Freedom

For a summer festival at “The Laurels” on the Merrimac.


Once more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer’s golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river,

Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,
And bore its memory o’er the deep,
To soothe a martyr’s sadness,
And fresco, in his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.

We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory
We know that Arno’s...

Fancy and Reality.--Rain-drops and Lakes.--Plan of a Story.--Where to place the Scene of it.--In some unknown Region.--Psalmanazar's Imposture with respect to the Island of Formosa.


The more I've viewed this world the more I've found,
    That, filled as 'tis with scenes and creatures rare.
Fancy commands within her own bright round
    A world of scenes and creatures far more fair.
Nor is it that her power can call up there
    A single charm, that's not from Nature won,
No more than rainbows in their pride can wear
    A single hue unborrowed from the sun--
But 'tis the mental medium it shines thro'
That lends to Beauty all its charm and hue;
As the same light that o'er the level lake
    One dull monotony of lustre flings,
Will, entering in the rounded ...

The birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they flew;
They sang, "The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds, flying from the South,
What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"
"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
The sickened camp, the blazing town!

"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
We saw your march-worn children die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs
And saw, from line and trench, your sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

"And heard and saw ye only wrong
And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"
"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
The crash...

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
    Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
    And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
    Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
    With drops of anguish falling fast and red
    From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
    Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
    Have something in them so divinely sweet,
    It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
    Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
    But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

O, why should nature niggardly restrain
That foreign nations relish not our tongue?
Else should my lines glide on the waves of Rhine,
And crown the Pyren's with my living song.
    But bounded thus, to Scotland get you forth!
Thence take you wing unto the Orcades!
There let my verse get glory in the north,
Making my sighs to thaw the frozen seas.
    And let the bards within that Irish isle,
To whom my Muse with fiery wings shall pass,
Call back the stiff-necked rebels from exile,
And mollify the slaughtering gallowglass;
    And when my flowing numbers they rehearse,
    Let wolves and bears be charmèd with my verse.

Give me the pulse of the tide again
    And the slow lapse of the leaves,
The rustling gold of a field of grain
    And a bird in the nested eaves;

And a fishing-smack in the old harbour
    Where all was happy and young;
And an echo or two of the songs I knew
    When songs could still be sung.

For I would empty my heart of all
    This world's implacable roar,
And I would turn to my home, and fall
    Asleep in my home once more;

And I would forget what the cities say,
    And the folly of all the wise,
And turn to my own true folk this day,
    And the love in their constant eyes.

There is peace, peace, where the sea-birds wheel,
    And peace in the breaking wave;
And I have a broken heart to heal,
    And a broken so...

    "I would not have," he said,
"Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
    Round me when I am dead.


    "Music and flowers and light,
And choric dances to guitar and flute,
Be these around me when my lips are mute,
    Mine eyes are sealed from sight.


    "So let me lie one day,
One long, eternal day, in sunshine bathed,
In cerements of silken tissue swathed,
    Smothered 'neath flowers of May.

    "One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life - a gilded vapor - shall exhale,
    Brief as a sigh - and cease.


    "But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,

Myself and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heat - to take good aim with a gun - to sail a boat - to manage horses - to beget superb children,
To speak readily and clearly - to feel at home among common people,
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea.

Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers - I welcome them also;)
But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.

Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking.

Let me have my own way;
Let others promulge the laws - I will make no account of the laws;
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace - I hold up agitation and conflict;
...

A beardless crew we launched our little boat;
Laughed at its lightness; joyed to see it float,
Veer in the wind, and, with the freshening gale,
Bend o'er the foaming prow the swollen sail.

No fears were ours within that stanch-built barque;
No fears were ours 'though all the west was dark,
And overhead were unknown stars; the ring
Of ocean sailless and no bird a-wing:

Yet there was light; radiance that dimmed the stars
Dancing like bubbles in Night's sapphire jars.

We knew not what: only adown the skies
A shape that led us, with sidereal eyes,
Brow-bound and shod with elemental fire,
Beckoning us onward like the god Desire.

Brisk blew the breeze; and through the starry gloam,
Flung from our prow, flew white the furrowed foam.
Long, long...

I love the tropics, where sun and rain
Go forth together, a joyous train,
To hold up the green, gay side of the world,
And to keep earth's banners of bloom unfurled.

I love the scents that are hidden there
By housekeeper Time, in her chests of air:
Strange and subtle and all a-rife,
With vague lost dreams of a bygone life.

They steal upon you by night and day,
But never a whiff can you take away:
And never a song of a tropic bird
Outside of its palm-decked land is heard.

And nowhere else can you know the sweet
Soft, 'joy-in-nothing,' that comes with the heat
Of tropic regions.    And yet, and yet,
If in evergreen worlds my way were set

I would span the waters of widest seas
To see the wonder of waking trees;
To feel the shock ...

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room,
And hermits are contented with their cells,
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

"Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign
On fair islands that we would command;
But clouds that are darker and denser than these
Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas
And rest on our Southern Land.

Low in dust is our Goddess of Liberty hurled
At our feet, and the time is at hand,
When we, the proud sons of the southern world,
Beneath a proud banner of freedom unfurled
And true to each other shall stand.

If e'er in the ranks of the Right we advance;
Though our enemies come like a flood,
We'll meet them like lions, aroused from our trance,
And show that a streak of the Olden Romance
Still runs in our commonplace blood.

I.


The corn has turned from grey to red,
Since first my spirit wandered forth
From the drear cities of the north,
And to Italia's mountains fled.

And here I set my face towards home,
For all my pilgrimage is done,
Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun
Marshals the way to Holy Rome.

O Blessed Lady, who dost hold
Upon the seven hills thy reign!
O Mother without blot or stain,
Crowned with bright crowns of triple gold!

O Roma, Roma, at thy feet
I lay this barren gift of song!
For, ah! the way is steep and long
That leads unto thy sacred street.


II.


And yet what joy it were for me
To turn my feet unto the south,
And journeying towards the Tiber mouth
To kneel again at Fiesole!

There's joy when the rosy morning floods
    The purple east with light,
When the zephyr sweeps from a thousand buds
    The pearly tears of night.
There's joy when the lark exulting springs
    To pour his matin lay,
From the blossomed thorn when the blackbird sings,
    And the merry month is May.

There's joy abroad when the wintry snow
    Melts as it ne'er had been,
When cowslips bud and violets blow,
    And leaves are fresh and green.
There's joy in the swallow's airy flight,
    In the cuckoo's blithesome cry,
When the floating clouds reflect the light
    Of evening's glowing sky.

There's joy in April's balmy showers
    'Mid gleam of sunshine shed,
When May calls forth a thousand flowers
    To deck the earth's green bed.

In those good days when we were young and wise,
You spake to music, you with the thoughtful eyes,
And God looked down from heaven, pleased to hear
A young man's song arise so firm and clear.
Has Fancy died? The Morning Star gone cold?
Why are you silent? Have we grown so old?
Must I alone keep playing? Will not you,
Lord of the Measures, string your lyre anew?
Lover of Greece, is this the richest store
You bring us,--withered leaves and dusty lore,
And broken vases widowed of their wine,
To brand you pedant while you stand divine?
Decorous words beseem the learned lip,
But Poets have the nicer scholarship.

In English glades they watch the Cyprian glow,
And all the Maenad melodies they know.
They hear strange voices in a London street,
And track the ...

(Written after hearing a line of Keats repeated by a passing stranger under the palms of Southern California.)


Under the palms of San Diego
    Where gold-skinned Mexicans loll at ease,
And the red half-moons of their black-pipped melons
    Drop from their hands in the sunset seas,
And an incense, out of the old brown missions,
    Blows through the orange trees;

I wished that a poet who died in Europe
    Had found his way to this rose-red West;
That Keats had walked by the wide Pacific
    And cradled his head on its healing breast,
And made new songs of the sun-burned sea-folk,
    New poems, perhaps his best.

I thought of him, under the ripe pomegranates
    At the desert's edge, where the grape-vines grow,
In a sun-kissed ranch between...

I slept upon the Rice-boat
That, reef protected, lay
At anchor, where the palm-trees
Infringe upon the bay.
The windless air was heavy
With cinnamon and rose,
The midnight calm seemed waiting,
Too fateful for repose.

One joined me on the Rice-boat
With wild and waving hair,
Whose vivid words and laughter
Awoke the silent air.
Oh, beauty, bare and shining,
Fresh washen in the bay,
One well may love by moonlight
What one would not love by day!

Above among the cordage
The night wind hardly stirred,
The lapping of the ripples
Was all the sound we heard.
Love reigned upon the Rice-boat,
And Peace controlled the sea,
The spirit's consolation,
The senses' ecstasy.

Though many things and mighty
Are further...

I. Off Gilbatrar

Beyond the sleepy hills of Spain,
The sun goes down in yellow mist,
The sky is fresh with dewy stars
Above a sea of amethyst.
Yet in the city of my love
High noon burns all the heavens bare
For him the happiness of light,
For me a delicate despair.

II. Off Algeirs

Oh give me neither love nor tears,
Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,
Go lightly on your pilgrimage
Unburdened by desire.
Forget me for a month, a year,
But, oh, beloved, think of me
When unexpected beauty burns
Like sudden sunlight on the sea.

III. Naples

Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,
Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,
Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,
Naples crowds her million r...