Freedom

            I.

The fight was o'er; the flashing through the gloom,
Which robes the cannon as he wings a tomb,
Had ceased; and sulphury vapours upward driven
Had left the Earth, and but polluted Heaven:
The rattling roar which rung in every volley
Had left the echoes to their melancholy;
No more they shrieked their horror, boom for boom;
The strife was done, the vanquished had their doom;
The mutineers were crushed, dispersed, or ta'en,
Or lived to deem the happiest were the slain.
Few, few escaped, and these were hunted o'er
The isle they loved beyond their native shore.
No further home was theirs, it seemed, on earth,
Once renegades to that which gave them birth;
Tracked like wild beasts, like them they sought the wild,
As to a Mother's bosom flies the ...

Reveille sang its call among the barracks' paths,
And moving air disturbed the tall, commanding lamps.

It was the time when dreams of lust and swarming heat
Set brown young adolescents twisting in their sheets;
When, like a bloody eye that pulses as it stares,
The lamp will cast a stain of red throughout the air;
When spirits, in the burden of the body's sway,
Mimic the struggles of the lamplight and the day.
The air, a face in tears that breeezes will wipe dry,
Is full of tremors of escaping things that fly,
And he is tired of writing, she of making love.

This house and that began to send their smoke above.
With ghastly painted eyes, the women of the streets,
Mouths gaping open, lay within their stupid sleep.
Poor women, slack breasts dangling, cold and lea...

The quiet graves of our country's braves
    Through thirty Junes and Decembers
Have solemnly lain under sun and rain,
    And yet the Nation remembers.

The marching of feet and the flags on the street
    Told once again this morning,
In the voice of the drum how the day had come
    For those lowly beds' adorning.

Then swiftly back on Time's worn track
    His three decades seemed driven,
And with startled eyes I saw arise,
    From graves by fancy riven,

The Gray and Blue in a grand review.
    Oh! vast were the hosts they numbered,
As they wheeled and swayed in a dress parade
    O'er the graves where they long had slumbered.

The colours were not, as when they fought,
    Ranked one against the other,
But a mingled hue of ...

Thrice hath the spring beheld thy faded fame
Since I exulting grasp'd the tuneful shell:
Eager through endless years to sound thy name,
Proud that my memory with thine should dwell.
How hast thou stain'd the splendor of my choice!
Those godlike forms which hover'd round thy voice,
Laws, freedom, glory, whither are they flown?
What can I now of thee to time report,
Save thy fond country made thy impious sport,
Her fortune and her hope the victims of thy own?
There are with eyes unmov'd and reckless heart
Who saw thee from thy summit fall thus low,
Who deem'd thy arm extended but to dart
The public vengeance on thy private foe.
But, spite of every gloss of envious minds,
The owl-ey'd race whom Virtue's lustre blinds,
Who sagely prove that each man hath his price...

May is building her house. With apple blooms
She is roofing over the glimmering rooms;
Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams,
And, spinning all day at her secret looms,
With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall
She pictureth over, and peopleth it all
    With echoes and dreams,
    And singing of streams.

May is building her house of petal and blade;
Of the roots of the oak is the flooring made,
With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover,
    Each small miracle over and over,
And tender, travelling green things strayed.

Her windows the morning and evening star,
And her rustling doorways, ever ajar
    With the coming and going
    Of fair things blowing,
The thresholds of the four winds are.

May is building her hou...

He lay within a warm, soft world
Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled,
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red,
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled
To vanish in the grey-green gloom,
Perspectiveless and shadowy.
A bulging world that had no walls,
A flowing world, most like the sea,
Compassing all infinity
Within a shapeless, ebbing room,
An endless tide that swells and falls...
He slept and woke and slept again.
As a veil drops Time dropped away;
Space grew a toy for children's play,
Sleep bolted fast the gates of Sense --
He lay in naked impotence;
Like a drenched moth that creeps and crawls
Heavily up brown, light-baked walls,
To fall in wreck, her task undone,
Yet somehow striving toward the sun.
So, as he slept, his hands clenched tighter,

Fair flower! that fall'n beneath the angry blast,
Which marks with wither'd sweets its fearful way,
I grieve to see thee on the low earth cast,
While beauty's trembling tints fade fast away.
But who is she, that from the mountain's head
Comes gaily on, cheering the child of earth?
The walks of woe bloom bright beneath her tread,
And Nature smiles with renovated mirth?
'Tis Health! She comes: and, hark! the vallies ring,
And, hark! the echoing hills repeat the sound:
She sheds the new-blown blossoms of the spring,
And all their fragrance floats her footsteps round.
And, hark! she whispers in the zephyr's voice,
Lift up thy head, fair floweret, and rejoice!

White moons may come, white moons may go -
She sleeps where early blossoms blow;
Knows nothing of the leafy June,
That leans above her night and noon,
Crowned now with sunbeam, now with moon,
Watching her roses grow.

The downy moth at twilight comes
And flutters round their honeyed blooms:
Long, lazy clouds, like ivory,
That isle the blue lagoons of sky,
Redden to molten gold and dye
With flame the pine-deep glooms.

Dew, dripping from wet fern and leaf;
The wind, that shakes the violet's sheaf;
The slender sound of water lone,
That makes a harp-string of some stone,
And now a wood bird's glimmering moan,
Seem whisperings there of grief.

Her garden, where the lilacs grew,
Where, on old walls, old roses blew,
Head-heavy with...

'Tis the midnight hour; I heard
The Abbey-bell give out the word.
Seldom is the lamp-ray shed
On some dwarfed foot-farer's head
In the deep and narrow street
Lying ditch-like at my feet
Where I stand at lattice high
Downward gazing listlessly
From my house upon the rock,
Peak of earth's foundation-block.

    There her windows, every story,
Shine with far-off nebulous glory!
Round her in that luminous cloud
Stars obedient press and crowd,
She the centre of all gazing,
She the sun her planets dazing!
In her eyes' victorious lightning
Some are paling, some are brightening:
Those on which they gracious turn,
Stars combust, all tenfold burn;
Those from which they look away
Listless roam in twilight gray!
When on her my looks I be...

    When London was a little town
    Lean by the river's marge,
    The poet paced it with a frown,
    He thought it very large.

    He loved bright ship and pointing steeple
    And bridge with houses loaded
    And priests and many-coloured people...
    But ah, they were not woaded!

    Not all the walls could shed the spell
    Of meres and marshes green,
    Nor any chaffering merchant tell
    The beauty that had been:

    The crying birds at fall of night,
    The fisher in his coracle,
    And, grim on Ludgate's windy height,
    An oak-tree and an oracle.

    Sick for the past his hair he rent
    And dropt a tear in season;
    If he had cause for his lament
    We have much better reason.

    For n...

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that ...

I


Globed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellow
As some round apple hung
High in hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellow
The branch-like mists among:
Within thy light a sunburnt youth, named Health,
Rests 'mid the tasseled shocks, the tawny stubble;
And by his side, clad on with rustic wealth
Of field and farm, beneath thy amber bubble,
A nut-brown maid, Content, sits smiling still:
While through the quiet trees,
The mossy rocks, the grassy hill,
Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill,
Around whose wheel the breeze
And shimmering ripples of the water play,
As, by their mother, little children may.


II


Sweet spirit of the moon, who walkest,--lifting
Exhaustless on thy arm,
A pearly vase of fire,--through the s...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

    He coveted her portrait.
    He toiled as she grew gay.
    She loved to see him labor
    In that devoted way.

    And in the end it pleased her,
    But bowed him more with care.
    Her rose-smile showed so plainly,
    Her soul-smile was not there.

    That night he groped without a lamp
    To find a cloak, a book,
    And on the vexing portrait
    By moonrise chanced to look.

    The color-scheme was out of key,
    The maiden rose-smile faint,
    But through the blessed darkness
    She gleamed, his friendly saint.

    The comrade, white, immortal,
    His bride, and more than bride -
    The citizen, the sage of mind,
    For whom he lived...

    One summer's morning I heard a lark
    Singing to heaven, a sweet-throated bird;
    One winter's night I was glad in the dark
    Because of the wondrous song I had heard.

    The joy of life, I have heard you say,
    Is my love, my laughter, my smiles and tears;
    When I have gone on the long, strange way,
    Let these stay with you through all the years -

    These be the lark's song. What is love worth
    That cannot crowd, in the time that's given
    To two like us on this gray old earth,
    Such bliss as will last till we reach heaven?

    Dear one, think oft of the full, glad years,
    And, thinking of them, forget to weep.
    Whisper: "Remembrance holds no tears!"
    And kiss my mouth when I fall on sleep.

"Oh, Earth, where is the mantle of pleasant emerald dye
That robed thee in sweet summer-time, and gladdened heart and eye,
Adorned with blooming roses, graceful ferns and blossoms sweet,
And bright green moss like velvet that lay soft beneath our feet?"

"What! am I not as lovely in my garb of spotless white?
Was young bride in her beauty ever clothed in robe as bright?
Or, if you seek for tinting warm, at morn and evening hour,
You'll find me bathed in blushes bright as those of summer flower."

"But, Earth, I miss the verdure of thy woods and forests old,
The waving of their foliage, casting shadows o'er the wold,
The golden sunbeams peering 'mid the green leaves here and there,
And I sigh to see the branches so cheerless and so bare."

"But oft they're clothed i...

Was, Is, and Yet-to-Be
Were chatting over a cup of tea.

In tarnished finery smelling of must,
Was talked of people long turned to dust;

Of titles and honours and high estate,
All forgotten or out of date;

Of wonderful feasts in the long ago,
Of pride that perished with nothing to show.

"I loathe the present," said Was, with a groan;
"I live in pleasures that I HAVE known."

The Yet-to-be, in a gown of gauze,
Looked over the head of musty Was,

And gazed far off into misty space
With a wrapt expression upon her face.

"Such wonderful pleasures are coming to me,
Such glory, such honour," said Yet-to-be.

"No one dreamed, in the vast Has-Been,
Of such successes as I shall win.

"The past, the present -why...

To E. B. B.


I
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view, but one, the volume.
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her lifetime
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,
Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving,
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,
Rafael?s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?

Oh, sing once more those dear, familiar lays,
    Whose gliding measure every bosom thrills,
And takes my heart back to the happy days
    When first I sang them on my native hills!
With the fresh feelings of the olden times,
    I hear them now upon a foreign shore--
The simple music and the artless rhymes!
    Oh, sing those dear, familiar lays once more,
        Those cheerful lays of other days--
    Oh, sing those cheerful lays once more!

Oh, sing once more those joy-provoking strains,
    Which, half forgotten, in my memory dwell;
They send the life-blood bounding thro' my veins,
    And linger round me like a fairy spell.
The songs of home are to the human heart
    Far dearer than the notes that song-birds pour,
And of our very nature form a part...