Friendship

Recorders ages hence!
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior I will tell you what to say of me;
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend, the lover's portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him and freely pour'd it forth,
Who often walk'd lonesome walks, thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
Who pensive, away from one he lov'd, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away, through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand, they twain, apart from other men,
Who oft as he saunter'd th...

        Nay, nay, Antonio! nay, thou shalt not blame her,
    My Gracia, who hath so deserted me.
        Thou art my friend, but if thou dost defame her
    I shall not hesitate to challenge thee.

        "Curse and forget her?" So I might another,
    One not so bounteous-natured or so fair;
        But she, Antonio, she was like no other -
    I curse her not, because she was so rare.

        She was made out of laughter and sweet kisses;
    Not blood, but sunshine, through her blue veins ran
        Her soul spilled over with its wealth of blisses;
    She was too great for loving but a man.

        None but a god could keep so rare a creature:
    I blame her not for her inconstancy;
        When I recall each radiant smile and feature,
    ...

The tropic day's redundant charms
    Cool twilight soothes away,
The sun slips down behind the palms
    And leaves the landscape grey.
    I want to take you in my arms
    And kiss your lips away!

I wake with sunshine in my eyes
    And find the morning blue,
A night of dreams behind me lies
    And all were dreams of you!
    Ah, how I wish the while I rise,
    That what I dream were true.

The weary day's laborious pace,
    I hasten and beguile
By fancies, which I backwards trace
    To things I loved erstwhile;
    The weary sweetness of your face,
    Your faint, illusive smile.

The silken softness of your hair
    Where faint bronze shadows are,
Your strangely slight and youthful air,
    No passions seem to ...

    I

    O wonderful and wingèd flow'r,
    That hoverest in the garden-close,
    Finding in mazes of the rose,
    The beauty of a Summer hour!

    O symbol of Impermanence,
    Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
    A word that in her song is sung,
    Appealing to the inner sense!

    Of that great mystic harmony,
    All lovely things are notes and words -
    The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
    The flame-white stars, the surging sea,

    The aureate light of sudden dawn,
    The sunset's crimson afterglow,
    The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
    The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.

    Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
    A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
    From Nature's multi...

'Tis an old deserted homestead
On the outskirts of the town,
Where the roof is all moss-covered,
And the walls are tumbling down;
But around that little cottage
Do my brightest mem'ries cling,
For 'twas there I spent the moments
Of my youth,--life's happy spring.

I remember how I used to
Swing upon the old front gate,
While the robin in the tree tops
Sung a night song to his mate;
And how later in the evening,
As the beaux were wont to do,
Mr. Perkins, in the parlor,
Sat and sparked my sister Sue.

There my mother--heaven bless her!--
Kissed or spanked as was our need,
And by smile or stroke implanted
In our hearts fair virtue's seed;
While my father, man of wisdom,
Lawyer keen, and farmer stout,
Argued long with neighb...

From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily"


O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung silvering long windows of your room,
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for I know not what!
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's
Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:
The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:
Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:
And underneath her window b...

How solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty--as the men file by where I stand;
As the faces, the masks appear--as I glance at the faces, studying the masks;
(As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you are;)
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to each in the ranks, and to you;
I see behind each mask, that wonder, a kindred soul;
O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are:
The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
Waiting, secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab, O friend!

'Tis a little room, my friend;
A baby-walk from end to end;
All the things look sadly real,
This hot noontide's Unideal.
Seek not refuge at the casement,
There's no pasture for amazement
But a house most dim and rusty,
And a street most dry and dusty;
Seldom here more happy vision
Than water-cart's blest apparition,
We'll shut out the staring space,
Draw the curtains in its face.

Close the eyelids of the room,
Fill it with a scarlet gloom:
Lo! the walls on every side
Are transformed and glorified;
Ceiled as with a rosy cloud
Furthest eastward of the crowd,
Blushing faintly at the bliss
Of the Titan's good-night kiss,
Which her westward sisters share,--
Crimson they from breast to hair.
'Tis the faintest lends its dye
To...

i.

I tell thee Sweet! there lives not on the earth
    A love like mine in all the height and girth
And all the vast completion of the sphere.
I should be proud, to-day, to shed a tear
If I could weep. But tears are most denied
When most besought; and joys are sanctified
    By joys' undoing in this world of ours
From dusk to dawn and dawn to eventide.


ii.

Wert thou a marble maid and I endow'd
    With power to move thee from thy seeming shroud
Of frozen splendour,--all thy whiteness mine
And all the glamour, all the tender shine
Of thy glad eyes,--ah God! if this were so,
And I the loosener, in the summer-glow,
    Of thy long tresses! I were licensed then
To gaze, unchidden, on thy limbs of snow.


iii.

...

Now the shiades o’ the elems da stratch muore an muore,
Vrom the low-zinkàn zun in the west o’ the sky;
An’ the mâidens da stan out in clusters avore
The doors, var to chatty an’ zee vo’ke goo by.

An’ ther cuombs be a-zet in ther bunches o’ hiair,
An’ ther curdles1 da hang roun’ ther necks lily-white,
An’ ther cheëaks tha be ruosy, ther shoulders be biare,
Ther looks tha be merry, ther lims tha be light.

An’ the times have a been but tha cëant be noo muore
When I, too, had my jây under evemen’s dim sky,
When my Fanny did stan’ out wi’ others avore
Her door, var to chatty an’ zee vo’ke goo by.

An’ up there, in the green, is her own honey-zuck,
That her brother trâin’d up roun’ her winder; an’ there
Is the ruose an’ the jessamy, where she did pluck
...

Just when the gentle hand of spring
Came fringing the trees with bud and leaf,
And when the blades the warm suns bring
Were given glad promise of golden sheaf;
Just when the birds began to sing
Joy hymns after their winter's grief,
I wandered weary to a place;
Tired of toil, I sought for rest,
Where Nature wore her mildest grace --
I went where I was more than guest.
Strange, tall trees rose as if they fain
Would wear as crowns the clouds of skies;
The sad winds swept with low refrain
Through branches breathing softest sighs;
And o'er the field and down the lane
Sweet flowers, the dreams of Paradise,
Bloomed up into this world of pain,
Where all that's fairest soonest dies;
And 'neath the trees a little stream
Went winding slowly round and round...

Up this green woodland-ride let’s softly rove,
And list the nightingale - she dwells just here.
Hush ! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love ;
For here I’ve heard her many a merry year -
At morn, at eve, nay, all the live-long day,
As though she lived on song. This very spot,
Just where that old-man’s-beard all wildly trails
Rude arbours o’er the road, and stops the way -
And where that child its blue-bell flowers hath got,
Laughing and creeping through the mossy rails -
There have I hunted like a very boy,
Creeping on hands and knees through matted thorn
To find her nest, and see her feed her young.
And vainly did I many hours employ :
All seemed as hidden as a thought unborn.
And where those crimping fern-lea...

WRITTEN IN IRELAND. 1799.


Of all my happiest hours of joy,
    And even I have had my measure,
When hearts were full, and every eye
    Hath kindled with the light of pleasure,
An hour like this I ne'er was given,
    So full of friendship's purest blisses;
Young Love himself looks down from heaven,
    To smile on such a day as this is.
        Then come, my friends, this hour improve,
            Let's feel as if we ne'er could sever;
And may the birth of her we love
Be thus with joy remembered ever!

Oh! banish every thought to-night,
    Which could disturb our soul's communion;
Abandoned thus to dear delight,
    We'll even for once forget the Union!
On that let statesmen try their powers,
    And tremble o'er the rights they'd ...

Never enlivened with the liveliest ray
That fosters growth or checks or cheers decay,
Nor by the heaviest rain-drops more deprest,
This Flower, that first appeared as summer's guest,
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves
And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.
When files of stateliest plants have ceased to bloom,
One after one submitting to their doom,
When her coevals each and all are fled,
What keeps her thus reclined upon her lonesome bed?

The old mythologists, more impressed than we
Of this late day by character in tree
Or herb, that claimed peculiar sympathy,
Or by the silent lapse of fountain clear,
Or with the language of the viewless air
By bird or beast made vocal, sought a cause
To solve the mystery, not in Nature's laws
But in Man'...

A LAMENT

I

Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. `What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own.' The presence of a ONE,

        The best belov'd, who loveth me the best,

is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen and crushes it into flatness.

II

The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel th...

Alone it stands in Poesy's fair land,
    A temple by the muses set apart;
    A perfect structure of consummate art,
By artists builded and by genius planned.
Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand,
    Beyond the ken of the untutored heart,
    Like a fine carving in a common mart,
Only the favored few will understand.
A chef-d'oeuvre toiled over with great care,
    Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by,
A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire,
An ancient bit of pottery, too rare
    To please or hold aught save the special eye,
These only with the sonnet can compare.

Glide, gentle streams, and bear
Along with you my tear
To that coy girl
Who smiles, yet slays
Me with delays,
And strings my tears as pearl.

See! see, she's yonder set,
Making a carcanet
Of maiden-flowers!
There, there present
This orient
And pendant pearl of ours.

Then say I've sent one more
Gem to enrich her store;
And that is all
Which I can send,
Or vainly spend,
For tears no more will fall.

Nor will I seek supply
Of them, the spring's once dry;
But I'll devise,
Among the rest,
A way that's best
How I may save mine eyes.

Yet say - should she condemn
Me to surrender them
Then say my part
Must be to weep
Out them, to keep
A poor, yet loving heart.

Say too, she...

She rode o'er hill, she rode o'er plain,
She rode by fields of barley,
By morning-glories filled with rain,
And beechen branches gnarly.

She rode o'er plain, she rode o'er hill,
By orchard land and berry;
Her face was buoyant as the rill,
Her eyes and heart were merry,

A bird sang here, a bird sang there,
Then blithely sang together,
Sang sudden greetings every where,
"Good-morrow!" and "good weather!"

The sunlight's laughing radiance
Laughed in her radiant tresses;
The bold breeze set her curls a-dance,
Made red her lips with kisses.

"Why ride ye here, why ride ye there,
Why ride ye here so merry?
The sunlight living in your hair,
And in your cheek the cherry?

"Why ride ye with your sea-green plumes,
Your...