Freedom

Travellers in Mexico have found the form of a serpent invariably pictured over the doorways of the Indian Temples, and on the interior walls, the impression of a red hand.

The superstitions attached to the phenomena of the thunderstorm and Aurora Borealis, alluded to in the poem, are well authenticated.


I saw him in vision,--the last of that race
Who were destined to vanish before the Pale-face,
As the dews of the evening from mountain and dale,
When the thirsty young Morning withdraws her dark veil;
Alone with the Past and the Future's chill breath,
Like a soul that has entered the valley of Death.

He stood where of old from the Fane of the Sun,
While cycles unnumbered their centuries run,
Never quenched, never fading, and mocking at Time,
Blazed the fire sace...

(To Ellen Terry)

In the lone tent, waiting for victory,
She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,
Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain:
The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,
War's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry
To her proud soul no common fear can bring:
Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King,
Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy.
O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face
Made for the luring and the love of man!
With thee I do forget the toil and stress,
The loveless road that knows no resting place,
Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness,
My freedom, and my life republican!

A score of years had come and gone
Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth stone,
When Captain Underhill, bearing scars
From Indian ambush and Flemish wars,
Left three-hilled Boston and wandered down,
East by north, to Cocheco town.

With Vane the younger, in counsel sweet,
He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet,
And, when the bolt of banishment fell
On the head of his saintly oracle,
He had shared her ill as her good report,
And braved the wrath of the General Court.

He shook from his feet as he rode away
The dust of the Massachusetts Bay.
The world might bless and the world might ban,
What did it matter the perfect man,
To whom the freedom of earth was given,
Proof against sin, and sure of heaven?

He cheered his heart as he rode along<...

If the sad old world should jump a cog
    Sometime, in its dizzy spinning,
And go off the track with a sudden jog,
    What an end would come to the sinning,
What a rest from strife and the burdens of life
    For the millions of people in it,
What a way out of care, and worry and wear,
    All in a beautiful minute.

As 'round the sun with a curving sweep
    It hurries and runs and races,
Should it lose its balance, and go with a leap
    Into the vast sea-spaces,
What a blest relief it would bring to the grief,
    And the trouble and toil about us,
To be suddenly hurled from the solar world
    And let it go on without us.

With not a sigh or a sad good-bye
    For loved ones left behind us,
We would go with a lunge and a mighty plunge...

    I am growing old: I have kept youth too long,
    But I dare not let them know it now.
    I have done the heart of youth a grievous wrong,
    Danced it to dust and drugged it with the rose,
    Forced its reluctant lips to one more vow.
    I have denied the lawful grey,
    So kind, so wise, to settle in my hair;
    I belong no more to April, but September has not taught me her repose.
    I wish I had let myself grow old in the quiet way
    That is so gracious....    I wish I did not care.
    My faded mouth will never flower again,
    Under the paint the wrinkles fret my eyes,
    My hair is dull beneath its henna stain,
    I have come to the last ramparts of disguise.
    And now the day draws on of my defeat.
    I shall not meet
    The swift, ...

The cock hath crow'd. I hear the doors unbarr'd;
Down to the moss-grown porch my way I take,
And hear, beside the well within the yard,
Full many an ancient, quacking, splashing drake,
And gabbling goose, and noisy brood-hen - all
Responding to yon strutting gobbler's call.

The dew is thick upon the velvet grass -
The porch-rails hold it in translucent drops,
And as the cattle from th' enclosure pass,
Each one, alternate, slowly halts and crops
The tall, green spears, with all their dewy load,
Which grow beside the well-known pasture-road.

A lustrous polish is on all the leaves -
The birds flit in and out with varied notes -
The noisy swallows twitter 'neath the eaves -
A partridge-whistle thro' the garden floats,
While yonder gaudy peacock harshly...

I.

Ere wild haws, looming in the glooms,
Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;
And in the whistling hollow there
The red-bud bends as brown and bare
As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm;
From some slick hickory or larch,
Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March,
The sad heart thrills and reddens warm
To hear thee braving the rough storm,
Frail courier of green-gathering powers, -
Rebelling sap in trunks and flowers;
Love's minister come heralding;
O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers! -
Thou brown-red pursuivant of Spring!


II.

"Moan" sob the woodland cascades still
Down bloomless ledges of the hill;
And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang
In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang
Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:

Now young-ey'd Spring, on gentle breezes borne,
    'Mid the deep woodlands, hills, and vales, and bowers,
    Unfolds her leaves, her blossoms, and her flowers,
    Pouring their soft luxuriance on the morn.
O! how unlike the wither'd, wan, forlorn,
    And limping Winter, that o'er russet moors,
    Grey ridgy fields, and ice-incrusted shores,
    Strays! - and commands his rising Winds to mourn.
Protracted Life, thou art ordain'd to wear
    A form like his; and, shou'd thy gifts be mine,
    I tremble lest a kindred influence drear
Steal on my mind; - but pious Hope benign,
    The Soul's bright day-spring, shall avert the fear,
    And gild Existence in her dim decline.

Come, beneath yon verdant branches,
Come, my own, with me!
Come, and there my soul will open
Secret doors to thee.
Yonder shalt thou learn the secrets
Deep within my breast,
Where my love upsprings eternal;
Come! with pain opprest,
Yonder all the truth I'll tell thee,
Tell it thee with tears...
(Ah, so long have we been parted,
Years of youth, sweet years!)

See'st thou the dancers floating
On a stream of sound?
There alone, the soul entrancing,
Happiness is found!
Magic music, hark! it calls us,
Ringing wild and sweet!
One, two, three!--beloved, haste thee,
Point thy dainty feet!
Now at last I feel that living
Is no foolish jest...
(O sweet years of youth departed,
Vanished with the rest!)

Fiddler, play a lit...

The springtime's pallid landscape
Will glow like bright bouquet,
Though drifted deep in parian
The village lies to-day.

The lilacs, bending many a year,
With purple load will hang;
The bees will not forget the tune
Their old forefathers sang.

The rose will redden in the bog,
The aster on the hill
Her everlasting fashion set,
And covenant gentians frill,

Till summer folds her miracle
As women do their gown,
Or priests adjust the symbols
When sacrament is done.

The Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The ploughboy is whooping, anon, anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

I.

There was moonlight in the garden and the chirr and chirp of crickets;
There was scent of pink and peony and deep syringa thickets,
When adown the pathway whitely, where the firefly glimmered brightly,
She came stepping, oh, so lightly,
To the old gate made of pickets.

II.

There were dew and musk and murmur and a voice that hummed odd snatches
Of a song while there she hurried, through the moonlight's silvery patches,
To the rose-grown gate, above her and her softly-singing lover,
With its blossom-tangled cover
And its weight and wooden latches.

III.

Whom she met there, whom she kissed there, mid the moonlight and the roses,
With his arms who there enclosed her, as a tiger-lily encloses
Some white moth that frailly settles on its go...

On His Learned And Useful Works; But More Particularly His Treatise Of Stonehenge,[1] By Him Restored To The True Founder.


    The longest tyranny that ever sway'd,
    Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
    Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
    And made his torch their universal light.
    So truth, while only one supplied the state,
    Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
    Still it was bought, like empiric wares, or charms,
    Hard words seal'd up with Artistotle's arms.
    Columbus was the first that shook his throne,
    And found a temperate in a torrid zone,
    The feverish air fann'd by a cooling breeze,
    The fruitful vales set round with shady trees:
    And guiltless men, who danced away their time,
    Fresh...

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason...

When I am tired of earnest men,
    Intense and keen and sharp and clever,
Pursuing fame with brush or pen
    Or counting metal disks forever,
Then from the halls of Shadowland
    Beyond the trackless purple sea
Old Martin's ghost comes back to stand
    Beside my desk and talk to me.

Still on his delicate pale face
    A quizzical thin smile is showing,
His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace,
    His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing.
He wears a brilliant-hued cravat,
    A suit to match his soft grey hair,
A rakish stick, a knowing hat,
    A manner blithe and debonair.

How good that he who always knew
    That being lovely was a duty,
Should have gold halls to wander through
    And should himself inhabit beauty.
How like ...

Caged in old woods, whose reverend echoes wake
When the hern screams along the distant lake,
Her little heart oft flutters to be free,
Oft sighs to turn the unrelenting key.
In vain! the nurse that rusted relic wears,
Nor mov'd by gold--nor to be mov'd by tears;
And terraced walls their black reflection throw
On the green-mantled moat that sleeps below.

When evening listened to the dipping oar,
Forgetting the loud city's ceaseless roar,
By the green banks, where Thames, with conscious pride,
Reflects that stately structure on his side,

Within whose walls, as their long labours close,
The wanderers of the ocean find repose,
We wore, in social ease, the hours away,
The passing visit of a summer's day.

Whilst some to range the breezy hill are gone,
I lingered on the river's marge alone,
Mingled with groups of ancient sailors gray,
And watched the last bright sunshine steal away.

As thus I mused amidst the various train
Of toil-worn wanderers of the perilous main,
Two sailors, - well I marked them, as the beam
Of parting day yet lingered on the stream,
And the sun sank behind the shady reach, -<...

The night was a failure but why not - ?

In the darkness with the pale dawn seething at the window through the black frame I could not be free, not free myself from the past, those others -    and our love was a confusion, there was a horror, you recoiled away from me.

Now, in the morning
As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine,
And look at the mountain-walls,
Walls of blue shadow,
And see so near at our feet in the meadow
Myriads of dandelion pappus
Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass
Held still beneath the sunshine -

It is enough, you are near -
The mountains are balanced,
The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the grass;
You and I together
We hold them proud and blithe
On our love.
They stand upright on our love,...