Freedom

Master of sweet and loving lore,
    Give us the open mind
To know religion means no more,
    No less, than being kind.

Give us the comprehensive sight
    That sees another's need;
And let our aim to set things right
    Prove God inspired our creed.

Give us the soul to know our kin
    That dwell in flock and herd,
The voice to fight man's shameful sin
    Against the beast and bird.

Give us a heart with love so fraught
    For all created things,
That even our unspoken thought
    Bears healing on its wings.

Give us religion that will cope
    With life's colossal woes,
And turn a radiant face of hope
    On troops of pigmy foes.

Give us the mastery of our fate
    In thoughts so warm and white,
T...

How the sumac banners bent, dripping as if with blood,
What a mournful presence brooded upon the slumbrous air;
A mocking-bird screamed noisily in the depth of the silent wood,
And in my heart was crying the raven of despair,
Thrilling my being through with its bitter, bitter cry -
"It were better to die, it were better to die."

For she, my love, my fate, she sat by my side
On a fallen oak, her cheek all flushed with a bashful shame,
Telling me what her innocent heart had hid -
"For was not I her brother, her dear brother, all but in name."
I listened to her low words, but turned my face away -
Away from her eyes' soft light, and the mocking light of the day.

"He was noble and proud," she said, "and had chosen her from all
The haughty ladies, and great; she didn'...

Clove-spicy pinks and phlox that fill the sense
With drowsy indolence;
And in the evening skies
Interior splendor, pregnant with surprise,
As if in some new wise
The full moon soon would rise.

Hung with the crimson aigrets of its seeds
The purple monkshood bleeds;
The dewy crickets chirr,
And everywhere are lights of lavender;
And scents of musk and myrrh
To guide the foot of her.

She passes like a misty glimmer on
To where the rose blooms wan,
A twilight moth in flight,
As in the west its streak of chrysolite
The dusk erases quite,
And ushers in the night.

And now another shadow passes slow,
With firefly light a-glow:
The scent of a cigar,
And two who kiss beneath the evening-star,
Where, in a moonbeam bar,

The children awoke in their dreaming
    While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
    To the heart-light of the hill.

Its sounds and sights were forsaking
    The world as they faded in sleep,
When they heard a music breaking
    Out from the heart-light deep.

It ran where the rill in its flowing
    Under the star-light gay
With wonderful colour was glowing
    Like the bubbles they blew in their play.

From the misty mountain under
    Shot gleams of an opal star:
Its pathways of rainbow wonder
    Rayed to their feet from afar.

From their feet as they strayed in the meadow
    It led through caverned aisles,
Filled with purple and green light and shadow
    For mystic miles on miles.
<...

This is the quiet hour; the theaters
Have gathered in their crowds, and steadily
The million lights blaze on for few to see,
Robbing the sky of stars that should be hers.
A woman waits with bag and shabby furs,
A somber man drifts by, and only we
Pass up the street unwearied, warm and free,
For over us the olden magic stirs.

Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights
We live a little ere the charm is spent;
This night is ours, of all the golden nights,
The pavement an enchanted palace floor,
And Youth the player on the viol, who sent
A strain of music through an open door.

("Nous emmenions en esclavage.")

[VIII., March, 1828.]


We're bearing fivescore Christian dogs
To serve the cruel drivers:
Some are fair beauties gently born,
And some rough coral-divers.
We hardy skimmers of the sea
Are lucky in each sally,
And, eighty strong, we send along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.

A nunnery was spied ashore,
We lowered away the cutter,
And, landing, seized the youngest nun
Ere she a cry could utter;
Beside the creek, deaf to our oars,
She slumbered in green alley,
As, eighty strong, we sent along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.

"Be silent, darling, you must come -
The wind is off shore blowing;
You only change your prison dull
For one that's splendid, glowing!
His Highness doats ...

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.

Then, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heaven's deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his lovi...

Stay awhile, thou blessed band, be entreated, daughters of heaven!
While the chance-met scholar of Wisdom learneth your sacred names:
He is resting a little from his toil, yet a little on the borders of earth,
And fain would he have you his friends, to bid him glad welcome hereafter.
Who among the glorious art thou, that walkest a Goddess and a Queen,
Thy crown of living stars, and a golden cross thy sceptre?
Who among flowers of loveliness is she, thy seeming herald,
Yet she boasteth not thee nor herself, and her garments are plain in their neatness?
Wherefore is there one among the train, whose eyes are red with weeping.
Yet is her open forehead beaming with the sun of ecstasy?
And who is that blood-stained warrior, with glory sitting on his crest?
And who that solemn sage, calm in ...

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave

Oh that a Song would sing itself to me
    Out of the heart of Nature, or the heart
    Of man, the child of Nature, not of Art,
    Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea,
With just enough of bitterness to be
    A medicine to this sluggish mood, and start
    The life-blood in my veins, and so impart
    Healing and help in this dull lethargy!
Alas! not always doth the breath of song
    Breathe on us.    It is like the wind that bloweth
    At its own will, not ours, nor tarries long;
We hear the sound thereof, but no man knoweth
    From whence it comes, so sudden and swift and strong,
    Nor whither in its wayward course it goeth.

Angel of Peace, thou hast wandered too long!
Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love!
Come while our voices are blended in song, -
Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove!
Fly to our ark on the wings of the dove, -
Speed o'er the far-sounding billows of song,
Crowned with thine olive-leaf garland of love, -
Angel of Peace, thou hast waited too long!

Joyous we meet, on this altar of thine
Mingling the gifts we have gathered for thee,
Sweet with the odors of myrtle and pine,
Breeze of the prairie and breath of the sea, -
Meadow and mountain and forest and sea!
Sweet is the fragrance of myrtle and pine,
Sweeter the incense we offer to thee,
Brothers once more round this altar of thine!

Angels of Bethlehem, answer the strain!
Hark! a new ...

I.
Stand still, true poet that you are!
I know you; let me try and draw you.
Some night you’ll fail us: when afar
You rise, remember one man saw you,
Knew you, and named a star!

II.
My star, God’s glow-worm! Why extend
That loving hand of his which leads you
Yet locks you safe from end to end
Of this dark world, unless he needs you,
Just saves your light to spend?

III.
His clenched hand shall unclose at last,
I know, and let out all the beauty:
My poet holds the future fast,
Accepts the coming ages’ duty,
Their present for this past.

IV.
That day, the earth’s feast-master’s brow
Shall clear, to God the chalice raising;
“Others give best at first, but thou
“Forever set’st our table praising,
“Keep’st the good...

How strange it seems!    These Hebrews in their graves,
    Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
    At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
    Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
    The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
    That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
    And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.

The very names recorded here are strange,
    Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange
    With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

"Bless...

(At No. 1, Newgate. Favored by Mr. Wontner.)


O Mary, I believed you true,
And I was blest in so believing;
But till this hour I never knew -
That you were taken up for thieving!

Oh! when I snatch'd a tender kiss,
Or some such trifle when I courted,
You said, indeed, that love was bliss,
But never owned you were transported!

But then to gaze on that fair face -
It would have been an unfair feeling
To dream that you had pilfered lace -
And Flint's had suffered from your stealing!

Or when my suit I first preferred,
To bring your coldness to repentance,
Before I hammer'd out a word,
How could I dream you heard a sentence!

Or when with all the warmth of youth
I strove to prove my love no fiction,
How could I guess ...

Here, where the great hills fall away
To bays of silver sea,
I hold within my hand to-day
A wild thing, strange to me.

Behind me is the deep green dell
Where lives familiar light;
The leaves and flowers I know so well
Are gleaming in my sight.

And yonder is the mountain glen,
Where sings in trees unstirred
By breath of breeze or axe of men
The shining satin-bird.

The old weird cry of plover comes
Across the marshy ways,
And here the hermit hornet hums,
And here the wild bee strays.

No novel life or light I see,
On hill, in dale beneath:
All things around are known to me
Except this bit of heath.

This touching growth hath made me dream
It sends my soul afar
To where the Scottish mountains gleam
Ag...

Yet many a Novice of the cloistral shade,
And many chained by vows, with eager glee
The warrant hail, exulting to be free;
Like ships before whose keels, full long embayed
In polar ice, propitious winds have made
Unlooked-for outlet to an open sea,
Their liquid world, for bold discovery,
In all her quarters temptingly displayed!
Hope guides the young; but when the old must pass
The threshold, whither shall they turn to find
The hospitality, the alms (alas!
Alms may be needed) which that House bestowed?
Can they, in faith and worship, train the mind
To keep this new and questionable road?

In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron hand,
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximili...

There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a lo...