Freedom

I rose up with the sun
And climbed the hill.
I saw the white mists run
And shadows run
Down into hollow woods.

I went with the white clouds
That swept the hill.
A wind struck the low hedge trees
And clustering trees,
And rocked in each tall elm.

The long afternoon was calm
When down the hill
I came, and felt the air cool,
The shadows cool;
And I walked on footsore,

Saying, "But two hours more,
Then, the last hill....
Surely this road I know,
These hills I know,
All the unknown is known,

"And that barn, black and lone,
High on the hill--
There the long road ends,
The long day ends,
And travelling is over." ...

Nor thought nor travelling's over.
Here on the hill
The black barn i...

Our thoughts are moulding unmade spheres,
    And, like a blessing or a curse,
They thunder down the formless years,
    And ring throughout the universe.

We build our futures by the shape
    Of our desires, and not by acts.
There is no pathway of escape;
    No priest-made creeds can alter facts.

Salvation is not begged or bought;
    Too long this selfish hope sufficed;
Too long man reeked with lawless thought,
    And leaned upon a tortured Christ.

Like shrivelled leaves, these worn-out creeds
    Are dropping from Religion's tree;
The world begins to know its needs,
    And souls are crying to be free.

Free from the load of fear and grief,
    Man fashioned in an ignorant age;
Free from the ache of unbelief
    He fl...

“Arcane danze
D’immortal piede i ruinosi gioghi
Scossero e l’ardue selve (oggi romito
Nido de’ vend).”
- LEOPARDI.


Through the country to the town
Ran a rumour and renown,
That a woman grand and tall,
Swift of foot, and therewithal
Naked as a lily gleaming,
Had been seen by eyes not dreaming,
Darting down far forest glades,
Flashing sunshine through the shades.

With this rumour’s swelling word
All the city buzzed and stirred;
Solemn senators conferred;
Priest, astrologer, and mage,
Subtle sophist, bard, and sage,
Brought their wisdom, lore, and wit,
To expound or riddle it:
Last a porter ventured “We
Might go out ourselves to see.”

Thus, upon a summer morn,
Lo the city all forlorn;
Every ho...

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF HER LATE ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS DOWAGER OF WALES.

OVERTURE A SOLEMN DIRGE. AIR TRIO.

Arise, ye sons of worth, arise,
And waken every note of woe;
When truth and virtue reach the skies,
'Tis ours to weep the want below!

CHORUS.
When truth and virtue, etc.

MAN SPEAKER.
The praise attending pomp and power,
The incense given to kings,
Are but the trappings of an hour
Mere transitory things!
The base bestow them: but the good agree
To spurn the venal gifts as flattery.
But when to pomp and power are join'd
An equal dignity of mind
When titles are the smallest claim
When wealth and rank and noble blood,
But aid the power of doing good
Then all their trophies last; and flattery turns to fame.

I.

As down life's morning stream we glide,
Full oft some Flower stoops o'er its side,
And beckons to the smiling shore,
Where roses strew the landscape o'er:
Yet as we reach that Flower to clasp,
It seems to mock the cheated grasp,
And whisper soft, with siren glee,
"My bloom is not oh not for thee!"


II.

Within Youth's flowery vale I tread,
By some entrancing shadow led
And Echo to my call replies
Yet, as she answers, lo, she flies!
And, as I seem to reach her cell
The grotto, where she weaves her spell
The Nymph's sweet voice afar I hear
So Love departs, as we draw near!


III.

Upon a mountain's dizzy height,
Ambition's temple gleams with light:
Proud forms are moving fair within,
And bid u...

I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud,
I build it bright to see,
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.

Cloud-walls of the morning's grey,
Faced with amber column,
Crowned with crimson cupola
From a sunset solemn!
May mists, for the casements, fetch,
Pale and glimmering;
With a sunbeam hid in each,
And a smell of spring.

Build the entrance high and proud,
Darkening and then brightening,
If a riven thunder-cloud,
Veined by the lightning.
Use one with an iris-stain,
For the door within;
Turning to a sound like rain,
As I enter in.

Build a spacious hall thereby:
Boldly, never fe...

One broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay
On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I
The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away;
The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there.

Morning: a woman looking on the sea;
Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns;
Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee!
Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns.

And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands,
And torches flaring in the weedy caves,
Where'er the waters lay with icy hands
The shapes uplifted from their coral graves.

Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er;
The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks,
And lean, wild children gather from the shore
To the black hovels bedded in the rocks.

But Love still prayed, with agoni...

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago.
        And etched on vacant places,
        Are half forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know -
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.

Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,
We see, with strange emotion that is not free from fear,
        That continent Elysian
        Long vanished from our vision,
Youth's lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.

When gloomy gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
        And draws from youth's recesses
        Some mem...

What if our numbers barely could defy
The arithmetic of babes, must foreign hordes,
Slaves, vile as ever were befooled by words,
Striking through English breasts the anarchy
Of Terror, bear us to the ground, and tie
Our hands behind our backs with felon cords?
Yields every thing to discipline of swords?
Is man as good as man, none low, none high?
Nor discipline nor valour can withstand
The shock, nor quell the inevitable rout,
When in some great extremity breaks out
A people, on their own beloved Land
Risen, like one man, to combat in the sight
Of a just God for liberty and right.

There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
On the water where the silver salmon play;
And I light my little corn-cob, and I linger softly dreaming,
In the twilight, of a land that's far away.

Far away, so faint and far, is flaming London, fevered Paris,
That I fancy I have gained another star;
Far away the din and hurry, far away the sin and worry,
Far away - God knows they cannot be too far.
Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon - how my purse-proud brothers taunt me!
I might have been as well-to-do as they
Had I clutched like them my chance...

What wonder this? we ask the lympid well,
O earth! of thee and from thy solemn womb
What yieldest thou? is there life in the abyss
Doth a new race beneath the lava dwell?
Returns the past, awakening from the tomb?
Rome Greece! Oh, come! Behold behold! for this!
Our living world the old Pompeii sees;
And built anew the town of Dorian Hercules!
House upon house its silent halls once more
Opes the broad portico! Oh, haste and fill
Again those halls with life! Oh, pour along
Through the seven-vista'd theatre the throng!
Where are ye, mimes? Come forth, the steel prepare
For crowned Atrides, or Orestes haunt,
Ye choral Furies, with your dismal chant!
The arch of triumph! whither leads it? still
Behold the forum! on the curule chair
Where the majestic image? Li...

    Even the shrewd and bitter,
    Gnarled by the old world's greed,
    Cherished the stranger softly
    Seeing his utter need.
    Shelter and patient hearing,
    These were their gifts to him,
    To the minstrel, grimly begging
    As the sunset-fire grew dim.
    The rich said "You are welcome."
    Yea, even the rich were good.
    How strange that in their feasting
    His songs were understood!
    The doors of the poor were open,
    The poor who had wandered too,
    Who had slept with ne'er a roof-tree
    Under the wind and dew.
    The minds of the poor were open,
    Their dark mistrust was dead.
    They loved his wizard stories,
    They bought his rhymes with bread.
    Those were his days of glory,
    Of faith in ...

Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
"Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;
Make way for our time,"
Wild winds have cried.
Green once and cheery,
The woods, worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary
Weak sun goes home:
A great wind grapples
The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.

Through fell and moorland,
And salt-sea foreland,
Our noisy norland
Resounds and rings;
Waste waves thereunder
Are blown in sunder,
And winds make thunder
With cloudwide wings;
Sea-drift makes dimmer
The beacon's glimmer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves quicken,
Under the heather the sundew hide...

Sublime was the warning that Liberty spoke,
And grand was the moment when Spaniards awoke
Into life and revenge from the conqueror's chain.
Oh, Liberty! let not this Spirit have rest,
Till it move, like a breeze, o'er the waves of the west--
Give the light of your look to each sorrowing spot,
Nor, oh, be the Shamrock of Erin forgot
While you add to your garland the Olive of Spain!

If the fame of our fathers, bequeathed with their rights,
Give to country its charm, and to home its delights,
If deceit be a wound, and suspicion a stain,
Then, ye men of Iberia; our cause is the same!
And oh!    may his tomb want a tear and a name,
Who would ask for a nobler, a holier death,
Than to turn his last sigh into victory's breath,
For the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Sp...

Immured in Bothwell's Towers, at times the Brave
(So beautiful is the Clyde) forgot to mourn
The liberty they lost at Bannockburn.
Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have
In mind the landscape, as if still in sight;
The river glides, the woods before me wave;
But, by occasion tempted, now I crave
Needless renewal of an old delight.
Better to thank a dear and long-past day
For joy its sunny hours were free to give
Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost.
Memory, like Sleep, hath powers which dreams obey,
Dreams, vivid dreams, that are not fugitive;
How little that she cherishes is lost!

    And wouldst thou seek the low abode
        Where PEACE delights to dwell?
    Pause Traveller on thy way of life!
    With many a snare and peril rife
        Is that long labyrinth of road:
    Dark is the vale of years before
        Pause Traveller on thy way!
    Nor dare the dangerous path explore
Till old EXPERIENCE comes to lend his leading ray.

    Not he who comes with lanthorn light
    Shall guide thy groping pace aright
        With faltering feet and slow;
    No! let him rear the torch on high
    And every maze shall meet thine eye,
        And every snare and every foe;
    Then with steady step and strong,
    Traveller, shalt thou march along.

    Tho' POWER invite thee to her hall,
    Regard not thou her tempting ...

occasioned by His Majesty's Royal Encouragement of the Sea Service.


    To Which is Prefixed an Ode to the King; and a Discourse on Ode.


    I think myself obliged to recommend to you a consideration of the greatest importance; and I should look upon it as a great happiness, if, at the beginning of my reign, I could see the foundation laid of so great and necessary a work, as the increase and encouragement of our seamen in general; that they may be invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the service of their country, as oft as occasion shall require it: a consideration worthy the representatives of a people great and flourishing in trade and navigation. This leads me to mention to you the case of Greenwich Hospital, that care may be taken, by some addition to that fund, to rend...

I see the wild and dashing waves
Break madly on the shore;
With glee I watch their stately course,
With joy I hear their roar.
The howling of the wildest storm,
The shrieking of the gull
Drive quickly all of pain away,
And all my fears they lull.

I join my feeble voice with theirs,
Triumphant in its yell,
For evil powers of earth I scorn,
And all the pow'rs of hell.
Tho' men and devils both unite,
And all their force combine,
I feel, ye waves and howling winds,
That all your strength is mine.

For He who holds you in His hand,
And moulds you to His will,
Can whisper to all hostile pow'rs,
As to you, "Peace, be still!"
He bends your necks like osiers green,
Also the necks of men;
Therefore with you I raise my voice,