Freedom

There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold
Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,
As of a moonlit primrose brimmed with rain,
Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.

Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;--
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veined violets stream;--
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet's dream;
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion--dead this many a year.

        Come o'er the sea,
        Maiden, with me,
    Mine thro' sunshine, storm, and snows;
        Seasons may roll,
        But the true soul
    Burns the same, where'er it goes.
Let fate frown on, so we love and part not;
'Tis life where thou art, 'tis death where thou art not.
        Then come o'er the sea,
        Maiden, with me,
    Come wherever the wild wind blows;
        Seasons may roll,
        But the true soul
    Burns the same, where'er it goes.

        Was not the sea
        Made for the Free,
    Land for courts and chains alone?
        Here we are slaves,
        But, on the waves,
    Love and Liberty's all our own.
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us,
All earth forgot, and all heaven aro...

Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!
How they yearn to ramble and love to range
Down through the vales of the years long gone,
Up through the future that fast rolls on.

To-days are dull -- so they wend their ways
Back to their beautiful yesterdays;
The present is blank -- so they wing their flight
To future to-morrows where all seems bright.

Build them a bright and beautiful home,
They'll soon grow weary and want to roam;
Find them a spot without sorrow or pain,
They may stay a day, but they're off again.

Those hearts of ours -- how wild! how wild!
They're as hard to tame as an Indian child;
They're as restless as waves on the sounding sea,
Like the breeze and the bird are they fickle and free.

Those hearts of ours -- how l...

The day is dead; and in the west
The slender crescent of the moon--
Diana's crystal-kindled crest--
Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.
What is the murmur in the dell?
The stealthy whisper and the drip?--
A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?
Or Naiad o'er her fountain well?--
Who, with white fingers for her comb,
Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls
Showers slim minnows and pale pearls,
And hollow music of the foam.
What is it in the vistaed ways
That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?--
The naked limbs of one who flees?
An Oread who hesitates
Before the Satyr form that waits,
Crouching to leap, that there she sees?
Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilie...

    Regret not me;
    Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

    Swift as the light
    I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

    I did not know
    That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

    I skipped at morn
    Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

    I ran at eves
    Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, "I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves."

    Now soon will come
    The apple, pear, and plum
And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.

    Again you will fare
    To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

    Yet gaily sing
    Until the pe...

The day and its delights are done;
So all delights and days expire:
Down in the dim, sad West the sun
Is dying like a dying fire.

The fiercest lances of his light
Are spent; I watch him droop and die
Like a great king who falls in fight;
None dared the duel of his eye

Living, but, now his eye is dim,
The eyes of all may stare at him.

How lovely in his strength at morn
He orbed along the burning blue!
The blown gold of his flying hair
Was tangled in green-tressèd trees,
And netted in the river sand
In gleaming links of amber clear;
But all his shining locks are shorn,
His brow of its bright crown is bare,
The golden sceptre leaves his hand,
And deeper, darker, grows the hue
Of the dim purple draperies
And cloudy banner...

And many there were hurt by that strong boy,
His name, they said, was Pleasure,
And near him stood, glorious beyond measure
Four Ladies who possess all empery
In earth and air and sea,
Nothing that lives from their award is free.
Their names will I declare to thee,
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear,
And they the regents are
Of the four elements that frame the heart,
And each diversely exercised her art
By force or circumstance or sleight
To prove her dreadful might
Upon that poor domain.
Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
The spirit dwelling there
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair
Within that magic mirror,
And dazed by that bright error,
It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger
And death, and penitence, and danger,...

You ask me, dear Nancy, what makes me presume
That you cherish a secret affection for me?
When we see the Flow'rs bud, don't we look for the Bloom?
Then, sweetest, attend, while I answer to thee.

When we Young Men with pastimes the Twilight beguile,
I watch your plump cheek till it dimples with joy:
And observe, that whatever occasions the smile,
You give me a glance; but provokingly coy.

Last Month, when wild Strawberries pluckt in the Grove,
Like beads on the tall seeded grass you had strung;
You gave me the choicest; I hop'd 'twas for Love;
And I told you my hopes while the Nightingale sung.

Remember the Viper: - 'twas close at your feet;
How you started, and threw yourself into my arms;
Not a Strawberry there was so ripe nor so sweet
As the li...

No doubt but ye are the People-your throne is above the King's.
Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things:
Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear,
Bringing the word well smoothen-such as a King should hear.

Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas,
Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease;
Till Ye said of Strife, "What is it?" of the Sword, "It is far from our ken";
Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men.
Ye stopped your ears to the warning-ye would neither look nor heed,
Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above their need.
Because of your witless learning and your beasts of warren and chase,
Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields for their camping-place.

Piped to the Spirit of John Keats.

    I.

    Would that my lips might pour out in thy praise
        A fitting melody - an air sublime, -
    A song sun-washed and draped in dreamy haze -
        The floss and velvet of luxurious rhyme:
    A lay wrought of warm languors, and o'er-brimmed
        With balminess, and fragrance of wild flowers
            Such as the droning bee ne'er wearies of -
    Such thoughts as might be hymned
        To thee from this midsummer land of ours
            Through shower and sunshine blent for very love.


    II.

    Deep silences in woody aisles wherethrough
        Cool paths go loitering, and where the trill
    Of best-remembered birds hath something new
        In cadence for the hea...

In a garb that was guiltless of colors
    She stood, with a dull, listless air -
A creature of dumps and of dolors,
    But most undeniably fair.

The folds of her garment fell round her,
    Revealing the curve of each limb;
Well proportioned and graceful I found her,
    Although quite alarmingly slim.

From the hem of her robe peeped one sandal -
    "High art" was she down to her feet;
And though I could not understand all
    She said, I could see she was sweet.

Impressed by her limpness and languor,
    I proffered a chair near at hand;
She looked back a mild sort of anger -
    Posed anew, and continued to stand.

Some praises I next tried to mutter
    Of the fan that she held to her face;
She said it was "utterly utter,...

Ye Bards in all your thousand dens,
Great souls with fewer pence than pens,
Sublime adorers of Apollo,
With folios full, and purses hollow;
Whose very souls with rapture glisten,
When you can find a fool to listen;
Who, if a debt were paid by pun,
Would never be completely done.
Ye bright inhabitants of garrets,
Whose dreams are rich in ports and clarets,
Who, in your lofty paradise,
See aldermanic banquets rise--
And though the duns around you troop,
Still float in seas of turtle soup.
I here forsake the tuneful trade,
Where none but lordlings now are paid,
Or where some northern rogue sits puling,
(The curse of universal schooling)--
A ploughman to his country lost,
An author to his printer's cost--
A slave to every man who'll buy ...

The bear puts both arms around the tree above her
And draws it down as if it were a lover
And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,
Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.
Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall
(She's making her cross-country in the fall).
Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples
As she flings over and off down through the maples,
Leaving on one wire moth a lock of hair.
Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.
The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests
The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet,
The telesco...

Now, when the moon slid under the cloud
And the cold clear dark of starlight fell,
He heard in his blood the well-known bell
Tolling slowly in heaves of sound,
Slowly beating, slowly beating,
Shaking its pulse on the stagnant air:
Sometimes it swung completely round,
Horribly gasping as if for breath;
Falling down with an anguished cry . . .
Now the red bat, he mused, will fly;
Something is marked, this night, for death . . .
And while he mused, along his blood
Flew ghostly voices, remote and thin,
They rose in the cavern of his brain,
Like ghosts they died away again;
And hands upon his heart were laid,
And music upon his flesh was played,
Until, as he was bidden to do,
He walked the wood he so well knew.
Through the cold dew he moved his feet,...

(March, 1862.)


Your honest heart of duty, Worden,
So helped you that in fame you dwell;
You bore the first iron battle's burden
Sealed as in a diving-bell.
Alcides, groping into haunted hell
To bring forth King Admetus' bride,
Braved naught more vaguely direful and untried.
What poet shall uplift his charm,
Bold Sailor, to your height of daring,
And interblend therewith the calm,
And build a goodly style upon your bearing.

Escaped the gale of outer ocean -
Cribbed in a craft which like a log
Was washed by every billow's motion -
By night you heard of Og
The huge; nor felt your courage clog
At tokens of his onset grim:
You marked the sunk ship's flag-staff slim,
Lit by her burning sister's heart;
You marked, and mused: "Day...

    There was a day, when I, if that was I,
    Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky,
    Where overhead the azure ached with heat,
    And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat;
    Motion was dead, and silence was complete,
    And stains of red fierce poppies splashed the wheat,

    And as I lay upon a scent-warm bank,
    I fell away, slipped back from earth, and sank,
    I lost the place of sky and field and tree,
    One covering face obscured the world for me,
    And for an hour I knew eternity,
    For one fixed face suspended Time for me.

    O had those eyes in that extreme of bliss
    Shed one more wise and culminating kiss,
    My end had come, nor had I lived to quail,
    Frightened and dumb as things must do that fail,
    A...

    'Tis Friendship's pledge, my young, fair friend,
        Nor thou the gift refuse,
    Nor with unwilling ear attend
        The moralizing muse.

    Since thou in all thy youth and charms,
        Must bid the world adieu,
    (A world 'gainst peace in constant arms)
        To join the friendly few.

    Since, thy gay morn of life o'ercast,
        Chill came the tempest's lower;
    (And ne'er misfortune's eastern blast
        Did nip a fairer flower.)

    Since life's gay scenes must charm no more,
        Still much is left behind;
    Still nobler wealth hast thou in store,
        The comforts of the mind!

    Thine is the self-approving glow,
        On conscious honour's part;
    And, dearest gift of heaven belo...

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds thro’ the country-side,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
Bright creeping thro’ the moss they love:
How long it seems since Charles was lost!
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed
The country in my very sight;
And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out in red dismay
With signal fires; well, there I lay
Close covered o’er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress,
Thinking on Metternich our friend,
And Charles’s miserable end,
And much beside, two days; t...