Friendship

I (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

II

My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the...

To kneel before some saintly shrine,
To breathe the health of airs divine,
Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,
The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.
I too, a palmer, take, as they
With staff and scallop-shell, my way
To feel, from burdening cares and ills,
The strong uplifting of the hills.

The years are many since, at first,
For dreamed-of wonders all athirst,
I saw on Winnipesaukee fall
The shadow of the mountain wall.
Ah! where are they who sailed with me
The beautiful island-studded sea?
And am I he whose keen surprise
Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?

Still, when the sun of summer burns,
My longing for the hills returns;
And northward, leaving at my back
The warm vale of the Merrimac,
I go to meet the winds of morn,
...

VII.

Fairies.


    Glory endures when calumny hath fled;
    And fairies show themselves, in friendly guise,
    To all who hold a trust beyond the dead,
    And all who pray, albeit so worldly-wise,
    With cheerful hearts or wildly-weeping eyes.
    They come and go when children are in bed
    To gladden them with dreams from out the skies
    And sanctify all tears that they have shed!
    Fairies are wing'd for wandering to and fro.
    They live in legends; they survive the Greeks.
    Wisdom is theirs; they live for us and grow,
    Like...

"I'm home again, my dear old Room,
I'm home again, and happy, too,
As, peering through the brightening gloom,
I find myself alone with you:
    Though brief my stay, nor far away,
    I missed you - missed you night and day -
    As wildly yearned for you as now. -
    Old Room, how are you, anyhow?

"My easy chair, with open arms,
Awaits me just within the door;
The littered carpet's woven charms
Have never seemed so bright before, -
    The old rosettes and mignonettes
    And ivy-leaves and violets,
    Look up as pure and fresh of hue
    As though baptized in morning dew.

"Old Room, to me your homely walls
Fold round me like the arms of love,
And over all my being falls
A blessing pure as from above -
    Even as a nestling ...

A village Chorus is supposed to be assembled, and about to commence its festive procession.


CHORUS.

THE festal day hail ye

With garlands of pleasure,

And dances' soft measure,
With rapture commingled
And sweet choral song.

DAMON.

Oh, how I yearn from out the crowd to flee!
What joy a secret glade would give to me!
Amid the throng, the turmoil here,
Confined the plain, the breezes e'en appear.

CHORUS.

Now order it truly,
That ev'ry one duly
May roam and may wander,
Now here, and now yonder,

The meadows along.

[The Chorus retreats gradually, and the song becomes fainter and fainter, till it dies away in the distance.]

DAMON.

In vain ye call, in vain would lure me on...

O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake,
My sweet, wild, fresh three-quarters of a year,
My one Oasis in the dust and drouth
Of city life! I was a sketcher then:
See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge,
Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built
When men knew how to build, upon a rock,
With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock:
And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,
New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,
Here lived the Hills—a Tudor-chimnied bulk
Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.
O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake
With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull
The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names,
Long-learned names of agaric, moss and fern,
Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks,
Who taug...

Ah, little did I think in time that's past,
By summer burnt, or numb'd by winter's blast,
Delving the ditch a livelihood to earn,
Or lumping corn out in a dusty barn;
With aching bones returning home at night,
And sitting down with weary hand to write;
Ah, little did I think, as then unknown,
Those artless rhymes I even blush'd to own
Would be one day applauded and approv'd,
By learning notic'd, and by genius lov'd.
God knows, my hopes were many, but my pain
Damp'd all the prospect which I hop'd to gain;
I hardly dar'd to hope.--Thou corner-chair,
In which I've oft slung back in deep despair,
Hadst thou expression, thou couldst easy tell
The pains and all that I have known too well:
'Twould be but sorrow's tale, yet still 'twould be
A tale of truth, and p...

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-
    Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
    Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
    In which your June has never passed away.
    Walk there awhile among my memories.

The sunburnt face in the willow shade
To the face in the water-mirror said,

"O deep mysterious face in the stream,
Art thou myself or am I thy dream?"

And the face deep down in the water's side
To the face in the upper air replied,

"I am thy dream, them poor worn face,
And this is thy heart's abiding place.

"Too much in the world, come back and be
Once more my dream-fellow with me,

"In the far-off untarnished years
Before thy furrows were washed with tears,

"Or ever thy serious creature eyes
Were aged with a mist of memories.

"Hast thou forgotten the long ago
In the garden where I used to flow,

"Among the hills, with the maple tree
And the roses blowing over me?--

"I who am now but a wraith of thi...

The summer day is closed, the sun is set:
Well they have done their office, those bright hours,
The latest of whose train goes softly out
In the red West. The green blade of the ground
Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig
Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun;
Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown
And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil,
From bursting cells, and in their graves await
Their resurrection. Insects from the pools
Have filled the air awhile with humming wings,
That now are still for ever; painted moths
Have wandered the blue sky, and died again;
The mother-bird hath broken for her brood
Their prison shell, or shoved them from the nest,
Plumed for their earliest flight. In bright alcoves,
In woodland cottages with ...

Because your voice was at my side
I gave him pain,
Because within my hand I held
Your hand again.

There is no word nor any sign
Can make amend,
He is a stranger to me now
Who was my friend.

I slept upon the Rice-boat
That, reef protected, lay
At anchor, where the palm-trees
Infringe upon the bay.
The windless air was heavy
With cinnamon and rose,
The midnight calm seemed waiting,
Too fateful for repose.

One joined me on the Rice-boat
With wild and waving hair,
Whose vivid words and laughter
Awoke the silent air.
Oh, beauty, bare and shining,
Fresh washen in the bay,
One well may love by moonlight
What one would not love by day!

Above among the cordage
The night wind hardly stirred,
The lapping of the ripples
Was all the sound we heard.
Love reigned upon the Rice-boat,
And Peace controlled the sea,
The spirit's consolation,
The senses' ecstasy.

Though many things and mighty
Are further...

Some day I shall rise and leave my friends
And seek you again through the world's far ends,
You whom I found so fair
(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),
My only god in the days that were.
My eager feet shall find you again,
Though the sullen years and the mark of pain
Have changed you wholly; for I shall know
(How could I forget having loved you so?),
In the sad half-light of evening,
The face that was all my sunrising.
So then at the ends of the earth I'll stand
And hold you fiercely by either hand,
And seeing your age and ashen hair
I'll curse the thing that once you were,
Because it is changed and pale and old
(Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!),
And I loved you before you were old and wise,
When the flame of youth was strong ...

        o dulces comitum valete coetus!
        CATULLUS.


No, never shall my soul forget
    The friends I found so cordial-hearted;
Dear shall be the day we met,
    And dear shall be the night we parted.

If fond regrets, however sweet,
    Must with the lapse of time decay,
Yet stall, when thus in mirth you meet,
    Fill high to him that's far away!

Long be the light of memory found
    Alive within your social glass;
Let that be still the magic round.
    O'er which Oblivion, dare not pass.

Bereave me not of Fancy's shadowy dreams,
Which won my heart, or when the gay career
Of life begun, or when at times a tear
Sat sad on memory's cheek--though loftier themes
Await the awakened mind to the high prize
Of wisdom, hardly earned with toil and pain,
Aspiring patient; yet on life's wide plain
Left fatherless, where many a wanderer sighs
Hourly, and oft our road is lone and long,
'Twere not a crime should we a while delay
Amid the sunny field; and happier they
Who, as they journey, woo the charm of song,
To cheer their way; till they forget to weep,
And the tired sense is hushed, and sinks to sleep.

I often thought to write to thee, what time
I almost fancied heaven-born, genius mine,
And fondly hoped my island harp to wake,
To some new strain sung for my country's sake.
'Twas a vain hope and yet its presence smiled
Upon my day dreams when I was a child,
And only faded when my heart grew cold,
For head and heart alike are getting old.
Had I been gifted, some bright lay would be,
With touching melody, poured forth for thee.
Now, what I think the best I wish for thee.

            *            *            *

May you never be a stranger;
    Ever living with your own,
With the same eyes beaming round you,
    That on your childhood shone.

Friendship knitting true hearts to you,
    From youth to kindly age;
And affection brightenin...

I

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
    A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
    Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
    Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
    Far off the noises of the world retreat;
    The loud vociferations of the street
    Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
    And leave my burden at this minster gate,
    Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
    To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
    While the eternal ages watch and wait.


II

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
    This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
    Birds build their nests; while ca...

A poet! He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff
Which art hath lodged within his hand—must laugh
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.
Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool
Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph.
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold;
And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree
Comes not by casting in a formal mould,
But from its own divine vitality.