Friendship

Quel rosignuol che sì soave piagne.

THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE REMINDS HIM OF HIS UNHAPPY LOT.


    Yon nightingale, whose bursts of thrilling tone,
Pour'd in soft sorrow from her tuneful throat,
Haply her mate or infant brood bemoan,
Filling the fields and skies with pity's note;
Here lingering till the long long night is gone,
Awakes the memory of my cruel lot--
But I my wretched self must wail alone:
Fool, who secure from death an angel thought!
O easy duped, who thus on hope relies!
Who would have deem'd the darkness, which appears,
From orbs more brilliant than the sun should rise?
Now know I, made by sad experience wise,
That Fate would teach me by a life of tears,
On wings how fleeting fast all earthly rapture flies!

WRANG...

I sang my songs for the rest,
For you I am still;
The tree of my song is bare
On its shining hill.

For you came like a lordly wind,
And the leaves were whirled
Far as forgotten things
Past the rim of the world.

The tree of my song stands bare
Against the blue,
I gave my songs to the rest,
Myself to you.

Oh love! that stronger art than Wine,
Pleasing Delusion, Witchery divine,
Wont to be priz'd above all Wealth,
Disease that has more Joys than Health;
Though we blaspheme thee in our Pain,
And of Tyranny complain,
We are all better'd by thy Reign.

What Reason never can bestow,
We to this useful Passion owe:
Love wakes the dull from sluggish ease,
And learns a Clown the Art to please:
Humbles the Vain, kindles the Cold,
Makes Misers free, and Cowards bold;
And teaches airy Fops to think.

When full brute Appetite is fed,
And choaked the Glutton lies and dead;
Thou new Spirits dost dispense,
And fine'st the gross Delights of Sense.

Virtue's unconquerable Aid
That against Nature can persuade;
And makes a roving Mind retire

When friendly summer calls again,
Calls again
Her little fifers to these hills,
We'll go we two to that arched fane
Of leafage where they prime their bills
Before they start to flood the plain
With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.
" We'll go," I sing; but who shall say
What may not chance before that day!

And we shall see the waters spring,
Waters spring
From chinks the scrubby copses crown;
And we shall trace their oncreeping
To where the cascade tumbles down
And sends the bobbing growths aswing,
And ferns not quite but almost drown.
" We shall," I say; but who may sing
Of what another moon will bring!

Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those:
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
If to her share some female errors fall,

I


Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Far to the East lay the ocean paling
Under the skies of Augustine.--
There, in the boat as we sat together,
Soft in the glow of the turquoise weather,
Light as the foam or a seagull's feather,
Fair of form and of face serene,
Sweet at my side I felt you lean,
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.


II


Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Pine and palm, to the West, hung, trailing
Under the skies of Augustine.--
Was it the wind that sighed above you?
Was it the wave that whispered of you?
Was it my soul that said "I love you"?
Was it your heart that murmured between,
Answeri...

Of all the sweet visions that come unto me
Of happy refreshment by land or by sea,
Like oases where in life's desert I roam,
Is nothing so pleasant as Holiday Home.

I climb to the top of the highest of hills
And look to the west with affectionate thrills,
And fancy I stand by the emerald side
Of charming Geneva, like Switzerland's pride.

In distant perspective unruffled it lies,
Except for the packet that paddles and plies,
And puffing its way like a pioneer makes
Its daily go-round o'er this pearl of the lakes.

Untroubled except for the urchins that come
From many a haunt that is never a home,
Instinctive as ducklings to swim and to wade,
Scarce knowing aforetime why water was made.

All placid except for the dip of the oar
Of the ...

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they -
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.

Black Monday black as its school-room ink -
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And its frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first...

1.
Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our Mother's bosom - Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!

2.
Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold,
Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown,
And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.

3.
And whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands
Watching the beck of Mutability
Delays to execute her high commands,
And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,

4.
Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,
And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;
Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.

5.
I curse thee by ...

Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides methinks are dead.

But born, and like a short delight,
I glided by my parents' sight.
That done, the harder fates denied
My longer stay, and so I died.
If, pitying my sad parents' tears,
You'll spill a tear or two with theirs,
And with some flowers my grave bestrew,
Love and they'll thank you for't. Adieu.

If chance some pensive stranger, hither led,
His bosom glowing from majestic views,
Temple and tower 'mid the bright landscape's hues,
Should ask who sleeps beneath this lowly bed?
A maid of sorrow. To the cloistered scene,
Unknown and beautiful a mourner came,
Seeking with unseen tears to quench the flame
Of hapless love: yet was her look serene
As the pale moonlight in the midnight aisle;
Her voice was gentle and a charm could lend,
Like that which spoke of a departed friend;
And a meek sadness sat upon her smile!
Now, far removed from every earthly ill,
Her woes are buried, and her heart is still.

Sailors there are of the gentlest breed,
Yet strong, like every goodly thing;
The discipline of arms refines,
And the wave gives tempering.
The damasked blade its beam can fling;
It lends the last grave grace:
The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman
In Titian's picture for a king,
Are of hunter or warrior race.

In social halls a favored guest
In years that follow victory won,
How sweet to feel your festal fame
In woman's glance instinctive thrown:
Repose is yours--your deed is known,
It musks the amber wine;
It lives, and sheds a light from storied days
Rich as October sunsets brown,
Which make the barren place to shine.

But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
There's a light and a shadow on eve...

    I.    THE FLUKE

    For two years you went
    Through all the worst of it,
    Men fell around you, but you did not fall.
    On the Somme when the air was a sea
    Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,
    Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch.
    And once when you watched from a village tower
    (At Longueval, was it?) between our guns and theirs
    As men fought in the houses below,
    A shell from an English battery came
    And tore a hole in the tower below you,
    But you were not hurt and remained observing.

    And now,
    A casual shell has come
    And pierced your head,
    And the men who were with you, uninjured,
    Carried you back,
    And you died on the way.


    II.    THE ...

Bring, in this timeless grave to throw,
No cypress, sombre on the snow;
Snap not from the bitter yew
His leaves that live December through;
Break no rosemary, bright with rime
And sparkling to the cruel clime;
Nor plod the winter land to look
For willows in the icy brook
To cast them leafless round him: bring
No spray that ever buds in spring.

But if the Christmas field has kept
Awns the last gleaner overstept,
Or shrivelled flax, whose flower is blue
A single season, never two;
Or if one haulm whose year is o'er
Shivers on the upland frore,
-Oh, bring from hill and stream and plain
Whatever will not flower again,
To give him comfort: he and those
Shall bide eternal bedfellows
Where low upon the couch he lies
Whence he never shal...

        "Ahi, mio Ben!"
        --METASTASIO.[3]


What! BEN, my old hero, is this your renown?
Is this the new go?--kick a man when he's down!
When the foe has knockt under, to tread on him then--
By the fist of my father, I blush for thee, BEN!
"Foul! foul!" all the lads of the Fancy exclaim--
CHARLEY SHOCK is electrified--BELCHER spits flame--
And MOLYNEUX--ay, even BLACKY[4] cries "shame!"

Time was, when JOHN BULL little difference spied
'Twixt the foe at his feet and the friend at his side:
When he found (such his humor in fighting and eating)
His foe, like his beef-steak, the sweeter for beating.
But this comes, Master BEN, of your curst foreign notions,
Your trinkets, wigs, thingumbobs, gold lace and loti...

Anteros.


I.

    This is the feast-day of my soul and me,
    For I am half a god and half a man.
    These are the hours in which are heard by sea,
    By land and wave, and in the realms of space,
    The lute-like sounds which sanctify my span,
    And give me power to sway the human race.


II.

    I am the king whom men call Lucifer,
    I am the genius of the nether spheres.
    Give me my Christian name, and I demur.
    Call me a Greek, and straightway I rejoice.
    Yea, I am Anteros, and with my tears
    I salt the earth tha...

So I went wrong,
Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o’ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o’erflowed, or hushed itself in fear
Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and, me seemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being’s depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden...