Freedom

Bereave me not of Fancy's shadowy dreams,
Which won my heart, or when the gay career
Of life begun, or when at times a tear
Sat sad on memory's cheek--though loftier themes
Await the awakened mind to the high prize
Of wisdom, hardly earned with toil and pain,
Aspiring patient; yet on life's wide plain
Left fatherless, where many a wanderer sighs
Hourly, and oft our road is lone and long,
'Twere not a crime should we a while delay
Amid the sunny field; and happier they
Who, as they journey, woo the charm of song,
To cheer their way; till they forget to weep,
And the tired sense is hushed, and sinks to sleep.

Autumn's last days, winters and mud-soaked spring
I praise the stupefaction that you bring
By so enveloping my heart and brain
In shroud of vapours, tomb of mist and rain.

In this great flatness where the chill winds course,
Where through the nights the weather-cock grows hoarse,
My soul, more than in springtime's tepid sky,
Will open out her raven's wings to fly.

O blankest seasons, queens of all my praise,
Nothing is sweet to the funereal breast
That has been steeped in frost and wintriness

But the continuous face of your pale shades
- Except we two, where moonlight never creeps
Daring in bed to put our griefs to sleep.

'Tis spring! the boats bound to the sea;
The breezes, loitering kindly over
The fields, again bring herds and men
The grateful cheer of honeyed clover.

Now Venus hither leads her train,
The Nymphs and Graces join in orgies,
The moon is bright and by her light
Old Vulcan kindles up his forges.

Bind myrtle now about your brow,
And weave fair flowers in maiden tresses--
Appease God Pan, who, kind to man,
Our fleeting life with affluence blesses.

But let the changing seasons mind us
That Death's the certain doom of mortals--
Grim Death who waits at humble gat
And likewise stalks through kingly portals.

Soon, Sestius, shall Plutonian shades
Enfold you with their hideous seemings--
Then love and mirth and joys of earth
Shall fa...

Oh, for the fire that used to glow
In those my days of old!
I never thought a man could grow
So callous and so cold.
Ah, for the heart that used to ache
For those in sorrow’s ways;
I often wish my heart could break
As it did in those dead days.

Along my track of storm and stress,
And it is plain to trace,
I look back from the loneliness
And the depth of my disgrace.
’Twas fate and only fate I know,
But all mistakes are plain,
’Tis sadder than the afterglow,
More dreary than the rain.

But still there lies a patch of sun
That ne’er will come again,
Those golden days when I was one
Of Nature’s gentlemen.
And if there is a memory
Could break me down at last,
It sure would be the thought of this,
The sunshine in the pa...

Back of each soldier who fights for France,
    Ay, back of each woman and man
Who toils and prays through these long tense days,
    Is the spirit of Great Joan.
For the love she gave, and the life she gave,
    In the eyes of God sufficed
To crown her with light, and power, and might,
    That made her second to Christ.

And so in that hour at the Marne she came,
    To the seeing eyes of men;
And the blind of view still felt and knew
    That her spirit had come again.
And she will come in each crucial hour
    And joy shall follow despair,
For Joan sees her France on its knees
    And she hears the voice of its prayer.

There is no hate in the heart of France,
    But a mighty moral force
That takes its stand for her worshipped land,

By the burnished laurel line
Glimmering flows the singing stream;
Oily eddies crease and shine
O'er white pebbles, white as cream.

Richest roses bud or die
All about the splendid park;
Fountains glass a wily eye
Where the fawns browse in the dark.

Amber-belted through the night
Floats the alabaster moon,
Stooping o'er th' acacia white
Where my mandolin I tune.

By the twinkling mere I sing
Where lake lilies stretch pale eyes,
And a bulbul there doth fling
Music at the moon who flies.

With a broken syrinx there,
From enameled beds of buds,
Rises Pan in hoof and hair -
Moonlight his dim sculpture floods.

The pale jessamines have felt
The large passion of her gaze;
See! they part - their glories melt

I come to you grown weary of much laughter,
From jangling mirth that once seemed over-sweet,
From all the mocking ghosts that follow after
A man's returning feet;
Give me no word of welcome or of greeting
Only in silence let me enter in,
Only in silence when our eyes are meeting,
Absolve me of my sin.

I come to you grown weary of much living,
Open your door and lift me of your grace,
I ask for no compassion, no forgiving,
Only your face, your face;
Only in that white peace that is your dwelling
To come again, before your feet to sink,
And of your quiet as of wine compelling
Drink as the thirsting drink.

Be kind to me as sleep is kind that closes
With tender hands men's fever-wearied eyes,
Your arms are as a garden of white roses
Wher...

I.

The lake she haunts gleams dreamily
'Twixt sleepy boughs of melody,
Set 'mid the hills beside the sea,
In tangled bush and brier;
Where the ghostly sunsets write
Wondrous things in golden light;
And above the pine-crowned height,
Clouds of twilight, rosy white,
Build their towers of fire.

II.

'Mid the rushes there that swing,
Flowering flags where voices sing
When low winds are murmuring,
Murmuring to stars that glitter;
Blossom-white, with purple locks,
Underneath the stars' still flocks,
In the dusky waves she rocks,
Rocks, and all the landscape mocks
With a song most sweet and bitter.

III.

Soft it sounds, at first, as dreams
Filled with tears that fall in streams;
Then it soars, until it se...

I.

Near Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found,
But so confused, that neither any eye
Can count them just, nor Reason reason try,
What force brought them to so unlikely ground.

To stranger weights my mind's waste soil is bound,
Of passion-hills, reaching to Reason's sky,
From Fancy's earth, passing all number's bound,
Passing all guess, whence into me should fly
So mazed a mass; or, if in me it grows,
A simple soul should breed so mixed woes.

II.

The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sun
Approaching warms, not else, dead logs up sends
From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends,
Sore sign it is the lord's last thread is spun.

My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run
But when my sun her shining twins ther...

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? - Are they alive? - Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the...

Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft,
Not for the people's praise;
Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed,
Claiming us all our days,

Claiming our best endeavour, body and heart and brain
Given with no reserve,
Niggard is she towards us, granting us little gain:
Still, we are proud to serve.

Not unto us is given choice of the tasks we try,
Gathering grain or chaff;
One of her favoured servants toils at an epic high,
One, that a child may laugh.

Yet if we serve her truly in our appointed place,
Freely she doth accord
Unto her faithful servants always this saving grace,
Work is its own reward!

        A monkey, to reform the times,
        Resolved to visit foreign climes;
        For therefore toilsomely we roam
        To bring politer manners home.
        Misfortunes serve to make us wise:
        Poor pug was caught, and made a prize;
        Sold was he, and by happy doom
        Bought to cheer up a lady's gloom.
        Proud as a lover of his chains
        His way he wins, his post maintains -
        He twirled her knots and cracked her fan,
        Like any other gentleman.
        When jests grew dull he showed his wit,
        And many a lounger hit with it.
        When he had fully stored his mind -
        As Orpheus once for human kind, -
        So he away would homewards steal,
        To civilize the monkey weal.

    A new year dawning on a warring world!
        And many fight, and many pray for peace;
        But yet the roar of battle will not cease,
    Still man against his brother man is hurled.

    So we who wait - we women in our woe,
        Who wait and work - who wait, and work, and weep -
        For us there is no rest, for us no sleep,
    As our sad thoughts are wandering grim and slow,

    Across those dreary fields where far away
        Our hero myriads bleed and burn and die,
        We lift our hearts toward the pitying sky -
    Dawns there no hope upon this New Year's day?

    1915

I stood before a chain of beautiful mountains forming a semicircle. A young, green forest covered them from summit to base.

Limpidly blue above them was the southern sky; on the heights the sunbeams rioted; below, half-hidden in the grass, swift brooks were babbling.

And the old fable came to my mind, how in the first century after Christ's birth, a Greek ship was sailing on the Aegean Sea.

The hour was mid-day.... It was still weather. And suddenly up aloft, above the pilot's head, some one called distinctly, 'When thou sailest by the island, shout in a loud voice, "Great Pan is dead!"'

The pilot was amazed ... afraid. But when the ship passed the island, he obeyed, he called, 'Great Pan is dead!'

And, at once, in response to his shout, all along the coast (though the island was unin...

Millions have been and passed from view
Benignity who never knew;
    No aspiration theirs, nor aim;
Existence soulless as the clay
From whence they sprang, what right have they
    To eulogy or fame?

So multitudes have been forgot -
But drones or dunces, good for naught;
    Like clinging parasites or burrs
Taking from others all they dared,
Yet little they for others cared
    Except as pilferers.

Not so with that majestic man
The all-round antiquarian -
    No model his nor parallel;
From selfishness inviolate
Are his achievements good and great,
    And thus shall ages tell.

A love for the antiquities
His honest hold, his birthright is!
    And things unheard of or unread,
Defaced by moth or rust or mold,
To ...

Change is the order of the universe.
Worlds wax and wane; suns die and stars are born.
Two atoms of cosmic dust unite, cohere
And lo the building of a world begun.
On all things high or low, or great or small
Earth, ocean, mountain, mammoth, midge and man,
On mind and matter lo perpetual change
God's fiat stamped! The very bones of man
Change as he grows from infancy to age.
His loves, his hates, his tastes, his fancies, change.
His blood and brawn demand a change of food;
His mind as well: the sweetest harp of heaven
Were hateful if it played the selfsame tune
Forever, and the fairest flower that gems
The garden, if it bloomed throughout the year,
Would blush unsought. The most delicious fruits
Pall on our palate if we taste too oft,
And Hyblan honey tur...

One leaned on velvet cushions like a queen -
    To see him pass, the hero of an hour,
Whom men called great. She bowed with languid mien,
    And smiled, and blushed, and knew her beauty's power.

One trailed her tinseled garments through the street,
    And thrust aside the crowd, and found a place
So near, the blooded courser's praning feet
    Cast sparks of fire upon her painted face.

One took the hot-house blossoms from her breast,
    And tossed them down, as he went riding by.
And blushed rose-red to see them fondly pressed
    To bearded lips, while eye spoke unto eye.

One, bold and hardened with her sinful life,
    Yet shrank and shivered painfully, because
His cruel glance cut keener than a knife,
    The glance of him who made her what...

    Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

    In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the centre part of the main road.

    Little enclaves of activity pass as stores, mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time of year.

    I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter of a winding fence.

    The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still against the field's shores.

    A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks, hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

    Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo, a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.