Freedom

Some spirit wafts our mountain lay--
                    Hili ho! boys, hili ho!
To distant groves and glens away!
                    Hili ho! boys, hili ho!
E'en so the tide of empire flows--
                    Ho! boys, hili ho!
Rejoicing as it westward goes!
                    Ho! boys, hili ho!
        To refresh our weary way
            Gush the crystal fountains,
        As a pilgrim band we stray
            Cheerly o'er the mountains.

The woodland rings with song and shout!
                    Hili ho! boys, hili ho!
As though a fairy hunt were out!
                    Hili ho! boys, hili ho!
E'en so the voice of woman cheers--
                    Ho! boys, hili ho!
The hearts of hardy mountaineers!
                    Ho! boys...

Stranger! a while beneath this aged tree
Rest thee, the hills beyond, and flowery meads,
Surveying; and if Nature's charms may wake
A sweet and silent transport at thine heart,
In spring-time, whilst the bee hums heedless nigh,
Rejoice! for thee the verdant spot is dressed,
Circled with laurels green, and sprinkled o'er
With many a budding rose: the shrubs all ring
To the birds' warblings, and by fits the air
Whispers amid the foliage o'er thine head!
Rejoice, and oh! if life's sweet spring be thine,
So gather its brief rose-buds, and deceive
The cares and crosses of humanity.

One gloomy eve I roamed about
Neath Oxey's hazel bowers,
While timid hares were darting out,
To crop the dewy flowers;
And soothing was the scene to me,
Right pleased was my soul,
My breast was calm as summer's sea
When waves forget to roll.

But short was even's placid smile,
My startled soul to charm,
When Nelly lightly skipt the stile,
With milk-pail on her arm:
One careless look on me she flung,
As bright as parting day;
And like a hawk from covert sprung,
It pounced my peace away.

I.

    This is a song of serfs that I have made,
    A song of sympathy for grief and joy: -
    The old, the young, the lov'd and the betrayed,
    All, all must serve, for all must be obeyed.


II.

    There are no tyrants but the serving ones,
    There are no servants but the ruling men.
    The Captain conquers with his army's guns,
    But he himself is conquered by his sons.


III.

    What is a parent but a daughter's slave,
    A son's retainer when the lad is ill?
    The great Creator loves the good and brave,
    And makes a flower the spokesman of a grave.


IV.

    The son is servant in his father's halls,
    The daughter is her mother's maid-of-work.
    The welkin wonders when the...

Thou art, and, therefore, Thou art near, oh God!
    Thick darkness covers me, I cannot see;
Is this the Shepherd's crook, or the correcting rod,
    And by Thy hand, O Father, laid on me?

I cry to Thee, and shall I cry in vain?
    My soul looks up as if through prison bars,
Up through the silent Heaven, ah, turn again
    Thy face to me, hide not behind the stars.

Thy presence hath been with me in the past,
    Where "heaps of witness" mark out all the way;
Thy years change not, Thy love is still as vast,
    I look to Thee, I trust Thee though Thou slay.

My friends walk on the hills the sun hath kissed,
    Flowers at their feet, their sky is blue and fair;
I'm prisoned in this vale of tearful mist,
    Shut in with sorrow, darkened by despair....

I.SPRING ON THE HILLS

Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crabapple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?

In redbud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With white, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?

In valleys of wild strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries,
With which the south winds grapple,
That brook and byway dapple?

With eyes of far forgetfulness, -
Like some wild wood-thing's daughter,
Whose feet are beelike fretfulness, -
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.

O Spring, to seek, yet find you not!<...

1.
The cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

2.
The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

3.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

4.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved -
The wind made thy bosom chill -<...

Oh! I should ill thy generous cares requite
Thou who didst first inspire my timid Muse,
Could I one tuneful tear to thee refuse,
Now that thine aged eyes are closed in night,
Kind Warton! Thou hast stroked my stripling head,
And sometimes, mingling soft reproof with praise,
My path hast best directed through the maze
Of thorny life: by thee my steps were led
To that romantic valley, high o'erhung
With sable woods, where many a minstrel rung
His bold harp to the sweeping waterfall;
Whilst Fancy loved around each form to call
That fill the poet's dream: to this retreat
Of Fancy, (won by whose enticing lay
I have forgot how sunk the summer's day),
Thou first did guide my not unwilling feet;
Meantime inspiring the gay breast of youth
With love of taste, of sc...

No, ne'er did the wave in its element steep
    An island of lovelier charms;
It blooms in the giant embrace of the deep,
    Like Hebe in Hercules' arms.
The blush of your bowers is light to the eye,
    And their melody balm to the ear;
But the fiery planet of day is too nigh,
    And the Snow Spirit never comes here.

The down from his wing is as white as the pearl
    That shines through thy lips when they part,
And it falls on the green earth as melting, my girl,
    As a murmur of thine on the heart.
Oh! fly to the clime, where he pillows the death,
    As he cradles the birth of the year;
Bright are your bowers and balmy their breath,
    But the Snow Spirit cannot come here.

How sweet to behold him when borne on the gale,
    And bright...

    O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
        Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
        Thy mists, that roll and rise!
    Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
    And all but cry with colour!    That gaunt crag
    To crush!    To lift the lean of that black bluff!
    World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!


    Long have I known a glory in it all,
            But never knew I this;
            Here such a passion is
    As stretcheth me apart,--Lord, I do fear
    Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
    My soul is all but out of me,--let fall
    No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

CHORUS

If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth,
O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee,
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life;
By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces;
By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses;
By thine own song hoarse and hollow and shrill with strife;
By thy voice distuned and marred of modulation;
By the discord of thy measure’s march with theirs;
By the beauties of thy bosom, and the cares;
By thy glory of growth, and splendour of thy station;
By the shame of men thy children, and the pride;
By the pale-cheeked hope that sleeps and weeps and passes,
As the grey dew from the morning mountain-grasses;
...

'The oppression of the tumult, wrath and scorn
The tribulation and the gleaming blades'
Such is the impetuous spirit that pervades
The song of Taliesin; Ours shall mourn
The 'unarmed' Host who by their prayers would turn
The sword from Bangor's walls, and guard the store
Of Aboriginal and Roman lore,
And Christian monuments, that now must burn
To senseless ashes. Mark! how all things swerve
From their known course, or vanish like a dream;
Another language spreads from coast to coast;
Only perchance some melancholy Stream
And some indignant Hills old names preserve,
When laws, and creeds, and people all are lost!

(TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES)


Strange spell of youth for age, and age for youth,
Affinity between two forms of truth! -
As if the dawn and sunset watched each other,
Like and unlike as children of one mother
And wondering at the likeness. Ardent eyes
Of young men see the prophecy arise
Of what their lives shall be when all is told;
And, in the far-off glow of years called old,
Those other eyes look back to catch a trace
Of what was once their own unshadowed grace.
But here in our dear poet both are blended -
Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended; -
Even as his song the willowy scent of spring
Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing,
And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun,
In strains that ever delicately run;
So musical and wise, page...

Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
Alcestis rises from the shades;
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
Hide all the peopled hills you see,
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
These many summers you and me.

"Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day!
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away!
'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!"

The warning was spoken, the righteous had gone,
And the proud ones of Sodom were feasting alone;
All gay was the banquet, the revel was long,
With the pouring of wine and the breathing of song.

'T was an evening of beauty; the air was perfume,
The earth was all greenness, the trees were all bloom;
And softly the delicate viol was heard,
Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird.

And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance,
With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance
And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free
As the plumage of birds in ...

Sylvan, they say, and nymph are gone;
And yet I saw the two last night,
When overhead the moon sailed white,
And through the mists, her light made wan,
Each bush and tree doffed its disguise,
And stood revealed to mortal eyes.

The hollow, rimmed with rocks and trees,
And massed with ferns and matted vines,
Seemed an arena mid the pines,
A theatre of mysteries,
Where oread and satyr met,
And all the myths that men forget.

The rain and frost had carved the rocks
With faces that were wild and strange,
Which Protean fancy seemed to change
Each moment in the granite blocks,
That seemed slow dreaming into form
The gods grotesque of wind and storm.

Then suddenly Diana stood,
Slim as a shaft of moonlight, there,
Immortalizing eart...

The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull and slow,
For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the wanderers go;
Greater, or smaller, the same old things we see by the dull road-side,
And tired of all is the spirit that sings of the days when the world was wide.

When the North was hale in the march of Time, and the South and the West were new,
And the gorgeous East was a pantomime, as it seemed in our boyhood's view;
When Spain was first on the waves of change, and proud in the ranks of pride,
And all was wonderful, new and strange in the days when the world was wide.

Then a man could fight if his heart were bold, and win if his faith were true,
Were it love, or honour, or power, or gold, or all that our hearts pursue;
Could live to the world...

"--the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale."
Aylmer's Field.


Five geese,--a landscape damp and wild,--
A stunted, not too pretty, child,
Beneath a battered gingham;
Such things, to say the least, require
A Muse of more-than-average Fire
Effectively to sing 'em.

And yet--Why should they? Souls of mark
Have sprung from such;--e'en Joan of Arc
Had scarce a grander duty;
Not always ('tis a maxim trite)
From righteous sources comes the right,--
From beautiful, the beauty.

Who shall decide where seed is sown?
Maybe some priceless germ was blown
To this unwholesome marish;
(And what must grow will still increase,
Though cackled round by half the geese
And ganders in the parish.)

Maybe th...