Freedom

You were a gipsy as you bent
Your dark hair over the black grate.
Hardly the west light above the hill
Showed your shadow, crooked and still.
The bellows hissed, and one bright spark
Deepened the hasty dark.

The bellows hissed, and the old smell
Crept on the air of smoking peat,
And round the spark a bubbling flame
Grew bright and loud. Sweeping the gloom
Lunatic shadows fled and came
Whirling about the room.

Then as you raised your head I saw
In the clear light of the bubbling fire
Your dark hair all lined with the gray
Sprinkled by years and sorrow and pain ...
Till as the bellows idle lay
Shadow swept back again.

Is anyone sad in the world, I wonder?
    Does anyone weep on a day like this,
With the sun above and the green earth under?
    Why, what is life but a dream of bliss?

With the sun and the skies and the birds above me,
    Birds that sing as they wheel and fly -
With the winds to follow and say they loved me -
    Who could be lonely?    O ho, not I!

Somebody said in the street this morning,
    As I opened my window to let in the light,
That the darkest day of the world was dawning;
    But I looked, and the East was a gorgeous sight

One who claims that he knows about it
    Tells me the Earth is a vale of sin;
But I and the bees and the birds - we doubt it,
    And think it a world worth living in.

Someone says that hearts are fickle...

THE POET SINGS TO HIS POET

From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn,
    We two are sundered always, sweet.
A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn
    And the cold sea-shore when we meet.
    The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet.

We are not day and night, my Fair,
    But one. It is an hour of hours.
And thoughts that are not otherwhere
    Are thought here 'mid the blown sea-flowers,
    This meeting and this dusk of ours.

Delight has taken Pain to her heart,
    And there is dusk and stars for these.
Oh, linger, linger! They would not part;
    And the wild wind comes from over-seas
    With a new song to the olive trees.

And when we meet by the sounding pine
    Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother.
And when thy swe...

O Time and Change, they range and range
From sunshine round to thunder!
They glance and go as the great winds blow,
And the best of our dreams drive under:
For Time and Change estrange, estrange,
And, now they have looked and seen us,
O we that were dear we are all-too near
With the thick of the world between us.

O Death and Time, they chime and chime
Like bells at sunset falling!
They end the song, they right the wrong,
They set the old echoes calling:
For Death and Time bring on the prime
Of God's own chosen weather,
And we lie in the peace of the Great Release
As once in the grass together.

I oft have net thee, Autumn, wandering
Beside a misty stream, thy locks flung wild;
Thy cheeks a hectic flush more fair than Spring,
As if on thee the scarlet copse had smiled.
Or thee I've seen a twisted oak beneath,
Thy gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,
    Beneath a faded oak from whose tinged leaves
Thou woundedst drowsy wreaths, while the soft breath
Of Morn did kiss thy locks and make them swim
    Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves.

Oft have I thee upon a hillock seen,
Dream-visaged, all agaze at glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between
With Indian faces from thy airy paint.
Or I have met thee 'twixt two dappled hills
Within a dingled valley nigh a fall,
    Clasped in thy tinted hand a ruddy flower,
An...

"The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering gray,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;

"Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November's gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter's hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek, so softly pressed,
In happy quiet on my breast,

"But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire's cheerful glow,
I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie those that I h...

Lais, when old and all her beauty gone,
Lais, the erstwhile courted pleasure queen,
Walked homeless through Corinth.
    One mocked her mien -
One tossed her coins; she took them and passed on.
Down by the harbour sloped a terraced lawn,
    Where fountains played; she paused to view the scene.
    A marble palace stood in bowers of green
'Twas here of old she revelled till the dawn.

Through yonder portico her lovers came -
    Hero and statesman, athlete, merchant, sage;
    They flung the whole world's treasures at her feet
To buy her favour and exalt her shame.

* * *

She spat upon her dole of coins in rage
    And faded like a phantom down the street.

I


When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,
Just at the time of opening apple-buds,
When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,
On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,
There is an unseen presence that eludes:--
Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling
The loamy odors of old solitudes,
Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads
My soul to follow; now with dimpling words
Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds;
While here and there--is it her limbs that swing?
Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?


II


Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips,
Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,
While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,
The moisture rains cool music on the grass.
Her have ...

I have not the gift of vision,
    I have not the psychic ear,
And the realms that are called Elysian
    I neither see nor hear;
Yet oft when the shadows darken
    And the daylight hides its face,
The soul of me seems to hearken
    For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,
    They speak to me not by word;
Yet my soul would be guilty of treason
    If it did not say it had heard.
For Space has a message compelling
    To give to the ear of Earth;
And the things which the Silence is telling
    In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it -
    That ever through good or ill,
The will of the Ruling Spirit
    Is moving and ruling still.
In the clutch of the blood-red ter...

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade
On desolate sea and lonely sand,
Out of the silence and the shade
What is the voice of strange command
Calling you still, as friend calls friend
With love that cannot brook delay,
To rise and follow the ways that wend
Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street
A roaring reach of death and life,
Of vortices that clash and fleet
And ruin in appointed strife,
Hark to it calling, calling clear,
Calling until you cannot stay
From dearer things than your own most dear
Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of ebb and flow,
Out of the sight of lamp and star,
It calls you where the good winds blow,
And the unchanging meadows are:
From faded hopes and hopes agleam,
It ...

Not only sun-kissed heights are fair.    Below
The cold, dark billows of the frowning deep
Do lovely blossoms of the ocean sleep,
Rocked gently by the waters to and fro.
The coral beds with magic colours glow,
    And priceless pearl-encrusted molluscs heap
    The glittering rocks where shining atoms leap
Like living broken rainbows.

    Even so
We find the sea of sorrow.    Black as night
    The sullen surface meets our frightened gaze,
    As down we sink to darkness and despair.
But at the depths -such beauty! such delight!
    Such flowers as never grew in pleasure's ways!
    Ah! not alone are sun-kissed summits fair.

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
C...

When life begins anew,
And Youth, from gathering flowers,
From vague delights, rapt musings, twilight hours,
Turns restless, seeking some great deed to do,
To sum his foster'd dreams; when that fresh birth
Unveils the real, the throng'd and spacious Earth,
And he awakes to those more ample skies,
By other aims and by new powers possess'd:
How deeply, then, his breast
Is fill'd with pangs of longing! how his eyes
Drink in the enchanted prospect! Fair it lies
Before him, with its plains expanding vast,
Peopled with visions, and enrich'd with dreams;
Dim cities, ancient forests, winding streams,
Places resounding in the famous past,
A kingdom ready to his hand!
How like a bride Life seems to stand
In welcome, and with festal robes array'd!
He feels her ...

"Why are you weeping, ye gentle flowers?
Are ye not blest in your sunny bowers?
Have you startling dreams that make ye weep,
When waking up from your holy sleep?

"Ah, knowest thou not, we fold at night,
The tears earth drops from her eyelids bright,
Like a loving mother her griefs are born,
Lest her tender nurslings should die ere morn,
And the sweet dew falls in each open cup,
Till the eyes of morn are lifted up;
We unfold our leaves to the sun's bright face,
And close them up at the night's embrace.

Dost thou ask if grief comes creeping across,
From the poplar bough to the dark green moss?
No, round us the sunbeams smile and glow,
Round us the streamlets dance and flow,
And the zephyr comes with its gentle breeze,
To sigh out its life in the...

'Tis gone, and for ever, the light we saw breaking,
    Like Heaven's first dawn o'er the sleep of the dead--
When Man, from the slumber of ages awaking,
    Looked upward, and blest the pure ray, ere it fled.
'Tis gone, and the gleams it has left of its burning
But deepen the long night of bondage and mourning,
That dark o'er the kingdoms of earth is returning,
    And darkest of all, hapless Erin, o'er thee.

For high was thy hope, when those glories were darting
    Around thee, thro' all the gross clouds of the world;
When Truth, from her fetters indignantly starting,
    At once, like a Sun-burst, her banner unfurled.[1]
Oh! never shall earth see a moment so splendid!
Then, then--had one Hymn of Deliverance blended
The tongues of all nations--how sw...

I see his Shape who should have led these ranks -
GARFIELD I see whose presence had evoked
The stormy rapture of a Nation's thanks -
His chariot stands unyoked!

Unyoked and empty, and the Charioteer
To Fame's expanded arms has headlong rushed
Ending the glories of a grand career,
While all the world stood hushed.

The thunder of his wheels is done, but he
Sustained by patience, fortitude, and grace -
A Christian Hero - from the struggle free -
Has won the Christian's race!

His wheel-tracks stop not in the Valley cold
But upward lead, and on, and up, and higher,
Till Hope can realize and Faith behold
His chariot mount in fire!

Therefore, my Countrymen, lift up your hearts!
Therefore, my Countrymen, be not cast down!
He lives wit...

Winds of the summer time what are you saying,
    What are ye seeking, and what do you miss?
Locks like the thistledown floating and straying,
    Cheeks like the budding rose, tinted to kiss.

See ye yon mist rising up from the river?
    That is the spirit of yesterday's rain.
Go to it, fly to it, call to it, cry to it,
    What did ye see when ye fell on the plain?

Rosewood, and velvet, and pansies, and roses,
    Blossoms from loving hands tenderly cast.
Lids like the leaves of a lily that closes
    After its brief little day-life is past.

Beautiful hands on a beautiful bosom,
    Folded so quietly, folded in rest.
Mouth like the bud of a white-petalled blossom,
    Creased where the lips of an angel had pressed.

Lower, and lower, a...

    I.

A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.

Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.

It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be found this bridge, disclose,
And who its beauteous form supplied!

    II.

It bears thee many a mile away,
And yet its place it changes ne'er;
It has no pinions to display,
And yet conducts thee through the air.

It is the bark of swiftest motion
That every weary wanderer bore;
With speed of thought the greatest ocean
It carries thee in safety...