Freedom

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,
What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose,
What marts of crystal, for the eyes of Thought
Hast builded on what Islands of Repose!
Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian,
Or piled Ionic, colonnading heights
That loom above long burst of mythic seas:
Vast gynaeceums of carnelian;
Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights,
Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze.

Where bulbous domes of coruscating ore
Cloud - like convulsive sunsets - lands that dream,
Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar,
Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream.
Tempestuous architecture-revelries;
Built melodies of marble or clear glass;
Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thought
In misty attitudes, whose majesties
...

I saw sweet Poetry turn troubled eyes
On shaggy Science nosing in the grass,
For by that way poor Poetry must pass
On her long pilgrimage to Paradise.
He snuffled, grunted, squealed; perplexed by flies,
Parched, weatherworn, and near of sight, alas,
From peering close where very little was
In dens secluded from the open skies.

But Poetry in bravery went down,
And called his name, soft, clear, and fearlessly;
Stooped low, and stroked his muzzle overgrown;
Refreshed his drought with dew; wiped pure and free
His eyes: and lo! laughed loud for joy to see
In those grey deeps the azure of her own.

I knew it the first of the summer,
    I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
    But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
    Couldn't we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
    To bind us, and nothing more?

There was not a word of folly
    Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
    Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects -
    The moon and the worlds above, -
And our talk was tinctured with science,
    And everything else, save love.

A wholly Platonic friendship
    You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
    The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
    Though both...

If I were a man, a young man, and knew what I know to-day,
I would look in the eyes of Life undaunted
    By any Fate that might threaten me.
I would give to the world what the world most wanted -
    Manhood that knows it can do and be;
    Courage that dares, and faith that can see
    Clear into the depths of the human soul,
    And find God there, and the ultimate goal,
If I were a man, a young man, and knew what I know to-day.

If I were a man, a young man, and knew what I know to-day,
    I would think of myself as the masterful creature
    Of all the Masterful plan;
    The Formless Cause, with form and feature;
    The Power that heeds not limit or ban;
    Man, wonderful man.
I would do good deeds, and forget them straightway;
    I would weave ...

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland’s sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
Had crept, perchance a hunter’s tale,
Of its wild mirth of waters lost
On the dark woods through which it tossed.

Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere
Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;
But who had raised its veil, or seen
The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

They sought it where the mountain brook
Its swift way to the valley took;
Along the rugged slope they clomb,
Their guide a thread of sound and foam.

Height after height they slowly won;
The fiery javelins of the sun
Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade
With rock and vine their steps delay...

For them that hope in Thee.... Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face, from the disturbance of men.

Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues.

Blessed be the Lord, for He hath shewn His wonderful mercy to me in a fortified city. - Psalm xxx.


Beauty and splendor were on every hand:
Yet strangely crawled dark shadows down the lanes,
Twisting across the fields, like dragon-shapes
That smote the air with blackness, and devoured
The life of light, and choked the smiling world
Till it grew livid with a sudden age -
The death of hope.

        O squandered happiness;
Vain dust of misery powdering life's fresh flower!
The sky was holy, but the earth was not.

Men ruled, but ruled in vain; since wretch...

All the long day the vapours played
    At blindfold in the city streets,
Their elfin fingers caught and stayed
    The sunbeams, as they wound their sheets
Into a filmy barricade
    'Twixt earth and where the sunlight beats.

A vagrant band of mischiefs these,
    With wings of grey and cobweb gown;
They live along the edge of seas,
    And creeping out on foot of down,
They chase and frolic, frisk and tease
    At blind-man's buff with all the town.

And when at eventide the sun
    Breaks with a glory through their grey,
The vapour-fairies, one by one,
Outspread their wings and float away
In clouds of colouring, that run
    Wine-like along the rim of day.

Athwart the beauty and the breast
    Of purpling airs they twirl and ...

Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood
On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude
Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
Out of our eyes, considering only this,
What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live, and win the final praise.

Though strife, ill fortune and harsh human need
Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
With agony; yet, patience - there shall come
Many great voices from life's outer sea,
Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.

The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue,
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the earth was green;
There is little colour, if any,
’Neath the sunlight now to be seen.

Then the rays of the sunset glinted
Through the blackwoods’ emerald bough
On an emerald sward, rose-tinted,
And spangled, and gemm’d; and now
The rays of the sunset redden
With a sullen and lurid frown,
From the skies that are dark and leaden,
To earth that is dusk and brown.

To right and to left extended
The uplands are blank and drear,
And their neutral tints are blended
With the dead leaves sombre and sere;
The cold grey mist from the still side
Of the l...

Take these flowers which, purple waving,
On the ruin'd rampart grew,
Where, the sons of freedom braving,
Rome's imperial standards flew.

Warriors from the breach of danger
Pluck no longer laurels there;
They but yield the passing stranger
Wild-flower wreaths the Beauty's hair.

This poem must be done to-day;
Then, I 'll e'en to it.
I must not dream my time away,--
I 'm sure to rue it.
The day is rather bright, I know
The Muse will pardon
My half-defection, if I go
Into the garden.
It must be better working there,--
I 'm sure it's sweeter:
And something in the balmy air
May clear my metre.

[In the Garden.]

Ah this is noble, what a sky!
What breezes blowing!
The very clouds, I know not why,
Call one to rowing.
The stream will be a paradise
To-day, I 'll warrant.
I know the tide that's on the rise
Will seem a torrent;
I know just how the leafy boughs
Are all a-quiver;
I know how many skiffs and scows
Are on the river.
I think I 'll just go out awhile
Before I write it;...

Poet, my master, come, tell me true,
    And how are your verses made?
Ah! that is the easiest thing to do: -
You take a cloud of a silvern hue,
A tender smile or a sprig of rue,
    With plenty of light and shade,

And weave them round in syllables rare,
    With a grace and skill divine;
With the earnest words of a pleading prayer,
With a cadence caught from a dulcet air,
A tale of love and a lock of hair,
    Or a bit of a trailing vine.

Or, delving deep in a mine unwrought,
    You find in the teeming earth
The golden vein of a noble thought;
The soul of a statesman still unbought,
Or a patriot's cry with anguish fraught
    For the land that gave him birth.

A brilliant youth who has lost his way
    On the winding road of l...

I

Within the mind strong fancies work.
A deep delight the bosom thrills
Oft as I pass along the fork
Of these fraternal hills:
Where, save the rugged road, we find
No appanage of human kind,
Nor hint of man; if stone or rock
Seem not his handywork to mock
By something cognizably shaped;
Mockery or model roughly hewn,
And left as if by earthquake strewn,
Or from the Flood escaped:
Altars for Druid service fit;
(But where no fire was ever lit,
Unless the glow-worm to the skies
Thence offer nightly sacrifice)
Wrinkled Egyptian monument;
Green moss-grown tower; or hoary tent;
Tents of a camp that never shall be razed
On which four thousand years have gazed!

II

Ye plough-shares sparkling on the slopes!
Ye snow-wh...

    'Tis not by selfish miser's greed
        The great rewards of love are given;
    'Tis not the cynic's haughty creed
        Which gladly makes this world a heaven;
    But tender word and loving deed
        Increase the angel joys of living,
    And mortals gain life's grandest meed
        By acts of giving and forgiving.

    Let warriors bold with armies fight
        Their awful battles brave and gory,
    To reap the harvest of their might
        And fill a gaping world with glory!
    The humble heroes, out of sight,
        Where hidden tears and woes are striving,
    Win victories for truth and right
        By deeds of giving and forgiving.

    Let mighty kings of loyal lands
        Despise the faithful sons of duty,
   ...

In my dream, methought I trod,
Yesternight, a mountain road;
Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
High as eagle's flight, it ran.

Overhead, a roof of cloud
With its weight of thunder bowed;
Underneath, to left and right,
Blankness and abysmal night.

Here and there a wild-flower blushed,
Now and then a bird-song gushed;
Now and then, through rifts of shade,
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played.

But the goodly company,
Walking in that path with me,
One by one the brink o'erslid,
One by one the darkness hid.

Some with wailing and lament,
Some with cheerful courage went;
But, of all who smiled or mourned,
Never one to us returned.

Anxiously, with eye and ear,
Questioning that shadow drear,
Never hand in token stirr...

In the cedar shadow sleeping,
Where cool grass and fragrant glooms
Oft at noon have lur’d me, creeping
From your darken’d palace rooms:
I, who in your train at morning
Stroll’d and sang with joyful mind,
Heard, at evening, sounds of warning;
Heard the hoarse boughs labour in the wind.

Who are they, O pensive Graces,
For I dream’d they wore your forms
Who on shores and sea-wash’d places
Scoop the shelves and fret the storms?
Who, when ships are that way tending,
Troop across the flushing sands.
To all reefs and narrows wending,
With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands

Yet I see, the howling levels
Of the deep are not your lair;
And your tragic-vaunted revels
Are less lonely than they were.
In a Tyrian galley steering
Fro...

TO J. FOX, JR.


You remember how the mist,
When we climbed to Devil's Den,
Pearly in the mountain glen,
And above us, amethyst,
Throbbed or circled? then away,
Through the wildwoods opposite,
Torn and scattered, morning-lit,
Vanished into dewy gray? -
Vague as in romance we saw,
From the fog, one riven trunk,
Talon-like with branches shrunk,
Thrust a monster dragon claw.
And we climbed for hours through
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To a wooded rock that shows
Undulating leagues of blue
Summits; mountain-chains that lie
Dark with forests; bar on bar,
Ranging their irregular
Purple peaks beneath a sky
Soft as slumber. Range on range
Billow their enormous spines,
Where the rocks and priestly pines
Sit eternal, wi...

    *        *        *        *        *        *

They come!--Be firm--in silence rally!
The long-knives our retreat have found!
Hark!--their tramp is in the valley,
And they hem the forest round!
The burdened boughs with pale scouts quiver,
The echoing hills tumultuous ring,
While across the eddying river
Their barks, like foaming war-steeds, spring!
The blood-hounds darken land and water;
They come--like buffaloes for slaughter!

See their glittering ranks advancing,
See upon the free winds dancing
Pennon proud and gaudy plume.
The strangers come in evil hour,
In pomp, and panoply, and power!
But, while upon our tribes they lower,
Think they our manly hearts will cower
To meet a warrior's doom?

Right they forget while strengt...