Freedom

Beneath the trees with heedful step and slow
At night I go,
Fearful upon their whispering to break
Lest they awake
Out of those dreams of heavenly light that fill
Their branches still
With a soft murmur of memoried ecstasy.
There 'neath each tree
Nightlong a spirit watches, and I feel
His breath unseal
The fast-shut thoughts and longings of tired day,
That flutter away
Mothlike on luminous soft wings and frail
And moonlike pale.
There in the flowering chestnuts' bowering gloom
And limes' perfume
Wandering wavelike through the moondrawn night
That heaves toward light,
There hang I my dark thoughts and deeper prayers;
And as the airs
Of star-kissed dawn come stirring and o'er-creep
The ford of sleep,
Thy shape, great Love, grows sha...

Sing me a song - a song to ease old sorrows,
And dull the edge of care -
A song of Hope to ring through all the morrows
That be my share.

Unlock the doors where joy hath been in hiding,
Though barred they be and strong,
And send black grief far down the wind a-riding -
Sing me a song.

Sing thou thy sky-lark song of sweetest daring,
And April ecstasy,
That I may follow it and go a-faring
To Arcady.

Charm sleep from out the shadows with thy singing,
And when the light turns grey,
Leave me bright dreams until the dawn comes bringing
The rose-edged day.

The wind of March taught thee his springtime madness,
And then in undertone
Whispered the wonder-secret of his gladness
To thee alone.

And thou hast learned from li...

Why do we make our music?
    Oh, blind dark strings reply:
Because we dwell in a strange land
    And remember a lost sky.
We ask no leaf of the laurel,
    We know what fame is worth;
But our songs break out of our winter
    As the flowers break out on the earth.

And we dream of the unknown comrade,
    In the days when we lie dead,
Who shall open our book in the sunlight,
    And read, as ourselves have read,
On a lonely hill, by a firwood,
    With whispering seas below,
And murmur a song we made him
    Ages and ages ago.

If making his may-time sweeter
    With dews of our own dead may,
One pulse of our own dead heart-strings
    Awake in his heart that day,
We would pray for no richer guerdon,
    No praise fr...

My boat is still in the reedy cove
Where the rushes hinder its onward course,
For I care not now if we rest or move
O'er the slumberous tide to the river's source.

My boat is fast in the tall dank weeds
And I lay my oars in silence by,
And lean, and draw the slippery reeds
Through my listless fingers carelessly.

The babbling froth of the surface foam
Clings close to the side of my moveless boat,
Like endless meshes of honeycomb, -
And I break it off, and send it afloat.

A faint wind stirs, and I drift along
Far down the stream to its utmost bound,
And the thick white foam-flakes gathering strong
Still cling, and follow, and fold around.

Oh! the weary green of the weedy waste,
The thickening scum of the frothy foam,
And the tor...

The night is young yet; an enchanted night
In early summer: calm and darkly bright.

I love the Night, and every little breeze
She brings, to soothe the sleep of dreaming trees.

Hearst thou the Voices? Sough! Susurrus! Hark!
’Tis Mother Nature whispering in the dark!

Burden of cities, mad turmoil of men,
That vex the daylight, she forgets them then.

Her breasts are bare; Grief gains from them surcease:
She gives her restless sons the milk of Peace.

To sleep she lulls them, drawn from thoughts of pelf
By telling sweet old stories of herself.

.    .    .    .    .

All secrets deep, yea, all I hear and see
Of things mysterious, Night reveals to me.

I know what every flower, with drowsy head
Down-drooping, dreams of, ...

When warm'd with zeal, my rustic Muse
Feels fluttering fain to tell her news,
And paint her simple, lowly views
With all her art,
And, though in genius but obtuse,
May touch the heart.

Of palaces and courts of kings
She thinks but little, never sings,
But wildly strikes her uncouth strings
In some pool cot,
Spreads o'er the poor hen fostering wings,
And soothes their lot.

Well pleased is she to see them smile,
And uses every honest wile
To mend then hearts, their cares beguile,
With rhyming story,
And lend them to then God the while,
And endless glory.

Perchance, my poor neglected Muse
Unfit to harass or amuse,
Escaping praise and loud abuse,
Unheard, unknown,
May feed the moths and wasting dews,
As some hav...

We walk on starry fields of white
    And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
    We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
    To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
    Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
    Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
    Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
    We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives
    And conquers if we let it.

There's not a day in all the year
    But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
    To brim the past's wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
    Who love and labo...

I.

In the far off sea there is many a sprite,
Who rests by day, but awakes at night.
In hidden caves where monsters creep,
When the sun is high, these spectres sleep:
From the glance of noon, they shrink with dread,
And hide 'mid the bones of the ghastly dead.
Where the surf is hushed, and the light is dull,
In the hollow tube and the whitened skull,
They crouch in fear or in whispers wail,
For the lingering night, and the coming gale.
But at even-tide, when the shore is dim,
And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim,
They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze,
And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas.


II.

At summer eve, as I sat on the cliff,
I marked a shape like a dusky skiff,
That skimmed the brine, toward the rock...

I'm weary of this weather and I hanker for the ways
Which people read of in the psalms and preachers paraphrase--
The grassy fields, the leafy woods, the banks where I can lie
And listen to the music of the brook that flutters by,
Or, by the pond out yonder, hear the redwing blackbird's call
Where he makes believe he has a nest, but hasn't one at all;
And by my side should be a friend--a trusty, genial friend,
With plenteous store of tales galore and natural leaf to lend;
Oh, how I pine and hanker for the gracious boon of spring--
For then I'm going a-fishing with John Lyle King!

How like to pigmies will appear creation, as we float
Upon the bosom of the tide in a three-by-thirteen boat--
Forgotten all vexations and all vanities shall be,
As we cast our cares to...

    Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,
    Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,
    With bands of reeds like thronged green swords
        Guarding the mirrored sky;
    And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills
    To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,
    And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,
        Trout flit or lie.

    I know those rivers that peacefully glide
    Past old towers and shaven gardens,
    Where mottled walls rise from the water
        And mills all streaked with flour;
    And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,
    That flow with a stately tidal motion
    Towards their destined estuaries
        Full of the pride of power;

    Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,
    Tweed with his g...

O God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow,
Wounding Thy soul.–That even now,
In this extremest misery
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summer noon
While I do pray to Thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my free-will
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me but Thou,
And faith in Thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances–
And children all seem full of Thee!
And women smile with saint-like ...

The pigeons, following the faint warm light,
Stayed at last on the roof till warmth was gone,
Then in the mist that's hastier than night
Disappeared all behind the carved dark stone,
Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost.
With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came
Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then
Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost,
Vanishing and returning ever again,
Small cloud following cloud across the flame
That clear and meagre burned and burned away
And left the ice unmelting day by day.

... Nor could the sun through the roof's purple slate
(Though his gold magic played with shadow there
And drew the pigeons from the streaming air)
With any fiery magic penetrate.
Under the roof the air and water froze,

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
    We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
    The beautiful Station of Hope.

But the wheels of old Time roll along as we climb,
    And our youth speeds away on the years;
And with hearts that are numb with life's sorrows we come
    To the mist-covered Station of Tears.

Still onward we pass, where the milestones, alas!
    Are the tombs of our dead, to the West,
Where glitters and gleams, in the dying sunbeams,
    The sweet, silent Station of Rest.

All rest is but change, and no grave can estrange
    The soul from its Parent above;
And, scorning the rod, it soars back to its God,
    To the limitless City of Love.

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
    We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
    The beautiful Station of Hope.

But the wheels of old Time roll along as we climb,
    And our youth speeds away on the years;
And with hearts that are numb with life's sorrows we come
    To the mist-covered Station of Tears.

Still onward we pass, where the milestones, alas!
    Are the tombs of our dead, to the West,
Where glitters and gleams, in the dying sunbeams,
    The sweet, silent Station of Rest.

All rest is but change, and no grave can estrange
    The soul from its Parent above;
And, scorning the rod, it soars back to its God,
    To the limitless City of Love.

Like a thorn in the flesh, like a fly in the mesh,
    Like a boat that is chained to shore,
The wild unrest of the heart in my breast
    Tortures me more and more.
I wot not why, it should wail and cry
    Like a child that is lost at night,
For it knew no grief, but has found relief,
    And it is not touched with blight.

It has had of pleasure full many a measure;
    It has thrilled with love's red wine;
It has hope and health, and youth's rare wealth -
    Oh rich is this heart of mine.
Yet it is not glad -it is wild and mad
    Like a billow before it breaks;
And its ceaseless pain is worse than vain,
    Since it knows not why it aches.

It longs to be, like the waves of the sea
    That rise in their might and beat
And dash and lu...

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.
Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.
There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

Heaven-invading hills are drowned
In wide moving waves of mist,
Phlox before my door are wound
In dripping wreaths of amethyst.

Ten feet away the solid earth
Changes into melting cloud,
There is a hush of pain and mirth,
No bird has heart to speak aloud.

Here in a world without a sky,
Without the ground, without the sea,
The one unchanging thing is I,
Myself remains to comfort me.

Subdued and sad, I trod the place
    Where he, the hero, lived and died;
Where, long-entombed beneath the shade
By willow bough and cypress made,
The peaceful scene with verdure rife,
He and the partner of his life,
Beloved of every land and race,
    Are sleeping side by side.

The summer solstice at its height
    Reflected from Potomac's tide
A glare of light, and through the trees
Intensified the Southern breeze,
That dallied, in the deep ravines,
With graceful ferns and evergreens,
While Northern cheeks so strangely white
    Grew dark as Nubia's pride.

What must this homestead once have been
    In boundless hospitality,
When Greene or Putnam may have met
The host who welcomed Lafayette,
Or when Pulaski, honored guest,