Freedom

I

Once more I join the Thespian choir,
And taste the inspiring fount again:
O parent of the Grecian lyre,
Admit me to thy powerful strain
And lo, with ease my step invades
The pathless vale and opening shades,
Till now I spy her verdant seat;
And now at large I drink the sound,
While these her offspring, listening round,
By turns her melody repeat.
I see Anacreon smile and sing,
His silver tresses breathe perfume;
His cheek displays a second spring
Of roses taught by wine to bloom.
Away, deceitful cares, away,
And let me listen to his lay;
Let me the wanton pomp injoy,
While in smooth dance the light-wing'd Hours
Lead round his lyre it's patron powers,
Kind laughter and convivial joy.
Broke from the fetters of his native land,

XXIII.


I love the lyric muse!
For when mankind ran wild in groves,
Came holy Orpheus with his songs
And turned men's hearts from bestial loves,
From brutal force and savage wrongs;
Came Amphion, too, and on his lyre
Made such sweet music all the day
That rocks, instinct with warm desire,
Pursued him in his glorious way.

I love the lyric muse!
Hers was the wisdom that of yore
Taught man the rights of fellow-man--
Taught him to worship God the more
And to revere love's holy ban;
Hers was the hand that jotted down
The laws correcting divers wrongs--
And so came honor and renown
To bards and to their noble songs.

I love the lyric muse!
Old Homer sung unto the lyre,
Tyrtaeus, too, in ancient days--
Still, warmed...

A waft of perfume from a bit of lace
    Moved lightly by a passing woman's hand;
And on the common street, a sensuous grace
    Shone suddenly from some lost time and land.

Tall structures changed to dome and parapet;
    The stern-faced Church an oracle became;
In sheltered alcoves marble busts were set;
    And on the wall frail Lais wrote her name.

Phryne before her judges stood at bay,
    Fearing the rigour of Athenian laws;
Till Hyperides tore her cloak away,
    And bade her splendid beauty plead its cause.

Great Alexander walking in the dusk,
    Dreamed of the hour when Greek with Greek should meet;
From Thais' window attar breathed, and musk:
    His footsteps went no farther down the street.

Faint and more faint the pungent ...

The birds are pirates of her notes,
The blossoms steal her face's light;
The stars in ambush lie all day,
To take her glances for the night.
Her voice can shame rain-pelted leaves;
Young robin has no notes as sweet
In autumn, when the air is still,
And all the other birds are mute.

When I set eyes on ripe, red plums
That seem a sin and shame to bite,
Such are her lips, which I would kiss,
And still would keep before my sight.
When I behold proud gossamer
Make silent billows in the air,
Then think I of her head's fine stuff,
Finer than gossamer's, I swear.

The miser has his joy, with gold
Beneath his pillow in the night;
My head shall lie on soft warm hair,
And miser's know not that delight.
Captains that own their ships can boas...

Scene: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT

Persons: A LADY AND A POET


    THE POET

    Dimly I see your face: I hear your breath
    Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death
    And when you whisper, you but stir the air
    With a soft hush like summer's own despair.


    THE LADY (aloud)

    O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
    Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
    Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
    Let her no more endure the shame of day.


    THE POET

    A thousand ages have not made less bright
    The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
    Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
    That every son of man desires in dream.


 ...

Like winds that with the setting of the sun
    Draw to a quiet murmuring and cease,
So is her little struggle fought and done;
    And the brief fever and the pain
In a last sigh fade out and so release
The lately-breathing dust they may not hurt again.

Now all that Wilma was is made as naught:
    Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure;
The pretty air, the childish grace untaught,
    The innocent wiles,
    And all the sunny smiles,
The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure;
    The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high,
    The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye;
    Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined,
    And the gay impulse of her baby mind
    That none could tame,
That sent her spinning round,
    A spirit ...

Come away with me, Tom,
Term and talk are done;
My poor lads are reaping,
Busy every one.
Curates mind the parish,
Sweepers mind the court;
We'll away to Snowdon
For our ten days' sport;
Fish the August evening
Till the eve is past,
Whoop like boys, at pounders
Fairly played and grassed.
When they cease to dimple,
Lunge, and swerve, and leap,
Then up over Siabod,
Choose our nest, and sleep.
Up a thousand feet, Tom,
Round the lion's head,
Find soft stones to leeward
And make up our bed.
Eat our bread and bacon,
Smoke the pipe of peace,
And, ere we be drowsy,
Give our boots a grease.
Homer's heroes did so,
Why not such as we?
What are sheets and servants?
Superfluity!
Pray for wives and children
Sa...

A hush is over all the teeming lists,
And there is pause, a breath-space in the strife;
A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists
And vapors that obscure the sun of life.
And Ethiopia, with bosom torn,
Laments the passing of her noblest born.

She weeps for him a mother's burning tears--
She loved him with a mother's deepest love.
He was her champion thro' direful years,
And held her weal all other ends above.
When Bondage held her bleeding in the dust,
He raised her up and whispered, "Hope and Trust."

For her his voice, a fearless clarion, rung
That broke in warning on the ears of men;
For her the strong bow of his power he strung,
And sent his arrows to the very den
Where grim Oppression held his bloody place
And gloated o'er the mis'ries of...

A batter'd, wreck'd old man,
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
Pent by the sea, and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd, and nigh to death,
I take my way along the island's edge,
Venting a heavy heart.

I am too full of woe!
Haply, I may not live another day;
I can not rest, O God - I can not eat or drink or sleep,
Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,
Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee - commune with Thee,
Report myself once more to Thee.

Thou knowest my years entire, my life,
(My long and crowded life of active work - not adoration merely;)
Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth;
Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations;
Thou knowest how,...

Robert Rawlin! Frosts were falling
When the ranger's horn was calling
Through the woods to Canada.

Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,
Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,
Gone the summer's harvest mowing,
And again the fields are gray.
Yet away, he's away!
Faint and fainter hope is growing
In the hearts that mourn his stay.

Where the lion, crouching high on
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,
Glares o'er wood and wave away,
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,
Or as thunder spent and dying,
Come the challenge and replying,
Come the sounds of flight and fray.
Well-a-day! Hope and pray!
Some are living, some are lying
In their red graves far away.

Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,
Homeward faring, weary strang...

I
Here in the self is all that man can know
Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,
All the unearthly colour, all the glow,
Here in the self which withers like a flower;
Here in the self which fades as hours pass,
And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten
Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass
In which it sees its glory still unrotten.
Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,
Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,
Beauty herself, the universal mind,
Eternal April wandering alone;
The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,
Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.

II
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their ma...

I passed through the gates of the city,
The streets were strange and still,
Through the doors of the open churches
The organs were moaning shrill.

Through the doors and the great high windows
I heard the murmur of prayer,
And the sound of their solemn singing
Streamed out on the sunlit air;

A sound of some great burden
That lay on the world's dark breast,
Of the old, and the sick, and the lonely,
And the weary that cried for rest.

I strayed through the midst of the city
Like one distracted or mad.
"Oh, Life! Oh, Life!" I kept saying,
And the very word seemed sad.

I passed through the gates of the city,
And I heard the small birds sing,
I laid me down in the meadows
Afar from the bell-ringing.

In the depth and t...

    An Apologue.


("Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.")


No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define - what is a bird,
To classify by rote and book, nor fail
To mark its structure and to note the scale
Whereon its song might possibly be heard.
Thus far, no farther; - so he spake the word.
When of a sudden, - hark, the nightingale!


Oh deeper, higher than he could divine
That all-unearthly, untaught strain!    He saw
The plain, brown warbler, unabashed.    "Not mine"
(He cried) "the error of this fatal flaw.
No bird is this, it soars beyond my line,
Were it a bird, 't would answer...

O! were I one of the Olympian twelve,
Their godships should pass this into law,
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,
Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,
A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller's lips.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1.
The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I;
And the moon, all silve-proud,
Might as well be in a cloud.

2.
And O the spring the spring!
I lead the life of a king!
Couch'd in the teeming grass,
I spy each pretty lass.

3.
I look where no one dares,
And I st...

In days, my Kate, when life was new,
When, lulled with innocence and you,
I heard, in home's beloved shade,
The din the world at distance made;
When, every night my weary head
Sunk on its own unthorned bed,
And, mild as evening's matron hour,
Looks on the faintly shutting flower,
A mother saw our eyelids close,
And blest them into pure repose;
Then, haply if a week, a day,
I lingered from that home away,
How long the little absence seemed!
How bright the look of welcome beamed,
As mute you heard, with eager smile,
My tales of all that past the while!

Yet now, my Kate, a gloomy sea
Bolls wide between that home and me;
The moon may thrice be born and die,
Ere even that seal can reach mine eye.
Which used so oft, so quick to come,
S...

It is full summer now, the heart of June;
Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
Rich autumn time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June's messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of their own loveliness some violets lie
That will not look the gold sun in the face
...

    Youth has no fear of ill, by no cloudy days annoyed,
    But the old man's all hath fled, and his hopes have met their doom:
    The bud hath burst to flower, and the flower been long destroyed,
    The root also is withered; I no more can look for bloom.
    So I have said my say, and I have had my day,
    And sorrow, like a young storm, creeps dark upon my brow;
    Hopes, like to summer clouds, have all blown far away,
    And the world's sunny side is turned over with me now,
    And I am left a lame bird upon a withered bough.

    I look upon the past: 't is as black as winter days,
    But the worst is not yet over; there are blacker, days to come.
    O, I would I had but known of the wide world's many ways,
    But youth is ever blind, so I e'en must meet my do...

1.

In thy western halls of gold
When thou sittest in thy state,
Bards, that erst sublimely told
Heroic deeds, and sang of fate,
With fervour seize their adamantine lyres,
Whose chords are solid rays, and twinkle radiant fires.

2.

Here Homer with his nervous arms
Strikes the twanging harp of war,
And even the western splendour warms,
While the trumpets sound afar:
But, what creates the most intense surprise,
His soul looks out through renovated eyes.

3.

Then, through thy Temple wide, melodious swells
The sweet majestic tone of Maro's lyre:
The soul delighted on each accent dwells,
Enraptur'd dwells, not daring to respire,
The while he tells of grief around a funeral pyre.

4.

'Tis awful silence t...