Freedom

Fair Prime of life! were it enough to gild
With ready sunbeams every straggling shower;
And, if an unexpected cloud should lower,
Swiftly thereon a rainbow arch to build
For Fancy's errands, then, from fields half-tilled
Gathering green weeds to mix with poppy flower,
Thee might thy Minions crown, and chant thy power,
Unpitied by the wise, all censure stilled.
Ah! show that worthier honours are thy due;
Fair Prime of life! arouse the deeper heart;
Confirm the Spirit glorying to pursue
Some path of steep ascent and lofty aim;
And, if there be a joy that slights the claim
Of grateful memory, bid that joy depart.

With triumph, this morning, oh Boston! I hail
The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail,
For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee,
To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free,
And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand
Is the last I shall tread of American land.
Well--peace to the land! may her sons know, at length,
That in high-minded honor lies liberty's strength,
That though man be as free as the fetterless wind,
As the wantonest air that the north can unbind,
Yet, if health do not temper and sweeten the blast,
If no harvest of mind ever sprung where it past,
Then unblest is such freedom, and baleful its might,--
Free only to ruin, and strong but to blight!

Farewell to the few I have left with regret:
May they sometimes recall, wha...

    I.

    A pale green sky is gleaming;
    The steely stars are few;
    The moorland pond is steaming
    A mist of gray and blue.

    Along the pathway lonely
    My horse is walking slow;
    Three living creatures only,
    He, I, and a home-bound crow!

    The moon is hardly shaping
    Her circle in the fog;
    A dumb stream is escaping
    Its prison in the bog.

    But in my heart are ringing
    Tones of a lofty song;
    A voice that I know, is singing,
    And my heart all night must long.


    II.

    Over a shining land--
    Once such a land I knew--
    Over its sea, by a soft wind fanned,
    The sky is all white and blue.

    The waves are kissing the shores,
...

Too oft we hide our Frailties' Blame
Beneath some simple-sounding Name!
So Folks, who in gilt Coaches ride,
Will call Display but Proper Pride;
So Spendthrifts, who their Acres lose,
Curse not their Folly but the Jews;
So Madam, when her Roses faint,
Resorts to ... anything but Paint.

An honest Uncle, who had plied
His Trade of Mercer in Cheapside,
Until his Name on 'Change was found
Good for some Thirty Thousand Pound,
Was burdened with an Heir inclined
To thoughts of quite a different Kind.
His Nephew dreamed of Naught but Verse
From Morn to Night, and, what was worse,
He quitted all at length to follow
That "sneaking, whey-faced God, APOLLO."
In plainer Words, he ran up Bills
At Child's, at Batson's and at Will's;
Discussed the Cla...

I never dreamed we'd meet that day
In our old haunts down Fricourt way,
Plotting such marvellous journeys there
For jolly old "Après-la-guerre."

Well, when it's over, first we'll meet
At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat
In Wales, a curious little shop
With two rooms and a roof on top,
A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet
That never needs a crowd to fill it.
But oh, the country round about!
The sort of view that makes you shout
For want of any better way
Of praising God: there's a blue bay
Shining in front, and on the right
Snowden and Hebog capped with white,
And lots of other jolly peaks
That you could wonder at for weeks,
With jag and spur and hump and cleft.
There's a grey castle on the left,
And back in the high Hinterland
You'll s...

Out of the grey northwest, where many a day gone by
Ye tugged and howled in your tempestuous grot,
And evermore the huge frost giants lie,
Your wizard guards in vigilance unforgot,
Out of the grey northwest, for now the bonds are riven,
On wide white wings your thongless flight is driven,
That lulls but resteth not.

And all the grey day long, and all the dense wild night
Ye wheel and hurry with the sheeted snow,
By cedared waste and many a pine-dark height,
Across white rivers frozen fast below;
Over the lonely forests, where the flowers yet sleeping
Turn in their narrow beds with dreams of weeping
In some remembered woe;

Across the unfenced wide marsh levels, where the dry
Brown ferns sigh out, and last year's sedges scold
In some drear language, ...

Go—thou art all unfit to share
The pleasures of this place
With such as its old tenants are,
Creatures of gentler race.


The squirrel here his hoard provides,
Aware of wintry storms,
And woodpeckers explore the sides
Of rugged oaks for worms.


The sheep here smooths the knotted thorn
With frictions of her fleece;
And here I wander eve and morn,
Like her, a friend to peace.


Ah!—I could pity thee exiled
From this secure retreat—
I would not lose it to be styled
The happiest of the great.


But thou canst taste no calm delight;
Thy pleasure is to show
Thy magnanimity in fight,
Thy prowess—therefore, go—


I care not whether east or north,
So I no more may find thee;
The angry muse...

Beneath thy skies, November!
Thy skies of cloud and rain,
Around our blazing camp-fires
We close our ranks again.
Then sound again the bugles,
Call the muster-roll anew;
If months have well-nigh won the field,
What may not four years do?
For God be praised! New England
Takes once more her ancient place;
Again the Pilgrim's banner
Leads the vanguard of the race.
Then sound again the bugles, etc.
Along the lordly Hudson,
A shout of triumph breaks;
The Empire State is speaking,
From the ocean to the lakes.
Then sound again the bugles, etc.
The Northern hills are blazing,
The Northern skies are bright;
And the fair young West is turning
Her forehead to the light!
Then sound again the bugles,. etc.
Push every outpost nearer,
...

Whatever I do, and whatever I say,
Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way;
When she was a girl (forty summers ago)
Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.

Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice!
But I like my own way, and I find it so nice
And besides, I forget half the things I am told;
But they all will come back to me - when I am old.

If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt,
He may chance to look in as I chance to look out;
She would never endure an impertinent stare, -
It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there.

A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own,
But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone;
So I take a lad's arm, - just for safety, you know, -
But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so.

How wicked w...

Said a people to a poet "Go out from among us straightway!
While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.
There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateways
Makes fitter music to our ears than any song of thine!"

The poet went out weeping the nightingale ceased chanting;
"Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?"
I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,
Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun."

The poet went out weeping, and died abroad, bereft there
The bird flew to his grave and died, amid a thousand wails:
And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there
Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's.

I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray;
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw,
Nathless I threw them as my final cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!

Here begins the sea that ends not till the world’s end. Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.
Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam
Breaks or stays the strength of waters till they pass our bounds of dream.
Where the waste Land’s End leans westward, all the seas it watches roll
Find their border fixed beyond them, and a worldwide shore’s control:
These whereby we stand no shore beyond us limits: these are free.
Gazing hence, we see the water that grows iron round the Pole,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.
Sail on sail along the sea-line fades and flashes; here on land
Flash and fade the wheeling w...

This is your month, the month of "perfect days,"
Birds in full song and blossoms all ablaze.
Nature herself your earliest welcome breathes,
Spreads every leaflet, every bower inwreathes;
Carpets her paths for your returning feet,
Puts forth her best your coming steps to greet;
And Heaven must surely find the earth in tune
When Home, sweet Home, exhales the breath of June.
These blessed days are waning all too fast,
And June's bright visions mingling with the past;

Lilacs have bloomed and faded, and the rose
Has dropped its petals, but the clover blows,
And fills its slender tubes with honeyed sweets;
The fields are pearled with milk-white margarites;
The dandelion, which you sang of old,
Has lost its pride of place, its crown of gold,
But still displays ...

I care not that one listen if he lives
For aught but life's romance, nor puts above
All life's necessities the need to love,
Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives.
But sometime on an afternoon in spring,
When dandelions dot the fields with gold,
And under rustling shade a few weeks old
'Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing,
Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the power
Of being young and winsome have prepared
For life's last privilege that really pays,
Make the companion of an idle hour
These relics of the time when I too fared
Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days.

Wake up my harp! thy strings begin to rust!
Has the soul fled that once within thee dwelt?
Idle so long, shake off that coat of dust!
Are there no souls to cheer, no hearts to melt?
Are there no victims under tyrants' yoke,
Whose wrongs thy stirring music should proclaim?
Or have the fetters of mankind been broke?
Or are there none deserving songs of fame?

Awake! awake! thy slumber has been long!
And let thy chords once more arouse the heart;
And teach us in thy most impassioned song,
How in our sphere we best may play our part.
Tell the down-trodden, who with daily toil,
Wear out their lives, another's greed to fill;
That they have rights and interests in the soil,
And they can win them if they have the will.

Tell the high-born that chance of birt...

An Oyster, cast upon the shore,
Was heard, though never heard before,
Complaining in a speech well worded,
And worthy thus to be recorded:—
Ah, hapless wretch! condemn’d to dwell
For ever in my native shell;
Ordain’d to move when others please,
Not for my own content or ease;
But toss’d and buffeted about,
Now in the water and now out.
‘Twere better to be born a stone,
Of ruder shape, and feeling none,
Than with a tenderness like mine,
And sensibilities so fine!
I envy that unfeeling shrub,
Fast rooted against every rub.
The plant he meant grew not far off,
And felt the sneer with scorn enough:
Was hurt, disgusted, mortified,
And with asperity replied
(When, cry the botanists, and stare,
Did plants call’d sensitive grow there?
No ...

Where the ragged, snow-capped saw tooth
    Cuts the azure of the sky
And watches o'er the lonely land
    As ages wander by;
Where the sentinel pines in grandeur
    Murmur to the glacier stream
As it, ice-gorged, gluts the canyon,
    Never brightened by the gleam
Of sun at brightest noon day,
    Nor moon of Arctic night,
And whose only link with Heaven
    Is the fitful Northern Light.
Where the Whistler shrills in triumph
    And the Big Horn dreams in peace,
Where the Brown Bear skulks to cover
    Up where silence holds the lease;
Where the land is as God left it
    Nor has known the tread of man,
There's a treasure ledge a-waiting--
    Go and find it if you can.

If your heart be steeled to triumph
    Nor beats less at ...

    Here, on the arid ridge
    Of dead Vesuvius,
    Exterminator terrible,
    That by no other tree or flower is cheered,
    Thou scatterest thy lonely leaves around,
    O fragrant flower,
    With desert wastes content. Thy graceful stems
    I in the solitary paths have found,
    The city that surround,
    That once was mistress of the world;
    And of her fallen power,
    They seemed with silent eloquence to speak
    Unto the thoughtful wanderer.
    And now again I see thee on this soil,
    Of wretched, world-abandoned spots the friend,
    Of ruined fortunes the companion, still.
    These fields with barren ashes strown,
    And lava, hardened into stone,
    Beneath the pilgrim's feet, that hollow sound,
    Where by their nest...