty cliff
A time-worn edifice o'erlooks the wave,
"Which greets the fisher's home-returning bark,"
And the young seaman checks his blithesome song
To hail the lonely ruin from the deep.

    Majestic in decay,...

"In my young days," the grandmother said (Nodding her head,
Where cap and curls were as white as snow),
"In my young days, when we used to go
Rambling,
Scrambling;
Each little dirty hand in hand,
Like a chain of daisies, a comical band
Of neighbours' children, seriously straying,
Really and truly going a-Maying,
My mother would bid us linger,
And lifting a slender, straight forefinger,
Would say--
'Little Kings and Queens of the May,
Listen to me!
If you want to be
Every one of you very good
In that beautiful, beautiful, beautiful wood,
Where the little birds' heads get so turned with delight,
That some of them sing all night:
Whatever you pluck,
Leave some for good luck;
Picked from the stalk, or pulled up by the root,
From overh...

Let the dream go. Are there not other dreams
    In vastness of clouds hid from thy sight
That yet shall gild with beautiful gold gleams,
    And shoot the shadows through and through with light?
    What matters one lost vision of the night?
    Let the dream go!

Let the hope set. Are there not other hopes
    That yet shall rise like new stars in thy sky?
Not long a soul in sullen darkness gropes
    Before some light is lent it from on high;
    What folly to think happiness gone by!
    Let the hope set!

Let the joy fade. Are there not other joys,
    Like frost-bound bulbs, that yet shall start and bloom?
Severe must be the winter that destroys
    The hardy roots locked in their silent tomb.
    What cares the earth for her brief time of gloo...

    HOME, SWEET HOME.


    I'm a Bedfordshire Chap, and Bill Stumps is my name,
    And to tell it don't give me no manner of shame;
    For a man as works honest and hard for his livin',
    When he tells you his name, needn't feel no misgivin'.

    And works's what I live by.    At dawn o' the day,
    While some folks is snorin', I'm up and away;
    When I stops for my Bavor [1], 'twould dew your heart good,
    To see how I relish the taste o' my food.

    I'm fond o' my hoein', and ploughin', and drill,
    And my hosses all knows me and works with a will;
    I'm fond o' my 'chinin', and thackin' and drainin',
    For when work's to be done, 'taint no use a complainin.'

    I whistles a tune if the mornins be dark;
    When I goes hom...

O Lord, I cannot but believe
The birds do sing thy praises then, when they sing to one another,
And they are lying seed-sown land when the winter makes them grieve,
Their little bosoms breeding songs for the summer to unsmother!

If thou hadst finished me, O Lord,
Nor left out of me part of that great gift that goes to singing,
I sure had known the meaning high of the songster's praising word,
Had known upon what thoughts of thee his pearly talk he was stringing!

I should have read the wisdom hid
In the storm-inspired melody of thy thrush's bosom solemn:
I should not then have understood what thy free spirit did
To make the lark-soprano mount like to a geyser-column!

I think I almost understand
Thy owl, his muffled swiftness, moon-round eyes, and intoned hoo...

My heart to-day is like a southern wood,
    Through summer months it has been drunk with heat;
    And slumbered on unmindful of the beat
Of life beyond it: sleep alone seemed good.

Now milder Autumn's tints are in the sky;
    The fervid heats of summer noons depart;
    And backward to the old haunts in my heart
The golden robins and the blue birds fly.

I hear the flutter of their airy wings,
    They flock about the Spring's deserted nest,
    And suddenly I feel within my breast
The stirring of sweet half-forgotten things.

Bright sunny mornings -golden growing hours -
    The building of glad birds among the trees;
    Wide open windows and the kindly breeze
Bringing the perfume of half-open flowers.

A blithe face at the window fai...

These little Songs,
Found here and there,
Floating in air
By forest and lea,
Or hill-side heather,
In houses and throngs,
Or down by the sea,
Have come together,
How, I can't tell:
But I know full well
No witty goose-wing
On an inkstand begot 'em;
Remember each place
And moment of grace,
In summer or spring,
Winter or autumn
By sun, moon, stars,
Or a coal in the bars,
In market or church,
Graveyard or dance,
When they came without search,
Were found as by chance.
A word, a line,
You may say are mine;
But the best in the songs,
Whatever it be,
To you, and to me,
And to no one belongs

Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have passed,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,
And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled
Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless child!

    I.

    The flush of green that dyed the day
    Hath vanished in the moon;
    Flower-scents float stronger out, and play
    An unborn, coming tune.

    One southern eve like this, the dew
    Had cooled and left the ground;
    The moon hung half-way from the blue,
    No disc, but conglobed round;

    Light-leaved acacias, by the door,
    Bathed in the balmy air,
    Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore,
    And breathed a perfume rare;

    Great gold-flakes from the starry sky
    Fell flashing on the deep:
    One scent of moist earth floating by,
    Almost it made me weep.


    II.

    Those gorgeous stars were not my own,
    They made me alien go!
    The mother o'er her head had thrown...

I.

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy, will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

II.

"You cannot eat your cake and have it too."
- Proverb.


How fever'd is the man, who cannot look
Upon his mortal day...

A Memory Of A Sister



The fire advances along the log
Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach
And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year,
It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim
From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

December 1915.

What's life but full of care and doubt
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails, and such vanities.

We plant pomegranate trees and things,
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks' wings,
To painted ladies courting.

We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue, -
But life's as frail as dishes!

Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese,
They'd both be smashed to shivers!

There is singing of birds in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the listening solitudes,
Pewees, and thrushes, and sparrows, not few,
And all the notes of their throats are true.

The thrush from the innermost ash takes on
A tender dream of the treasured and gone;
But the sparrow singeth with pride and cheer
Of the might and light of the present and here.

There is shining of flowers in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the sensitive solitudes,
The roseate bell and the lily are there,
And every leaf of their sheaf is fair.

Careless and bold, without dream of woe,
The trilliums scatter their flags snow;
But the pale wood-daffodil covers her face,
Agloom with the doom of a sorrowful race.

I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where eer I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good bye.

I met her in the greenest dells
Where dewdrops pearl the wood blue bells
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town
Till een the breeze would knock me down,
The bees seemed singing ballads oer,
The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tong...