Freedom

TO MARGOT


When I go free,
I think 'twill be
A night of stars and snow,
And the wild fires of frost shall light
My footsteps as I go;
Nobody - nobody will be there
With groping touch, or sight,
To see me in my bush of hair
Dance burning through the night.




VOICES


Who is it calling by the darkened river
    Where the moss lies smooth and deep,
And the dark trees lean unmoving arms,
    Silent and vague in sleep,
And the bright-heeled constellations pass
    In splendour through the gloom;
Who is it calling o'er the darkened river
        In music, "Come!"?

Who is it wandering in the summer meadows
    Where the children stoop and play
In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning
 ...

Over the meadows, and down the stream,

And through the garden-walks straying,
He plucks the flowers that fairest seem;

His throbbing heart brooks no delaying.
His maiden then comes oh, what ecstasy!
Thy flowers thou giv'st for one glance of her eye!

The gard'ner next door o'er the hedge sees the youth:
"I'm not such a fool as that, in good truth;
My pleasure is ever to cherish each flower,
And see that no birds my fruit e'er devour.
But when 'tis ripe, your money, good neighbour!
'Twas not for nothing I took all this labour!"
And such, methinks, are the author-tribe.

The one his pleasures around him strews,

That his friends, the public, may reap, if they choose;
The other would fain make them all subscribe,

I saw it all in Fancy's glass--
    Herself, the fair, the wild magician,
Who bade this splendid day-dream pass,
    And named each gliding apparition.

'Twas like a torch-race--such as they
    Of Greece performed, in ages gone,
When the fleet youths, in long array,
    Past the bright torch triumphant on.

I saw the expectant nations stand,
    To catch the coming flame in turn;--
I saw, from ready hand to hand,
    The clear tho' struggling glory burn.

And oh! their joy, as it came near,
    'Twas in itself a joy to see;--
While Fancy whispered in my ear.
    "That torch they pass is Liberty!"

And each, as she received the flame,
    Lighted her altar with its ray;
Then, smiling, to the next who came,
    Speeded it on i...

    A red rose in my lady's hair,
    A white rose in her fingers,
    A wild bird singing low, somewhere,
    A song that pulses, lingers.
    The sound of dancing and of mirth,
    The fiddle's merry chiming,
    A smell of earth, of fresh, warm earth,
    And honeysuckle climbing;
    My lady near, yet far away -
    Ah, lonely June of yesterday!

    A big white night of velvet sky,
    And Milky Way a-gleaming,
    The fragrant blue smoke drifting by
    From camp-fire brightly beaming;
    The stillness of the Northland far -
    God's solitudes of splendor -
    My road a trail, my chart a star.
    Wind, 'mong the balsams slender,
    Sing low: O glad June of to-day,
    My lady's near, though far away!

    Climbing the heights of Berkeley
    Nightly I watch the West.
    There lies new San Francisco,
    Sea-maid in purple dressed,
    Wearing a dancer's girdle
    All to inflame desire:
    Scorning her days of sackcloth,
    Scorning her cleansing fire.

    See, like a burning city
    Sets now the red sun's dome.
    See, mystic firebrands sparkle
    There on each store and home.
    See how the golden gateway
    Burns with the day to be -
    Torch-bearing fiends of portent
    Loom o'er the earth and sea.

    Not by the earthquake daunted
    Nor by new fears made tame,
    Painting her face and laughing
    Plays she a new-found game.
    Here on her half-cool cinders
    'Frisco abides in mirth,
    Plannin...

        We sang old love-songs on the way
            In sad and merry snatches,
        Your fingers o'er the strings astray
            Strumming the random catches.

        And ever, as the skiff plied on
            Among the trailing willows,
        Trekking the darker deeps to shun
            The gleaming sandy shallows,

        It seemed that we had, ages gone,
            In some far summer weather,
        When this same faery moonlight shone,
            Sung these same songs together.

        And every grassy cape we passed,
            And every reedy island,
        Even the bank'd cloud in the west
            That loomed a sombre highland;

        And you, with dewmist on your hair,
            Crowned with a wreat...

For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower and leaf
And shine and shade are very brief,
And that the heart they brighten, may,
Before them all, be sheathed in clay!
I do not know the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

A few there are, whose smile and praise
My minstrel hope, would kindly raise:
But, of those few, Death may impress
The lips of some with silentness;
While some may friendship's fai...

Ah why deceive ourselves! by no mere fit
Of sudden passion roused shall men attain
True freedom where for ages they have lain
Bound in a dark abominable pit,
With life's best sinews more and more unknit.
Here, there, a banded few who loathe the chain
May rise to break it; effort worse than vain
For thee, O great Italian nation, split
Into those jarring fractions. Let thy scope
Be one fixed mind for all; thy rights approve
To thy own conscience gradually renewed;
Learn to make Time the father of wise Hope;
Then trust thy cause to the arm of Fortitude,
The light of Knowledge, and the warmth of Love.

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;

Sweet resting place! that long hath been
A boon Elysian 'mid the din
    Of city life, 'mid city smoke;
Where weary ones who toil and spin
Have turned aside as to an inn
    Whose swinging sign a welcome spoke;
Where misanthropes find medicine
In peals of laughter that begin
    With ancient, resurrected joke,
Or ready wit of harlequin;
Where children, free from discipline,
    Take on Diversion's easy yoke.

Fair oasis! to view aright
Its charming paths, its sloping height,
    Its beautiful and broad expanse,
Must one approach in witching night
When, like abodes of airy sprite
    Revealed unto the wondering glance,
O'erflooded with electric light
Than Luna's beams more dazzling bright,
    Illumined nooks the scene enhance;
Whi...

I

What is this I read in history,
Full of marvel, full of mystery,
Difficult to understand?
Is it fiction, is it truth?
Children in the flower of youth,
Heart in heart, and hand in hand,
Ignorant of what helps or harms,
Without armor, without arms,
Journeying to the Holy Land!

Who shall answer or divine?
Never since the world was made
Such a wonderful crusade
Started forth for Palestine.
Never while the world shall last
Will it reproduce the past;
Never will it see again
Such an army, such a band,
Over mountain, over main,
Journeying to the Holy Land.

Like a shower of blossoms blown
From the parent trees were they;
Like a flock of birds that fly
Through the unfrequented sky,
Holding nothing as their own...

Down through the woods, along the way
That fords the stream; by rock and tree,
Where in the bramble-bell the bee
Swings; and through twilights green and gray
The redbird flashes suddenly,
My thoughts went wandering to-day.
I found the fields where, row on row,
The blackberries hang dark with fruit;
Where, nesting at the elder's root,
The partridge whistles soft and low;
The fields, that billow to the foot
Of those old hills we used to know.
There lay the pond, all willow-bound,
On whose bright face, when noons were hot,
We marked the bubbles rise; some plot
To lure us in; while all around
Our heads, like faery fancies, shot
The dragonflies without a sound.
The pond, above which evening bent
To gaze upon her gypsy face;
Wherein the twinkling...

To think of time, of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?
Have you fear'd the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were
flexible, real, alive! that everything was alive!
To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part!
To think that we are now here, and bear our part!

Not a day passes, not a minute or second, without an accouchement!
Not a day passes, not a minute or second, without a corpse!

The dull nights go over, and the dull da...

Green wing and ruby throat,
    What shining spell, what exquisite sorcery,
Lured you to float
    And fight with bees round this one flowering tree?

Petulant imps of light,
    What whisper or gleam or elfin-wild perfumes
Thrilled through the night
    And drew you to this hive of rosy bloom?

One tree, and one alone,
    Of all that load this magic air with spice,
Claims for its own
    Your brave migration out of Paradise;

Claims you, and guides you, too,
    Three thousand miles across the summer's waste
Of blooms ye knew
    Less finely fit for your ethereal taste.

To poets' youthful hearts,
    Even so the quivering April thoughts will fly,--
Those irised darts,
    Those winged and tiny denizens of the sky.

Whether I loved you who shall say?
Whether I drifted down your way
In the endless River of Chance and Change,
And you woke the strange
Unknown longings that have no names,
But burn us all in their hidden flames,
    Who shall say?

Life is a strange and a wayward thing:
We heard the bells of the Temples ring,
The married children, in passing, sing.
The month of marriage, the month of spring,
Was full of the breath of sunburnt flowers
That bloom in a fiercer light than ours,
And, under a sky more fiercely blue,
    I came to you!

You told me tales of your vivid life
Where death was cruel and danger rife -
Of deep dark forests, of poisoned trees,
Of pains and passions that scorch and freeze,
Of southern noontides and eastern nights,

Silently without my window,
Tapping gently at the pane,
Falls the rain.
Through the trees sighs the breeze
Like a soul in pain.
Here alone I sit and weep;
Thought hath banished sleep.

Wearily I sit and listen
To the water's ceaseless drip.
To my lip
Fate turns up the bitter cup,
Forcing me to sip;
'T is a bitter, bitter drink,
Thus I sit and think,--

Thinking things unknown and awful,
Thoughts on wild, uncanny themes,
Waking dreams.
Spectres dark, corpses stark,
Show the gaping seams
Whence the cold and cruel knife
Stole away their life.

Bloodshot eyes all strained and staring,
Gazing ghastly into mine;
Blood like wine
On the brow--clotted now--
Shows death's dreadful sign.
Lonely vigil still ...

In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side.
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high,,
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Nig...

WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 1693


Strange to conceive, how the same objects strike
At distant hours the mind with forms so like!
Whether in time, Deduction's broken chain
Meets, and salutes her sister link again;
Or haunted Fancy, by a circling flight,
Comes back with joy to its own seat at night;
Or whether dead Imagination's ghost
Oft hovers where alive it haunted most;
Or if Thought's rolling globe, her circle run,
Turns up old objects to the soul her sun;
Or loves the Muse to walk with conscious pride
O'er the glad scene whence first she rose a bride:
    Be what it will; late near yon whispering stream,
Where her own Temple was her darling theme;
There first the visionary sound was heard,
When to poetic view the Muse appear'd.
Such seem'd her eye...