Friendship

I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled on,
There one that ruffled in a manly pose
For all his timid heart, there that slow man,
That meditative man, John Synge, and those
Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane,
Found pride established in humility,
A scene well Set and excellent company.
They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman's powerful character
Could keep a Swallow to...

Accompanying manuscripts presented to a friend.


'T is said that in the Holy Land
The angels of the place have blessed
The pilgrim's bed of desert sand,
Like Jacob's stone of rest.

That down the hush of Syrian skies
Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings
The song whose holy symphonies
Are beat by unseen wings;

Till starting from his sandy bed,
The wayworn wanderer looks to see
The halo of an angel's head
Shine through the tamarisk-tree.

So through the shadows of my way
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear,
So at the weary close of day
Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.

That pilgrim pressing to his goal
May pause not for the vision's sake,
Yet all fair things within his soul
The thought of it shall w...

Enough of climbing toil! Ambition treads
Here, as 'mid busier scenes, ground steep and rough,
Or slippery even to peril! and each step,
As we for most uncertain recompence
Mount toward the empire of the fickle clouds,
Each weary step, dwarfing the world below,
Induces, for its old familiar sights,
Unacceptable feelings of contempt,
With wonder mixed that Man could e'er be tied,
In anxious bondage, to such nice array
And formal fellowship of petty things!
Oh! 'tis the 'heart' that magnifies this life,
Making a truth and beauty of her own;
And moss-grown alleys, circumscribing shades,
And gurgling rills, assist her in the work
More efficaciously than realms outspread,
As in a map, before the adventurer's gaze
Ocean and Earth contending for regard.
The ...

For G. H.



Say, does that stupid earth
Where they have laid her,
Bind still her sullen mirth,
Mirth which betrayed her?
Do the lush grasses hold,
Greenly and glad,
That brittle-perfect gold
She alone had?

Smugly the common crew,
Over their knitting,
Mourn her -- as butchers do
Sheep-throats they're slitting!
She was my enemy,
One of the best of them.
Would she come back to me,
God damn the rest of them!

Damn them, the flabby, fat,
Sleek little darlings!
We gave them tit for tat,
Snarlings for snarlings!
Squashy pomposities,
Shocked at our violence,
Let not one tactful hiss
Break her new silence!

Maids of antiquity,
Look well upon her;
Ice was her chastity,
Spotless h...

When pearl and gold, o'er deeps of musk,
The moon curves, silvering the dusk,
As in a garden, dreaming,
A lily slips its dewy husk
A firefly in its gleaming,
I of my garden am a guest;
My garden, that, in beauty dressed
Of simple shrubs and oldtime flowers,
Chats with me of the perished hours,
When she companioned me in life,
Living remote from care and strife.

It says to me:"How sad and slow
The hours of daylight come and go,
Until the Night walks here again
With moon and starlight in her train,
And she and I with perfumed words
Of winds and waters, dreaming birds,
And flowers and crickets and the moon,
For hour on hour, in soul commune.

And you, and you,
Sit here and listen in the dew
For her, the love, you used to know,<...

Beguiled into forgetfulness of care
Due to the day's unfinished task; of pen
Or book regardless, and of that fair scene
In Nature's prodigality displayed
Before my window, oftentimes and long
I gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam
Of beauty never ceases to enrich
The common light; whose stillness charms the air,
Or seems to charm it, into like repose;
Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear,
Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits
With emblematic purity attired
In a white vest, white as her marble neck
Is, and the pillar of the throat would be
But for the shadow by the drooping chin
Cast into that recess, the tender shade,
The shade and light, both there and everywhere,
And through the very atmosphere she breathes,
Broad, clear, and toned harmon...

Time and I have fallen out;
We, who were such steadfast friends.
So slowly has it come about
That none may tell when it began;
Yet sure am I a cunning plan
Runs through it all;
And now, beyond recall,
Our friendship ends,
And ending, there remains to me
The memory of disloyalty.

Long years ago Time tripping came
With promise grand,
And sweet assurances of fame;
And hand in hand
Through fairy-land
Went he and I together
In bright and golden weather.
Then, then I had not learned to doubt,
For friends were gods, and faith was sure,
And words were truth, and deeds were pure,
Before we had our falling out;
And life, all hope, was fair to see,
When Time made promise sweet to me.

When first my faithless friend grew cold<...

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
    One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
    Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.

Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
    As astrologers and seers of eld;
Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,
    Like the burning stars, which they beheld.

Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
    God hath written in those stars above;
But not less in the bright flowerets under us
    Stands the revelation of his love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation,
    Written all over this great world of ours;
Making evident our own creation,
    In these stars of earth, these golden flowers.

And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing,
    ...

        The ordered intermingling
            of the real and the dream,--
        The mill above the river,
            and the mist above the stream;
        The life of ceaseless labor,
            brave with song and cheery call--
        The radiant skies of evening,
            with its rainbow o'er us all.


        AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE!--Is this
            her presence here with me,
        Or but a vain creation of
            a lover's memory?

        A fair, illusive vision
            that would vanish into air
        Dared I even touch the silence
            with the whisper of a prayer?

        Nay, let me then believe in all
            the blended false a...

Dearer to me, thou pile of dust!
Tho' with the wild flow'r simply crown'd,
Than the vast dome or beauteous bust,
By genius form'd, by wit renown'd.

Wave, thou wild flow'r! for ever wave,
O'er my lov'd relic of delight;
My tears shall bathe her green-rob'd grave
More than the dews of heav'n by night.

Methinks my Delia bids me go,
Says, "Florio, dry that fruitless tear!
Feed not a wild flow'r with thy woe,
Thy long-lov'd Delia is not here.

"No drop of feeling from her eye
Now starts to hear thy sorrows speak;
And, did thy bosom know one joy,
No smile would bloom upon her cheek.

"Pale, wan, and torpid, droops that cheek,
Whereon thy lip impress'd its red;
Those eyes, which Florio taught to speak,
Unnotic'd close amid the dea...

Like flowers sequestered from the sun
And wind of summer, day by day
I dwindled paler, whilst my hair
Showed the first tinge of grey.

"Oh, what is life, that we should live?
Or what is death, that we must die?
A bursting bubble is our life:
I also, what am I?"

"What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,
That I may grieve," my sister said;
And stayed a white embroidering hand
And raised a golden head:

Her tresses showed a richer mass,
Her eyes looked softer than my own,
Her figure had a statelier height,
Her voice a tenderer tone.

"Some must be second and not first;
All cannot be the first of all:
Is not this, too, but vanity?
I stumble like to fall.

"So yesterday I read the acts
Of Hector and each clangorous ...

I've watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless! not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.

Verses of Hippolyta to her Husband.


They tell me thou'rt the favored guest
    Of every fair and brilliant throng;
No wit like thine to wake the jest,
    No voice like thine to breathe the song.
And none could guess, so gay thou art,
That thou and I are far apart.
Alas, alas! how different flows,
    With thee and me the time away!
Not that I wish thee sad, heaven knows--
    Still if thou canst, be light and gay;
I only know that without thee
The sun himself is dark for me.

Do I put on the jewels rare
Thou'st always loved to see me wear?
Do I perfume the locks that thou
So oft hast braided o'er my brow,
Thus deckt thro' festive crowds to run,
    And all the assembled world to see,--
All but the one, the absent one,

    The morning wakes in shadowy mantle gray,
    The darksome woods their glimmering skirts unfold,
    Prone from the cliff the falcon wheels her way,
    And long and loud the bell's slow chime is tolled.

    The reddening light gains fast upon the skies,
    And far away the glistening vapours sail,
    Down the rough steep the accustomed hedger hies,
    And the stream winds in brightness through the vale.

    Mark how those riven rocks on either shore
    Uplift their bleak and furrowed fronts on high;
    How proudly desolate their foreheads hoar,
    That meet the earliest sunbeams of the sky!

    Bound for yon dusky mart,[2] with pennants gay,
    The tall bark, on the winding water's line,
    Between the riven cliffs slow plies he...

Oft have I caught, upon a fitful breeze,
Fragments of far-off melodies,
With ear not coveting the whole,
A part so charmed the pensive soul.
While a dark storm before my sight
Was yielding, on a mountain height
Loose vapours have I watched, that won
Prismatic colours from the sun;
Nor felt a wish that heaven would show
The image of its perfect bow.
What need, then, of these finished Strains?
Away with counterfeit Remains!
An abbey in its lone recess,
A temple of the wilderness,
Wrecks though they be, announce with feeling
The majesty of honest dealing.
Spirit of Ossian! if imbound
In language thou may'st yet be found,
If aught (entrusted to the pen
Or floating on the tongues of men,
Albeit shattered and impaired)
Subsist thy dignity to...

Amid the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth; and there you learned,
From years of quiet industry, to love
The living Beings by your own fireside,
With such a strong devotion, that your heart
Is slow to meet the sympathies of them
Who look upon the hills with tenderness,
And make dear friendships with the streams and groves.
Yet we, who are transgressors in this kind,
Dwelling retired in our simplicity
Among the woods and fields, we love you well,
Joanna! and I guess, since you have been
So distant from us now for two long years,
That you will gladly listen to discourse,
However trivial, if you thence be taught
That they, with whom you once were happy, talk
Familiarly of you and of old times.
While I was seated, now some ten days past,

Severe the proof the Grecian youth was doomed to undergo,
Before he might what lurks beneath the Eleusinia know
Art thou prepared and ripe, the shrine the inner shrine to win,
Where Pallas guards from vulgar eyes the mystic prize within?
Knowest thou what bars thy way? how dear the bargain thou dost make,
When but to buy uncertain good, sure good thou dost forsake?
Feel'st thou sufficient strength to brave the deadliest human fray,
When heart from reason sense from thought, shall rend themselves away?
Sufficient valor, war with doubt, the hydra-shape, to wage;
And that worst foe within thyself with manly soul engage?
With eyes that keep their heavenly health the innocence of youth
To guard from every falsehood, fair beneath the mask of truth?
Fly, if thou canst not trust thy hear...

Years since (but names to me before),
Two sisters sought at eve my door;
Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
A gray old farm-house in the West.

How fresh of life the younger one,
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun!
Her gravest mood could scarce displace
The dimples of her nut-brown face.

Wit sparkled on her lips not less
For quick and tremulous tenderness;
And, following close her merriest glance,
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance.

Timid and still, the elder had
Even then a smile too sweetly sad;
The crown of pain that all must wear
Too early pressed her midnight hair.

Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
Her modest lips were sweet with song;
A memory haunted all her words
Of clover-fields and singing...