Freedom

A maiden blush o'er every feature straying,
The Muse her gentle harp now lays down here,
And stands before thee, for thy judgment praying,
She waits with reverence, but not with fear;
Her last farewell for his kind smile delaying.
Whom splendor dazzles not who holds truth dear.
The hand of him alone whose soaring spirit
Worships the beautiful, can crown her merit.

These simple lays are only heard resounding,
While feeling hearts are gladdened by their tone,
With brighter phantasies their path surrounding,
To nobler aims their footsteps guiding on.
Yet coming ages ne'er will hear them sounding,
They live but for the present hour alone;
The passing moment called them into being,
And, as the hours dance on, they, too, are fleeing.

The spring returns, ...

'Tis morning now, yet silently I stand,
Uplift the curtain with a weary hand,
Look out while darkness overspreads the way,
        And long for day.

Calm peace is frighted with my mood to-night,
Nor visits my dull chamber with her light,
To guide my senses into her sweet rest
        And leave me blest.

Long hours since the city rocked and sung
Itself to slumber: only the stars swung
Aloft their torches in the midnight skies
        With watchful eyes.

No sound awakes; I, even, breathe no sigh,
Nor hear a single footstep passing by;
Yet I am not alone, for now I feel
        A presence steal

Within my chamber walls; I turn to see
The sweetest guest that courts humanity;
With subtle, slow enchantment draws she near,
      ...

The sun goes down, and with him takes
The coarseness of my poor attire;
The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;
You captives of your air-tight halls,
Wear out indoors your sickly days,
But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task,
And say it frankly without guile,
Then you are Gypsies in a mask,
And I the lady all the while.

If on the heath, below the moon,
I court and play with paler blood,
Me false to mine dare whisper none,--
One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;
My swarthy tint is in the grain,
The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild ai...

He stood, a worn-out City clerk -
Who'd toil'd, and seen no holiday,
For forty years from dawn to dark -
Alone beside Caermarthen Bay.

He felt the salt spray on his lips;
Heard children's voices on the sands;
Up the sun's path he saw the ships
Sail on and on to other lands;

And laugh'd aloud. Each sight and sound
To him was joy too deep for tears;
He sat him on the beach, and bound
A blue bandana round his ears:

And thought how, posted near his door,
His own green door on Camden Hill,
Two bands at least, most likely more,
Were mingling at their own sweet will

Verdi with Vance. And at the thought
He laugh'd again, and softly drew
That Morning Herald that he'd bought
Forth from his breast, and read it through.

Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.


The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme--myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:
The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings--on the walk in the street, and the pas...

Sweet guardian of the rosy cheek!
Whene'er to thee I raise my hands
Upon the mountain's breezy peak,
Or on the yellow winding sands,

If thou hast deign'd, by Pity mov'd,
This fev'rish phantom to prolong,
I've touch'd my lute, for ever lov'd,
And bless'd thee with its earliest song!

And oh! if in thy gentle ear
Its simple notes have sounded sweet,
May the soft breeze, to thee so dear,
Now bear them to thy rose-wreath'd seat!

For thou hast dried the dew of grief,
And Friendship feels new ecstacy:
To Pollio thou hast stretch'd relief,
And, raising him, hast cherish'd me.

So, whilst some treasur'd plant receives
Th' admiring florist's partial show'r,
The drops that tremble from its leaves
Oft feed some near uncultur'd flow'r....

That other house, in the same crowded street,
One red-tiled floor had, answering to my feet,
And a bewildering garden all of light and heat.

Only that red floor and garden now remain,
One glowing firelike in my glowing brain,
One with smell, colour, sun and cloud revived again.

Yet in the garden the sky was very small,
Closed by some darkness beyond the low brown wall;
But from the west the gold could long unhindered fall.

Of human faces I remember none
Amid the garden; but myself alone
With creeping-jenny, sunflower, marigold, snapdragon--

These all my love, these now all my light,
Bringing their kindness to any painful night.
The sun brushed all their brightness with his skirt more bright.

And I was happy when I knew it not,
Dre...

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
--Goldsmith.


I fear the palace of the rich,
    I fear the hovel of the poor;
Though fortified by moat and ditch,
    The castle strong could not endure;
Nor can the squalid hovel be
    A source of strength, and those who cause
This widening discrepancy
    Infringe on God's eternal laws.

The heritage of man, the earth,
    Was framed for homes, not vast estates;
A lowering scale of human worth
    Each generation demonstrates,
Which feels the landlord's iron hand,
    And hopeless, plod with effort brave;
Who love no home can love no land;
    These own no home, until the grave.

The nation's strongest safeguards lie
In free...

        In summer time it doth seem good
        To seek the shade of the green wood,
        For it doth banish all our care
        When we gaze on scene so fair.

        And birds do here in branches sing
        So merrily in early spring,
        And lovingly they here do pair
        Their mutual joys together share.

        Here nature's charming, never rude,
        Inspiring all with happy mood,
        Tables had choice fruits of season,
        And we too had feast of reason.

        To dinner table all did march
        Through evergreen triumphal arch,
        On top the Union Jack it floats,
        On each side sheaves of wheat and oats.

        Great pumpkins and big ears of corn,
        They do this rural arch ado...

    I would enshrine in silvern song
    The charm that bore our souls along,
        As in the sun-flushed days of summer
    We felt the pulsings of nature's throng;

    When flecks of foam of flying spray
    Smote white the red sun's torrid ray,
        Or wimpling fogs toyed with the mountain,
    Aërial spirits of dew at play;

    When hovering stars, poised in the blue,
    Came down and ever closer drew;
        Or, in the autumn air astringent,
    Glimmered the pearls of the moonlit dew.


    We talked of bird and flower and tree,
    Of God and man and destiny.
        The years are wise though days be foolish,
    We said, as swung to its goal the sea.

    Our spirits knew keen fellowship
    Of light and shadow, h...

    I come upon it suddenly, alone -
        A little pathway winding in the weeds
    That fringe the roadside; and with dreams my own,
        I wander as it leads.

    Full wistfully along the slender way,
        Through summer tan of freckled shade and shine,
    I take the path that leads me as it may -
        Its every choice is mine.

    A chipmunk, or a sudden-whirring quail,
        Is startled by my step as on I fare -
    A garter-snake across the dusty trail
        Glances and - is not there.

    Above the arching jimson-weeds flare twos
        And twos of sallow-yellow butterflies,
    Like blooms of lorn primroses blowing loose
        When autumn winds arise.

    The trail dips - dwindles - broadens then, and lifts

THE BELL OF ATRI

At Atri in Abruzzo, a small town
Of ancient Roman date, but scant renown,
One of those little places that have run
Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun,
And then sat down to rest, as if to say,
"I climb no farther upward, come what may,"--
The Re Giovanni, now unknown to fame,
So many monarchs since have borne the name,
Had a great bell hung in the market-place
Beneath a roof, projecting some small space,
By way of shelter from the sun and rain.
Then rode he through the streets with all his train,
And, with the blast of trumpets loud and long,
Made proclamation, that whenever wrong
Was done to any man, he should but ring
The great bell in the square, and he, the King,
Would cause the Syndic to decide thereon.
Such was the pr...

To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught
Of all the great things men have saved from Time,
The withered body of a girl was brought
Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime,
And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the Egyptian's body, lo! was found
Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand
A little seed, which sown in English ground
Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear
And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.

With such strange arts this flower did allure
That all forgotten was the asphodel,
And the brown bee, the lily's paramour,
Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell,
For not a thing of earth it seemed to be,
But st...

I am that which began;
Out of me the years roll;
Out of me God and man;
I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Before ever land was,
Before ever the sea,
Or soft hair of the grass,
Or fair limbs of the tree,
Or the flesh-coloured fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.

First life on my sources
First drifted and swam;
Out of me are the forces
That save it or damn;
Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird; before God was, I am.

Beside or above me
Nought is there to go;
Love or unlove me,
Unknow me or know,
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.

I the mark that is missed
And the arrows that miss,
I the mouth ...

I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;
And he was seated, by the highway side,
On a low structure of rude masonry
Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they
Who lead their horses down the steep rough road
May thence remount at ease. The aged Man
Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone
That overlays the pile; and, from a bag
All white with flour, the dole of village dames,
He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one;
And scanned them with a fixed and serious look
Of idle computation. In the sun,
Upon the second step of that small pile,
Surrounded by those wild unpeopled hills,
He sat, and ate his food in solitude:
And ever, scattered from his palsied hand,
That, still attempting to prevent the waste,
Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers

The sunburnt face in the willow shade
To the face in the water-mirror said,

"O deep mysterious face in the stream,
Art thou myself or am I thy dream?"

And the face deep down in the water's side
To the face in the upper air replied,

"I am thy dream, them poor worn face,
And this is thy heart's abiding place.

"Too much in the world, come back and be
Once more my dream-fellow with me,

"In the far-off untarnished years
Before thy furrows were washed with tears,

"Or ever thy serious creature eyes
Were aged with a mist of memories.

"Hast thou forgotten the long ago
In the garden where I used to flow,

"Among the hills, with the maple tree
And the roses blowing over me?--

"I who am now but a wraith of thi...

    September 26, 1881.


Weep for the martyr!    Strew his bier
With the last roses of the year;
Shadow the land with sables; knell
The harsh-tongued, melancholy bell;
Beat the dull muffled drum, and flaunt
The drooping banner; let the chant
Of the deep-throated organ sob -
One voice, one sorrow, one heart-throb,
From land to land, from sea to sea -
The huge world quires his elegy.
Tears, love, and honor he shall have,
Through ages keeping green his grave.
Too late approved, too early lost,
His story is the people's boast.
Tough-sinewed offspring of the soil,
Of peasant lineage, reared to toil,
In Europe he had been a thing
To the glebe tethered - here a king!
Crowned not for some transcendent gift,
Genius of power that may lift<...

For a Very Little Girl, Not a Year Old.Catharine Frazee Wakefield.



    The sun gives not directly
        The coal, the diamond crown;
    Not in a special basket
        Are these from Heaven let down.

    The sun gives not directly
        The plough, man's iron friend;
    Not by a path or stairway
        Do tools from Heaven descend.

    Yet sunshine fashions all things
        That cut or burn or fly;
    And corn that seems upon the earth
        Is made in the hot sky.

    The gravel of the roadbed,
        The metal of the gun,
    The engine of the airship
        Trace somehow from the sun.

    And so your soul, my lady -
        (Mere sunshine, nothing more) -
    Prepares me the contraptions...