Freedom

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caressed,
Have left her solitude!

I ween, that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Unchecked through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue,
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's so...

She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in her hair.

Ah! many a suitor I knew before
Had knelt at her feet in the days of yore;
And many a lover as foolish as I,
Had proudly boasted to win or die.
She had scorned them all with a careless grace
And a woman's scorn on her beautiful face.
Yet now in the summer I knelt at her feet,
And dreamed a dream that was fair and sweet.

The roses drooped in her gold-brown hair,
And quivered and glowed in the sun-lit air;
The jew...

I have seen that which sweeter is
Than happy dreams come true.
I have heard that which echo is
Of speech past all I ever knew.
Vision and echo, come again,
Nor let me grieve in easeless pain!

It was a hill I saw, that rose
Like smoke over the street,
Whose greening rampires were upreared
Suddenly almost at my feet;
And tall trees nodded tremblingly
Making the plain day visionary.

But ah, the song, the song I heard
And grieve to hear no more!
It was not angel-voice, nor child's
Singing alone and happy, nor
Note of the wise prophetic thrush
As lonely in the leafless bush.

It was not these, and yet I knew
That song; but now, alas,
My unpurged ears prove all too gross
To keep the nameless air that was
And is not; and...

That is the earliest thing that I remember--
The narrow house in the long narrow street,
Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors
Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,
Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet.
The sunlight through one narrow passage pours,
As through the keyhole into a dusty room,
Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom.
The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind,
Letting the sun fling his rod clear between,
Lest there should be no gold upon the green,
And no light then for a child to dream upon,
And day be of day's brightness all forlorn.
I saw those timber piles first dark and tall,
And then men clambered up, and stumbled down,
Each with a heavy and long timber borne
Upon broad shoulders, leather-covered, bent.
Ho...

            TO E.M. II.

Dear friend, you love the poet's song,
    And here is one for your regard.
    You know the "melancholy bard,"
Whose grief is wise as well as strong;

Already something understand
    For whom he mourns and what he sings,
    And how he wakes with golden strings
The echoes of "the silent land;"

How, restless, faint, and worn with grief,
    Yet loving all and hoping all,
    He gazes where the shadows fall,
And finds in darkness some relief;

And how he sends his cries across,
    His cries for him that comes no more,
    Till one might think that silent shore
Full of the burden of his loss;

And how there comes sublimer cheer--
    Not darkness solacing sad eyes,
    Not the wild joy of mournf...

Like one who walketh in a plenteous land,
    By flowing waters, under shady trees,
    Through sunny meadows, where the summer bees
Feed in the thyme and clover; on each hand
Fair gardens lying, where of fruit and flower
The bounteous season hath poured out its dower:
Where saffron skies roof in the earth with light,
And birds sing thankfully towards Heaven, while he
With a sad heart walks through this jubilee,
Beholding how beyond this happy land,
Stretches a thirsty desert of gray sand,
Where all the air is one thick, leaden blight,
Where all things dwarf and dwindle, - so walk I,
Through my rich, present life, to what beyond doth lie.

Good Muse, rock me asleep
    With some sweet harmony:
The weary eye is not to keep
    Thy wary company.

Sweet Love, begone awhile,
    Thou knowest my heaviness:
Beauty is born but to beguile
    My heart of happiness.

See how my little flock,
    That loved to feed on high,
Do headlong tumble down the rock,
    And in the valley die.

The bushes and the trees
    That were so fresh and green,
Do all their dainty colour leese,
    And not a leaf is seen.

The blackbird and the thrush,
    That made the woods to ring,
With all the rest, are now at hush,
    And not a note they sing.

Sweet Philomel, the bird
    That hath the heavenly throat,
Doth now alas! not once afford
    Recording of a note.<...

You call authority "a grievous thing."
With careless hands you snap the leading string,
And, for a frolic (so it seems to you),
Put off the old love, and put on the new.

For "What does Mother know of love?" you say.
"Did her soul ever thrill?
Did little tendernesses ever creep
Into her dreams, and over-ride her will?
Did her eyes shine, or her heart ever leap
As my heart leaps to-day?
I, who am young; who long to try my wings!

How should she understand,
She, with her calm cool hand?
She never felt such yearnings? And, beside,
It's clear I can't be tied
For ever to my mother's apron strings."

There are Infinities of Knowledge, dear.
And there are mysteries, not yet made clear
To you, the Uninitiate. . . . Life's book
Is open, ye...

Over the dripping roofs and sunk snow-barrows
The bells are ringing loud and strangely near,
The shout of children dins upon mine ear
Shrilly, and like a flight of silvery arrows
Showers the sweet gossip of the British sparrows,
Gathered in noisy knots of one or two,
To joke and chatter just as mortals do
Over the days long tale of joys and sorrows;

Talk before bed-time of bold deeds together
Of thefts and fights, of hard-times and the weather,
Till sleep disarm them, to each little brain
Bringing tucked wings and many a blissful dream,
Visions of wind and sun, of field and stream,
And busy barn-yards with their scattered grain.

Another day awakes. And who -
    Changing the world - is this?
He comes at whiles, the Winter through,
    West Wind! I would not miss
His sudden tryst: the long, the new
    Surprises of his kiss.

Vigilant, I make haste to close
    With him who comes my way.
I go to meet him as he goes;
    I know his note, his lay,
His colour and his morning rose;
    And I confess his day.

My window waits; at dawn I hark
    His call; at morn I meet
His haste around the tossing park
    And down the softened street;
The gentler light is his; the dark,
    The grey - he turns it sweet.

So too, so too, do I confess
    My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess
    With his immortal things.
I feel, I know him. On I pr...

Achilles came from Homer's Jove-like brain,
Pavilioned 'mid his ships where Thetis trod;
But he whose image dominates this plain
        Came from the hand of God!

Yet, of his life, which shall all time adorn
I dare not sing; to try the theme would be
To drink as 'twere that Scandinavian Horn
        Whose tip was in the Sea.

I bow my head and go upon my ways,
Who tells that story can but gild the gold -
Could I pile Alps on Apennines of praise
    The tale would not be told.

Not his the blade which lyric fables say
Cleft Pyrenees from ridge to nether bed,
But his the sword which cleared the Sacred Way
    For Freedom's feet to tread.

Not Caesar's genius nor Napoleon's skill
Gave him proud mast'ry o'er the trembling earth;
But...

The sun is wrapped within a pall of mist,
Moon of my life! enshroud yourself like him;
Sleep, damp your fires; be silent, dim,
And plunge to ennui's most profound abyss;

I love you this way! But, if you decline,
And choose to move from your eclipse to light,
To strut yourself where Folly throngs tonight,
Spring, charming dagger, from your sheath! That's fine!

Light up your eyes with flames of candle glow!
Light up the lust in yokels at the show!
I love your moods, no one of them the best;

Be night or dawn, do what you want to do;
I cry in every fibre of my flesh:
'0 my Beelzebub, I worship you!'

Something startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground does not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day or perhaps I am...

This world has suns, but they are overcast;
This world has sweets, but they're of ling'ring bloom;
Life still expects, and empty falls at last;
Warm Hope on tiptoe drops into the tomb.
Life's journey's rough--Hope seeks a smoother way,
And dwells on fancies which to-morrow see,--
To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,
And empty shadow of what is to be;
Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,
And ends but only when our being ends.
I long have hoped, and still shall hope the best
Till heedless weeds are scrambling over me,
And hopes and ashes both together rest
At journey's end, with them that cease to be.

He halted in the wind, and, what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.

'Oh, that's the Paradise-in-bloom,' I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.

We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves.

Quando ad un giogo ed in Un tempo quivi.


    When to one yoke at once I saw the height
Of gods and men subdued by Cupid's might,
I took example from their cruel fate,
And by their sufferings eased my own hard state;
Since Phoebus and Leander felt like pain,
The one a god, the other but a man;
One snare caught Juno and the Carthage dame
(Her husband's death prepared her funeral flame--
'Twas not a cause that Virgil maketh one);
I need not grieve, that unprepared, alone,
Unarm'd, and young, I did receive a wound,
Or that my enemy no hurt hath found
By Love; or that she clothed him in my sight,
And took his wings, and marr'd his winding flight;
No angry lions send more hideous noise
From their beat breasts, nor clashing thunder's voice
Ren...

    Above the city at his feet,
    Above the dome, above the sea,
    He rises unconfined and free
    To break upon the noonday heat.

    He turns around the parapet,
    Black-robed against the marble tower;
    His singing gains or loses power
    In pacing round the minaret.

    A brother to the singing birds
    He never knew restraining walls,
    But freely rises, freely falls
    The rhythm of the sacred words.

    I would that it to me were given
    To climb each day the muezzin's stair
    And in the warm and silent air
    To sing my heart out into Heaven.

I


For toils which patriots have endur'd,
For treason quell'd and laws secur'd,
In every nation Time displays
The palm of honourable praise.
Envy may rail; and faction fierce
May strive: but what, alas, can those
(Though bold, yet blind and sordid foes)
To gratitude and love oppose,
To faithful story and persuasive verse?


O nurse of freedom, Albion, say,
Thou tamer of despotic sway,
What man, among thy sons around,
Thus heir to glory hast thou found?
What page, in all thy annals bright,
Hast thou with purer joy survey'd
Than that where truth, by Hoadly's aid,
Shines through imposture's solemn shade,
Through kingly and through sacerdotal night?


To him the Teacher bless'd,
Who sent religion, from the palmy f...