Freedom

For The Semi-Centennial Celebration Of The Settlement Of Cambridge, Mass., December 28, 1880

Your home was mine, - kind Nature's gift;
My love no years can chill;
In vain their flakes the storm-winds sift,
The snow-drop hides beneath the drift,
A living blossom still.

Mute are a hundred long-famed lyres,
Hushed all their golden strings;
One lay the coldest bosom fires,
One song, one only, never tires
While sweet-voiced memory sings.

No spot so lone but echo knows
That dear familiar strain;
In tropic isles, on arctic snows,
Through burning lips its music flows
And rings its fond refrain.

From Pisa's tower my straining sight
Roamed wandering leagues away,
When lo! a frigate's banner bright,
The starry blue, the red, the whi...

Back to where the roses rest
Round a shrine of holy name,
(Yes -- they knew me when I came)
More of peace and less of fame
Suit my restless heart the best.

Back to where long quiets brood,
Where the calm is never stirred
By the harshness of a word,
But instead the singing bird
Sweetens all my solitude.

With the birds and with the flowers
Songs and silences unite,
From the morning unto night;
And somehow a clearer light
Shines along the quiet hours.

God comes closer to me here --
Back of ev'ry rose leaf there
He is hiding -- and the air
Thrills with calls to holy prayer;
Earth grows far, and heaven near.

Every single flower is fraught
With the very sweetest dreams,
Under clouds or under gleams
Changeful...

Your mind and mine are such great lovers they
Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,
And on wild clouds of thought, naked together
They ride above us in extreme delight;
We see them, we look up with a lone envy
And watch them in their zone of crystal weather
That changes not for winter or the night.

(In Memory of Henry Kendall)


Ah! that God once would touch my lips with song
To pierce, as prayer doth heaven, earth’s breast of iron,
So that with sweet mouth I might sing to thee,
O sweet dead singer buried by the sea,
A song, to woo thee, as a wooing siren,
Out of that silent sleep which seals too long
Thy mouth of melody.

For, if live lips might speak awhile to dead,
Or any speech could reach the sad world under
This world of ours, song surely should awake
Thee who didst dwell in shadow for song’s sake!
Alas! thou canst not hear the voice of thunder,
Nor low dirge over thy low-lying head
The winds of morning make.

Down through the clay there comes no sound of these;
Down in the grave there is no sign of Summer,
Nor any knowledg...

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May....

Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fix d, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly.
Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise
May we together pass, and calmly try
What are this world s true joys, ere the great voice,
From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly.

Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.

"Prisoned on watery shore,
Starry jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar;
Weeping o'er,
I hear the father of the ancient men.

"Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
Can delight,
Chained in night,
The virgins of youth and morning bear?

"Does spring hide its joy,
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night,
Or the plowman in darkness plough?

"Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around!
Selfish, vain,
Eternal bane,
That free love with bondage bound."

I am serenity.    Though passions beat
    Like mighty billows on my helpless heart,
I know beyond them lies the perfect sweet
    Serenity, which patience can impart.
And when wild tempests in my bosom rage,
"Peace, peace," I cry, "it is my heritage."

I am good health.    Though fevers rack my brain
    And rude disorders mutilate my strength,
A perfect restoration after pain,
    I know shall be my recompense at length.
And so through grievous day and sleepless night,
"Health, health," I cry, "it is my own by right."

I am success.    Though hungry, cold, ill-clad,
    I wander for awhile, I smile and say,
"It is but for a time - I shall be glad
    To-morrow, for good fortune comes my way.
God is my father, He has wealth untold,
His wealth i...

In youth exalted high in air,
Or bathing in the waters fair,
Nature to form me took delight,
And clad my body all in white.
My person tall, and slender waist,
On either side with fringes graced;
Till me that tyrant man espied,
And dragg'd me from my mother's side:
No wonder now I look so thin;
The tyrant stript me to the skin:
My skin he flay'd, my hair he cropt:
At head and foot my body lopt:
And then, with heart more hard than stone,
He pick'd my marrow from the bone.
To vex me more, he took a freak
To slit my tongue and make me speak:
But, that which wonderful appears,
I speak to eyes, and not to ears.
He oft employs me in disguise,
And makes me tell a thousand lies:
To me he chiefly gives in trust
To please his malice or his lust.<...

I

He walked under the shadow of the Hill
Where men are fed into the fires
And walled apart...
Unarmed and alone,
He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth
Where tools rested on the floors
And great cranes swung
Unemptied, on the iron girders.
And they, who were the Lords of the Hill,
Were seized with a great fear,
When they heard out of the silence of wheels
The answer ringing
In endless reverberations
Under the mountain...

So they covered up their faces
And crept upon him as he slept...
Out of eye-holes in black cloth
They looked upon him who had flung
Between them and their ancient prey
The frail barricade of his life...
And when night - that has connived at so much -
Was heavy with the unborn day,
They haled h...

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them, ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancien...

All the morn a spirit gay
Breathes within my heart a rhyme,
'Tis but hide and seek we play
In and out the courts of Time.

Fairy lover, when my feet
Through the tangled woodland go,
'Tis thy sunny fingers fleet
Fleck the fire dews to and fro.

In the moonlight grows a smile
Mid its rays of dusty pearl--
'Tis but hide and seek the while,
As some frolic boy and girl.

When I fade into the deep
Some mysterious radiance showers
From the jewel-heart of sleep
Through the veil of darkened hours.

Where the ring of twilight gleams
Round the sanctuary wrought,
Whispers haunt me--in my dreams
We are one yet know it not.

Some for beauty follow long
Flying traces; some there be
Seek thee only for a song:
I to lo...

Dear is that valley to the murmuring bees.
The small birds build there; and, at summer-noon,
Oft have I heard a child, gay among flowers,
As in the shining grass she sate conceal'd,
Sing to herself.

*            *            *            *            *

There is a streamlet issuing from a rock.
The village-girls, singing wild madrigals,
Dip their white vestments in its waters clear,
And hang them to the sun. There first I saw her.
Her dark and eloquent eyes, mild, full of fire,
'Twas heav'n to look upon; and her sweet voice,
As tuneable as harp of many strings,
At once spoke joy and sadness to my soul!

The first was like a dream through summer heat,
    The second like a tedious numbing swoon,
While the half-frozen pulses lagged to beat
    Beneath a winter moon.

'But,' says my friend, 'what was this thing and where?'
    It was a pleasure-place within my soul;
An earthly paradise supremely fair
    That lured me from the goal.

The first part was a tissue of hugged lies;
    The second was its ruin fraught with pain:
Why raise the fair delusion to the skies
    But to be dashed again?

My castle stood of white transparent glass
    Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire,
But when the summer sunset came to pass
    It kindled into fire.

My pleasaunce was an undulating green,
    Stately with trees whose shadows slept below,...

I.

There breathes not a breath of the morning air,
But the spirit of Love is moving there;
Not a trembling leaf on the shadowy tree
Mingles with thousands in harmony;
But the Spirit of God doth make the sound,
And the thoughts of the insect that creepeth around.
And the sunshiny butterflies come and go,
Like beautiful thoughts moving to and fro;
And not a wave of their busy wings
Is unknown to the Spirit that moveth all things.
And the long-mantled moths, that sleep at noon,
And dance in the light of the mystic moon--
All have one being that loves them all;
Not a fly in the spider's web can fall,
But He cares for the spider, and cares for the fly;
And He cares for each little child's smile or sigh.
How it can be, I cannot know;
He is wiser than...

THROUGH field and wood to stray,
And pipe my tuneful lay,

'Tis thus my days are pass'd;
And all keep tune with me,
And move in harmony,

And so on, to the last.

To wait I scarce have power
The garden's earliest flower,

The tree's first bloom in Spring;
They hail my joyous strain,
When Winter comes again,

Of that sweet dream I sing.

My song sounds far and near,
O'er ice it echoes clear,

Then Winter blossoms bright;
And when his blossoms fly,
Fresh raptures meet mine eye,

Upon the well-till'd height.

When 'neath the linden tree,
Young folks I chance to see,

I set them moving soon;
His nose the dull lad curls,
The formal maiden whirls,

Obedient to my tune.

    When I see truth, do I seek truth
    Only that I may things denote,
    And, rich by striving, deck my youth
    As with a vain unusual coat?

    Or seek I truth for other ends:
    That she in other hearts may stir,
    That even my most familiar friends
    May turn from me to look on her?

    So I this day myself was asking;
    Out of the window skies were blue
    And Thames was in the sunlight basking;
    My thoughts coiled inwards like a screw.

    I watched them anxious for a while;
    Then quietly, as I did watch,
    Spread in my soul a sudden smile:
    I knew that no firm thing they'd catch.

    And I remembered if I leapt
    Upon the bosom of the wind
    It would sustain me; question slept;
    I fel...

Winter was weary. All his snows were failing--
Still from his stiff grey head he shook the rime
Upon the grasses, bushes and broad hedges,
But all was lost in the new touch of Time.

And the bright-globèd hedges were all ruddy,
As though warm sunset glowed perpetual.
The myriad swinging tassels of first hazel,
From purple to pale gold, were swinging all

In the soft wind, no more afraid of Winter.
Nor chaffinch, wren, nor lark was now afraid.
And Winter heard, or (ears too hard of hearing)
Snuffed the South-West that in his cold hair played.

And his hands trembled. Then with voice a-quaver
He called the East Wind, and the black East ran,
Roofing the sky with iron, and in the darkness
Winter crept out and chilled the earth again.

And while...