Freedom

Sir,

I thank you for your comedies.
I'll stay and read 'em now at home a-days,
Because Parcus wrote but sorrily
Thy notes, I'll read Lambinus thoroughly;
And then I shall be stoutly set a-gog
To challenge every Irish Pedagogue.
I like your nice epistle critical,
Which does in threefold rhymes so witty fall;
Upon the comic dram' and tragedy
Your notion’s right, but verses maggotty;
'Tis but an hour since I heard a man swear it,
The Devil himself could hardly answer it.
As for your friend the sage Euripides,
I[1] believe you give him now the slip o' days;
But mum for that - pray come a Saturday
And dine with me, you can't a better day:
I'll give you nothing but a mutton chop,
Some nappy mellow'd ale with rotten hop,
A pint of wine as good as...

Last high star of the years whose thunder
Still men’s listening remembrance hears,
Last light left of our fathers’ years,
Watched with honour and hailed with wonder
Thee too then have the years borne under,
Thou too then hast regained thy peers.

Wings that warred with the winds of morning,
Storm-winds rocking the red great dawn,
Close at last, and a film is drawn
Over the eyes of the storm-bird, scorning
Now no longer the loud wind’s warning,
Waves that threaten or waves that fawn.

Peers were none of thee left us living,
Peers of theirs we shall see no more.
Eight years over the full fourscore
Knew thee: now shalt thou sleep, forgiving
All griefs past of the wild world’s giving,
Moored at last on the stormless shore.

Worldwide liber...

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 tinselled garments through the street,
    And thrust aside the crowd, and found a place
So near, the blooded courser's prancing 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's life but full of care and doubt
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails, and such vanities.

We plant pomegranate trees and things,
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks' wings,
To painted ladies courting.

We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue, -
But life's as frail as dishes!

Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese,
They'd both be smashed to shivers!

When the mist drives past and the wind blows high,
And the harbour lights are dim -
See where they circle, and dip and fly,
The grey free-lances of wind and sky,
To the water's distant rim!

Like spirits possessed of a fierce delight,
A courage that cannot fail,
They face the breakers - they face the night -
The mad storm-horses are silvery white,
They ride through the bitter gale!

They seem like the souls of the long, long lost,
Who breasted the ocean-main -
Vikings whose vessels were tempest-tossed,
Voyagers who sailed, whatever the cost,
And never came home again.

Or stranger and wilder fancy - it seems
As I hear their wind-torn cry,
No birds fly there through the sun's last gleams,
But the wraiths of hopes - the ghosts of dreams<...

(See Note 49)

So let these songs their story tell
To all who in the Northland dwell,
Since many friends request it.
(That Finland's folk with them belong
In the wide realm of Northern song,
I grateful must attest it.)

I send these songs - and now I find
Most of them have riot what my mind
Has deepest borne and favored:
Some are too hasty, some too brief,
Some, long in stock, have come to grief,
Some with raw youth are flavored.

I lived far more than e'er I sang;
Thought, ire, and mirth unceasing rang
Around me, where I guested;
To be where loud life's battles call
For me was well-nigh more than all
My pen on page arrested.

What's true and strong has growing-room,
And will perhaps eternal bloom,
Without black ink...

From the green Amesbury hill which bears the name
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,
Down the long valley of the Merrimac,
Midway between me and the river's mouth,
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest
Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,
Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,
Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,
Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,
The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays
Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where
The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade
Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.

To thee the echoes of the Island Sound
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan
Of the South Breaker prophesy...

The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow
Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss
Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts;
In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow
Where beech-roots bulge the loam, protrude across
The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts.

And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense,
Among the rocks, great yellow violets,
Blue-bells and wind-flowers bloom; the agaric
In dampness crowds; a Fungus, thick, intense
With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets
The May-apples along the terraced creek
At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence
Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes ...

Aloft on the brow of a mountain,
And hard by a clear running fountain,
In neat little cot,
Content with her lot,
Retired, there lives a sweet maiden.

Her father is dead, and her brother,
And now she alone with her mother
Will spin on her wheel,
And sew, knit, and reel,
And cheerfully work for their living.

To gossip she never will roam,
She loves, and she stays at, her home,
Unless when a neighbour
In sickness does labour,
Then, kindly, she pays her a visit.

With Bible she stands by her bed,
And when some blest passage is read,
In prayer and in praises
Her sweet voice she raises
To Him who for sinners once died.

Well versed in her Bible is she,
Her language is artless and free,
Imparting pure joy,
That...

I had a dream, a strange, wild dream,
Said a dear voice at early light;
And even yet its shadows seem
To linger in my waking sight.

Earth, green with spring, and fresh with dew,
And bright with morn, before me stood;
And airs just wakened softly blew
On the young blossoms of the wood.

Birds sang within the sprouting shade,
Bees hummed amid the whispering grass,
And children prattled as they played
Beside the rivulet's dimpling glass

Fast climbed the sun: the flowers were flown,
There played no children in the glen;
For some were gone, and some were grown
To blooming dames and bearded men.

'Twas noon, 'twas summer: I beheld
Woods darkening in the flush of day,
And that bright rivulet spread and swelled,
A mighty stream, wi...

Yes; since she knows not need,
Nor walks in blindness,
I may without unkindness
A true thing tell:

Which would be truth, indeed,
Though worse in speaking,
Were her poor footsteps seeking
A pauper's cell.

I judge, then, better far
She now have sorrow,
Than gladness that to-morrow
Might know its knell. -

It may be men there are
Could make of union
A lifelong sweet communion -
A passioned spell;

But I, to save her name
And bring salvation
By altar-affirmation
And bridal bell;

I, by whose rash unshame
These tears come to her:-
My faith would more undo her
Than my farewell!

Chained to me, year by year
My moody madness
Would wither her old gladness
Like famine fell.

Persian, you rise
Aflame from climes of sacrifice
Where adulators sue,
And prostrate man, with brow abased,
Adheres to rites whose tenor traced
All worship hitherto.

Arch type of sway,
Meetly your over-ruling ray
You fling from Asia's plain,
Whence flashed the javelins abroad
Of many a wild incursive horde
Led by some shepherd Cain.

Mid terrors dinned
Gods too came conquerors from your Ind,
The book of Brahma throve;
They came like to the scythed car,
Westward they rolled their empire far,
Of night their purple wove.

Chemist, you breed
In orient climes each sorcerous weed
That energizes dream--
Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds,
Houris and hells, delirious screeds
And Calvin's last extreme.

...

Thine are all the gifts, O God!
Thine the broken bread;
Let the naked feet be shod,
And the starving fed.

Let Thy children, by Thy grace,
Give as they abound,
Till the poor have breathing-space,
And the lost are found.

Wiser than the miser's hoards
Is the giver's choice;
Sweeter than the song of birds
Is the thankful voice.

Welcome smiles on faces sad
As the flowers of spring;
Let the tender hearts be glad
With the joy they bring.

Happier for their pity's sake
Make their sports and plays,
And from lips of childhood take
Thy perfected praise

    John.        I’m glad I walk’d.        How fresh the meadows look
Above the river, and, but a month ago,
The whole hill-side was redder than a fox.
Is yon plantation where this byway joins
The turnpike?
    James.    Yes.
    John.        And when does this come by?
    James.    The mail? At one o’clock.
    John.        What is it now?
    James.    A quarter to.
    John.        Whose house is that I see?
No, not the County Member’s with the vane:
Up higher with the yew-tree by it, and half
A score of gables.
    James.    That?        Sir Edward Head’s:
But he’s abroad: the place is to be sold.
    John.        Oh, his. He was not broken.
    James.    No, sir, he,
Vex’d with a morbid devil in his blood
That veil’d the world with jaundic...

Sweet, sweet!
I rise to greet
The sapphire sky
The air slips by
On either side
As up I ride
On mounting wing,
And sing and sing -
Then reach my bliss,
The sun's great kiss;
And poise a space
To see his face,
Sweet, sweet,
In radiant grace,
Ah, sweet! ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet!
Beneath my feet
My nestlings call:
And down I fall
Unerring, true,
Through heaven's blue;
And haste to fill
Each noisy bill.
My brooding breast
Stills their unrest.
Sweet, sweet,
Their quick hearts beat,
Safe in the nest:
Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet!
Ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet
The calling sky
That bids me fly
Up--up--on high.
Sweet, sweet
The claiming earth;
It holds my nest
And dr...

Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.

O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.

O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?

Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.

Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.

Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander