Friendship

Full of life, now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States,
To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,
To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you.

When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible;
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me;
Fancying how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)

ONE Spring-morning bright and fair,

Roam'd a shepherdess and sang;
Young and beauteous, free from care,

Through the fields her clear notes rang:
So, Ia, Ia! le ralla, &c.

Of his lambs some two or three

Thyrsis offer'd for a kiss;
First she eyed him roguishly,

Then for answer sang but this:
So, Ia, Ia! le ralla, &c.

Ribbons did the next one offer,

And the third, his heart so true
But, as with the lambs, the scoffer

Laugh'd at heart and ribbons too,
Still 'twas Ia! le ralla, &c.

Yes, sad one of Sion,[1] if closely resembling,
    In shame and in sorrow, thy withered-up heart--
If drinking deep, deep, of the same "cup of trembling"
    Could make us thy children, our parent thou art,

Like thee doth our nation lie conquered and broken,
    And fallen from her head is the once royal crown;
In her streets, in her halls, Desolation hath spoken,
    And "while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down."[2]

Like thine doth her exile, mid dreams of returning,
    Die far from the home it were life to behold;
Like thine do her sons, in the day of their mourning,
    Remember the bright things that blest them of old.

Ah, well may we call her, like thee "the Forsaken,"[3]
    Her boldest are vanquished, her proude...

(After a glimpse of a certain monument in New York, during the Victory Celebration)


The thousand-windowed towers were all alight.
    Throngs of all nations filled that glittering way;
And, rich with dreams of the approaching day,
Flags of all nations trampled down the night.
No clouds, at sunset, die in airs as bright.
    No clouds, at dawn, awake in winds as gay;
    For Freedom rose in that august array,
Crowned with the stars and weaponed for the right.

Then, in a place of whispering leaves and gloom,
    I saw, too dark, too dumb for bronze or stone,
    One tragic head that bowed against the sky;
O, in a hush too deep for any tomb
    I saw Beethoven, dreadfully alone
        With his own grief, and his own majesty.

This cool quiet of trees
In the grey dusk of the north,
In the green half-dusk of the west,
Where fires still glow;
These glimmering fantasies
Of foliage branching forth
And drooping into rest;
Ye lovers, know
That in your wanderings
Beneath this arching brake
Ye must attune your love
To hushed words.
For here is the dreaming wisdom of
The unmovable things...
And more: - walk softly, lest ye wake
A thousand sleeping birds.

Sing to Love--for, oh, 'twas he
    Who won the glorious day;
Strew the wreaths of victory
    Along the conqueror's way.
Yoke the Muses to his car,
    Let them sing each trophy won;
While his mother's joyous star
    Shall light the triumph on.

Hail to Love, to mighty Love,
    Let spirits sing around;
While the hill, the dale, and grove,
    With "mighty Love" resound;
Or, should a sigh of sorrow steal
    Amid the sounds thus echoed o'er,
'Twill but teach the god to feel
    His victories the more.

See his wings, like amethyst
    Of sunny Ind their hue;
Bright as when, by Psyche kist,
    They trembled thro' and thro'.
Flowers spring beneath his feet;
    Angel forms beside him run;
While unnumbered lips repeat

Where dost thou careless lie,
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.

Are all th' Aonian springs
Dried up? lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius' harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings?
Or droop they as disgrac'd,
To see their seats and bowers by chatt'ring pies defac'd?

If hence thy silence be,
As 'tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.

What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only pi...

Both you two have
Relation to the grave:
And where
The funeral-trump sounds, you are there,

I shall be made,
Ere long, a fleeting shade:
Pray, come
And do some honour to my tomb.

Do not deny
My last request; for I
Will be
Thankful to you, or friends, for me.

(February 15 - September 28, 1894)


To V. G.

That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie
In the green peace within your gates, he came
To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy,
And, stricken as we were, we blessed his name:
Yet, like the Creature of Light that had been ours,
Soon of the sweet Earth disinherited,
He too must join, even with the Year's old flowers,
The unanswering generations of the Dead.
So stand we friends for you, who stood our friend
Through him that day; for now through him you know
That though where love was, love is till the end,
Love, turned of death to longing, like a foe,
Strikes: when the ruined heart goes forth to crave
Mercy of the high, austere, unpitying Grave.

Rise! they 'have' risen: of brave Aneurin ask
How they have scourged old foes, perfidious friends:
The Spirit of Caractacus descends
Upon the Patriots, animates their task;
Amazement runs before the towering casque
Of Arthur, bearing through the stormy field
The virgin sculptured on his Christian shield:
Stretched in the sunny light of victory bask
The Host that followed Urien as he strode
O'er heaps of slain; from Cambrian wood and moss
Druids descend, auxiliars of the Cross;
Bards, nursed on blue Plinlimmon's still abode,
Rush on the fight, to harps preferring swords,
And everlasting deeds to burning words!

What were this life without her?
Joy, whose young face is sweet
With dreams that flit about her,
And rapture wild of feet!

With hope, that knows no languor,
And love, that knows no sighs,
And mirth, like some rich anger,
High-sparkling in her eyes.

Come! bid adieu to Sorrow;
And arm in arm with Joy,
We 'll journey towards Tomorrow,
And let no Care decoy

Our souls from all clean Pleasures,
That take from Time's lean hand
The hour-glass he treasures,
And change to gold its sand.

I am a man! Let every one
Who is a man, too, spring
With joy beneath God's shining sun,
And leap on high, and sing!

To God's own image fair on earth
Its stamp I've power to show;
Down to the front, where heaven has birth
With boldness I dare go.

'Tis well that I both dare and can!
When I a maiden see,
A voice exclaims: thou art a man!
I kiss her tenderly.

And redder then the maiden grows,
Her bodice seems too tight
That I'm a man the maiden knows,
Her bodice therefore's tight.

Will she, perchance, for pity cry,
If unawares she's caught?
She finds that I'm a man then, why
By her is pity sought?

I am a man; and if alone
She sees me drawing near,
I make the emperor's daughter run,
Though ragged I ap...

As he said vanity, so vain say I,
Oh! vanity, O vain all under Sky;
Where is the man can say, lo, I have found
On brittle Earth a Consolation sound?
What is't in honour to be set on high?
No, they like Beasts and Sons of men shall dye,
And whil'st they live, how oft doth turn their fate;
He's now a captive that was King of late.
What is't in wealth, great Treasures to obtain?
No that's but labour, anxious care and pain.
He heaps up riches, and he heaps up sorrow,
It's his to day, but who's his heir to morrow?
What then? Content in pleasures canst thou find,
More vain then all, that's but to grasp the wind.
The sensual senses for a time they please.
Mean while the conscience rage, who shall appease?
What is't in beauty? No that's but a snare,
They're foul ...

'Tis pretty to be in Ballinderry,
    'Tis pretty to be in Ballindoon,
But 'tis prettier far in County Kerry
    Coortin' under the bran' new moon,
                Aroon, Aroon!

'Twas there by the bosom of blue Killarney
    They came by the hundther' a-coortin' me;
Sure I was the one to give back their blarney,
    An' merry was I to be fancy-free.

But niver a step in the lot was lighter,
    An' divvle a boulder among the bhoys,
Than Phelim O'Shea, me dynamither,
    Me illigant arthist in clock-work toys.

'Twas all for love he would bring his figgers
    Of iminent statesmen, in toy machines,
An' hould me hand as he pulled the thriggers
    An' scattered the thraytors to smithereens.

An' to see the Queen in her Crystial Pallus

The splendors of a southern sun
    Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
    And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
    And weaves a mystic spell;
A glowing grace that charms the soul--
    Whose glory none can tell.

Oh, warm sweet treasures of a sun
    Of endless fire and love;
Those dying embers are the flames
    From heavenly fires above.
Unto the water's edge they creep
    And bathe the seas in red;
Then die like shadows on the deep
    With glory cold and dead.

A ship--a lone, dark wanderer
    Upon the southern seas,
Speeds like a white-faced messenger
    Before the dying breeze.
Her masts are tipped with amethyst,
    A splendor all untold;
A crimson mantle wraps h...

Out of the East, as from an unknown shore,
Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,
Slumber and Dream, whom mortals all adore,
Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms:
Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest,
Laid like twin roses in one balmy nest.
Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow.
There is no other presence like to thine,
When thou approachest with thy babes divine,
Thy shadowy face above them bending low,
Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.
Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms,
And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed,
Within my bosom's depths, until its storms
With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed.
And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art
Arose from rest, and on my sleeping heart
Blew bubble...

[Read at Re-union of the G. A. T., Madison, Wis., July 4, 1872.]


After the battles are over,
    And the war drums cease to beat,
And no more is heard on the hillside
    The sound of hurrying feet,
Full many a noble action,
    That was done in the days of strife,
By the soldier is half forgotten,
    In the peaceful walks of life.

Just as the tangled grasses,
    In Summer's warmth and light,
Grow over the graves of the fallen
    And hide them away from sight,
So many an act of valor,
    And many a deed sublime,
Fade from the mind of the soldier,
    O'ergrown by the grass of time.

Not so should they be rewarded,
    Those noble deeds of old;
They should live forever and ever,
    When the heroes' hearts are cold...

Ah! no, no, it is nothing, surely nothing at all,
Only the wild-going wind round by the garden-wall,
For the dawn just now is breaking, the wind beginning to fall.

        Wind, wind! thou art sad, art thou kind?
        Wind, wind, unhappy! thou art blind,
        Yet still thou wanderest the lily-seed to find.

So I will sit, and think and think of the days gone by,
Never moving my chair for fear the dogs should cry,
Making no noise at all while the flambeau burns awry.

For my chair is heavy and carved, and with sweeping green behind
It is hung, and the dragons thereon grin out in the gusts of the wind;
On its folds an orange lies, with a deep gash cut in the rind.

        Wind, wind! thou art sad, art thou kind?
        Wind, wind, unhappy...