Freedom

The cocks have now the morn foretold,
The sun again begins to peep,
The shepherd, whistling to his fold,
Unpens and frees the captive sheep.
O’er pathless plains at early hours
The sleepy rustic sloomy goes;
The dews, brushed off from grass and flowers,
Bemoistening sop his hardened shoes

While every leaf that forms a shade,
And every floweret’s silken top,
And every shivering bent and blade,
Stoops, bowing with a diamond drop.
But soon shall fly those diamond drops,
The red round sun advances higher,
And, stretching o’er the mountain tops,
Is gilding sweet the village-spire.

’Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze,
Or list the gurgling of the brook;
Or, stretched beneath the shade of trees,
Peruse and pause on Nature’s book,
When...

Take me away into a storm of snow
So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill,
But listen to the murmuring overflow
Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill!

Take me away into the sunset's glow,
That holds a summer in a glorious bloom;
Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow
On the sky's mountains, in the evening gloom!

Give me an entrance to the limpid lake
When moonbeams shine across its purity!
A life there is, within the life we take
So commonly, for which 't were well to die.

A ring of gold and a milk-white dove
Are goodly gifts for thee,
And a hempen rope for your own love
To hang upon a tree.

For you a House of Ivory,
(Roses are white in the rose-bower)!
A narrow bed for me to lie,
(White, O white, is the hemlock flower)!

Myrtle and jessamine for you,
(O the red rose is fair to see)!
For me the cypress and the rue,
(Finest of all is rosemary)!

For you three lovers of your hand,
(Green grass where a man lies dead)!
For me three paces on the sand,
(Plant lilies at my head)!

Now the long-bearded chilly-fingered winter
Over the green fields sweeps his cloak and leaves
Its whiteness there. It caught on the wild trees,
Shook whiteness on the hedges and left bare
South-sloping corners and south-fronting smooth
Barks of tall beeches swaying 'neath their whiteness
So gently that the whiteness does not fall.
The ash copse shows all white between gray poles,
The oaks spread arms to catch the wandering snow.
But the yews--I wondered to see their dark all white,
To see the soft flakes fallen on those grave deeps,
Lying there, not burnt up by the yews' slow fire.
Could Time so whiten all the trembling senses,
The youth, the fairness, the all-challenging strength,
And load even Love's grave deeps with his barren snows?
Even so. And what remains?

O pouring westering streams
Shouting that I have leapt the mountain bar,
Down curve on curve my journey's white way gleams -
My road along the river of return.

I know the countries where the white moons burn,
And heavy star on star
Dips on the pale and crystal desert hills.
I know the river of the sun that fills
With founts of gold the lakes of Orient sky.

        *        *        *        *        *

And I have heard a voice of broken seas
And from the cliffs a cry.
Ah still they learn, those cave-eared Cyclades,
The Triton's friendly or his fearful horn,
And why the deep sea-bells but seldom chime,
And how those waves and with what spell-swept rhyme
In years of morning, on a summer's morn
Whispering round his castle on the coast,
...

Looking Over A Gate At A Pool In A Field.


What change has made the pastures sweet
And reached the daisies at my feet,
And cloud that wears a golden hem?
This lovely world, the hills, the sward -
They all look fresh, as if our Lord
But yesterday had finished them.

And here's the field with light aglow;
How fresh its boundary lime-trees show,
And how its wet leaves trembling shine!
Between their trunks come through to me
The morning sparkles of the sea
Below the level browsing line

I see the pool more clear by half
Than pools where other waters laugh
Up at the breasts of coot and rail.
There, as she passed it on her way,
I saw reflected yesterday
A maiden with a milking-pail.

There, neither slowly nor in haste,
O...

One of a hundred little rills--
Born in the hills,
Nourished with dews by the earth, and with tears by the sky,
Sang--"Who so mighty as I?
The farther I flow
The bigger I grow.
I, who was born but a little rill,
Now turn the big wheel of the mill,
Though the surly slave would rather stand still.
Old, and weed-hung, and grim,
I am not afraid of him;
For when I come running and dance on his toes,
With a creak and a groan the monster goes.
And turns faster and faster,
As he learns who is master,
Round and round,
Till the corn is ground,
And the miller smiles as he stands on the bank,
And knows he has me to thank.
Then when he swings the fine sacks of flour,
I feel my power;
But when the children enjoy their food,
I know I'm not only ...

If any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, ‘He holds her dear,’
And shook with hate and fear.
But oh, ’twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.

Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being gray,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
‘He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.’

For she had fiery blood
When I was young,
And trod so sweetly proud
As ’twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem
But an heroic dream.

Lieti flori e felici, e ben nate erbe.

HE ENVIES EVERY SPOT THAT SHE FREQUENTS.


    Gay, joyous blooms, and herbage glad with showers,
O'er which my pensive fair is wont to stray!
Thou plain, that listest her melodious lay,
As her fair feet imprint thy waste of flowers!
Ye shrubs so trim; ye green, unfolding bowers;
Ye violets clad in amorous, pale array;
Thou shadowy grove, gilded by beauty's ray,
Whose top made proud majestically towers!
O pleasant country! O translucent stream,
Bathing her lovely face, her eyes so clear,
And catching of their living light the beam!
I envy ye her actions chaste and dear:
No rock shall stud thy waters, but shall learn
Henceforth with passion strong as mine to burn.

NOTT.


    O b...

Thou with the dark blue eye upturned to heaven,
And cheek now pale, now warm with radiant glow,
                    Daughter of God,--most dear,--
                    Come with thy quivering tear,
And tresses wild, and robes of loosened flow,--
To thy lone votaress let one look be given!

Come Poesy! nor like some just-formed maid,
With heart as yet unswoln by bliss or woe;--
                    But of such age be seen
                    As Egypt's glowing queen,
When her brave Roman learned to love her so
That death and loss of fame, were, by a smile, repaid.

Or as thy Sappho, when too fierce assailed
By stern ingratitude her tender breast:--
                    Her love by scorn repaid
                    Her friendship true betrayed,
Sick of the...

A radiance in the midnight sky
No white moon gave, nor yellow star;
We thought its red glow mounted high
Where fire and forest fought afar,

Half questioning if the township blazed,
Perchance, beyond the boundary hill;
Then, finding what it was, we gazed
And wondered till we shivered chill.

And Fancy showed the sister-glow
Of our Aurora, sending lines
Of lustre forth to tint the snow
That lodges in Norwegian pines.

And South and North alternate swept
In vision past us, to and fro;
While stealthy winds of midnight crept
About us, whispering fast and low.

The North, whose star burns steadily,
High set in heaven long ago:
The South, new-risen on the sea,
A tremulous horizon-glow.

We mused, “Shall there be gallant g...

Love and thy vain employs, away
From this too oft deluded breast!
No longer will I court thy stay,
To be my bosom's teazing guest.
Thou treacherous medicine, reckoned pure,
Thou quackery of the harassed heart,
That kills what it pretends to cure,
Life's mountebank thou art.

With nostrums vain of boasted powers,
That, ta'en, a worse disorder leave;
An asp hid in a group of flowers,
That bites and stings when few perceive;
Thou mock-truce to the troubled mind,
Leading it more in sorrow's way,
Freedom, that leaves us more confined,
I bid thee hence away.

Dost taunt, and deem thy power beyond
The resolution reason gave?
Tut! Falsity hath snapt each bond,
That kept me once thy quiet slave,
And made thy snare a spider's thread,
W...

I was a Pirate once,
A blustering fellow with scarlet sash,
A ready cutlass and language rash;
From a ship with a rum-filled water-tank
I made the enemy walk the plank;
I marooned a man on an island bare,
And seized his wife by her long, dark hair;
Took treasure, such heaps of it! wealth untold,
Bright bars of silver and chunks of gold!
Till my ship was choked to the decks with pelf,
And no one dare touch it except myself
And my black flag waved to the tearing breeze,
And I was the terror of all the seas!

I was a Fairy once.
I swung in the bows of the silky oak,
And the harebells rang to the words I spoke,
And my wings were fashioned of silver gauze,
And I knew no grief and no human laws.
And I lived where the laces of green leaves sway.
A...

It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
For life upon life took hold and passed,
Strong in a fate set free,
Out of the deep, into the dark,
On for the years to be.

Between the gleam of a waning moon
And the song of an ebbing tide,
Chance upon chance of love and death
Took wing for the world so wide.
Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,
Wave out of wave of the sea;
And who shall reckon what lives may live
In the life that we bade to be?

If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the past and hereafter
In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and of laughter,
And the blithest of singers were back with a song; if again from his tomb as from prison,
If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had arisen,
With the gold-feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon earth at his shoulders,
And the gold-flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips, for a joy to beholders,
He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate measure
The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of their sense and the pleasure.
For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here, and the season
When desire was a longing, and absence a thorn, ...

A poet of one mood in all my lays,
    Ranging all life to sing one only love,
    Like a west wind across the world I move,
Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.

The countries change, but not the west-wind days
    Which are my songs. My soft skies shine above,
    And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.

I make the whole world answer to my art
    And sweet monotonous meanings. In your ears
I change not ever, bearing, for my part,
    One thought that is the treasure of my years,
A small cloud full of rain upon my heart
    And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears.

Come long-lost blessing! heaven-lov'd seraph, haste,
On pity's wings upborne, a world's wide woes
Invoke thy smiles extatic, long effac'd,
Beneath the tear which all corrosive flows;
While reason shudders, let ambition weep,
When wounding truth records what it has done:
Records the hosts consign'd to death's cold sleep,
Conspicuous 'mid the pomp of conflicts won!
Shall not the fiend relent, while groaning age
Pours its deep sorrows o'er its offspring slain;
While sire-robb'd infants mourn the deathful rage,
In many a penury enfeebled strain?
Sweet maid, return! behold affliction's tear,
And in my theme accept a nation's prayer.

Ah! sweet romantic spot, adieu!
Ere your green fields again I view,
These looks may change their youthful hue.

Dependence sternly bids me part
From all that ye, lov'd scenes! impart,
Far from my treasure and my heart.

Tho' winter shall your bloom invade,
Fancy may visit ev'ry shade,
Each bow'r shall kiss the wand'ring maid.

To busier scenes of life I fly,
Where many smile, where many sigh,
As Chance, not Worth, turns up the die.