Friendship

Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend
Now that the cottage Spinning-wheel is mute;
And Care, a comforter that best could suit
Her froward mood, and softliest reprehend;
And Love, a charmer's voice, that used to lend,
More efficaciously than aught that flows
From harp or lute, kind influence to compose
The throbbing pulse, else troubled without end:
Even Joy could tell, Joy craving truce and rest
From her own overflow, what power sedate
On those revolving motions did await
Assiduously to soothe her aching breast;
And, to a point of just relief, abate
The mantling triumphs of a day too blest.

Sweet guardian of the rosy cheek!
Whene'er to thee I raise my hands
Upon the mountain's breezy peak,
Or on the yellow winding sands,

If thou hast deign'd, by Pity mov'd,
This fev'rish phantom to prolong,
I've touch'd my lute, for ever lov'd,
And bless'd thee with its earliest song!

And oh! if in thy gentle ear
Its simple notes have sounded sweet,
May the soft breeze, to thee so dear,
Now bear them to thy rose-wreath'd seat!

For thou hast dried the dew of grief,
And Friendship feels new ecstacy:
To Pollio thou hast stretch'd relief,
And, raising him, hast cherish'd me.

So, whilst some treasur'd plant receives
Th' admiring florist's partial show'r,
The drops that tremble from its leaves
Oft feed some near uncultur'd flow'r....

The moment must come, when the hands that unite
    In the firm clasp of friendship, will sever;
When the eyes that have beamed o'er us brightly to-night,
    Will have ceased to shine o'er us, for ever.
        Yet wreathe again the goblet's brim
        With pleasure's roseate crown!
        What though the future hour be dim -
        The present is our own!

The moment is come, and again we are parting,
    To roam through the world, each our separate way;
In the bright eye of beauty the pearl-drop is starting,
    But hope, sunny hope, through the tear sheds its ray.
        Then wreathe again the goblet's brim
        With pleasure's roseate crown!
        What though the present hour be dim -
        The future's yet our own!

The moment is pa...

Poet, a truce to your song!
Have you heard the heart sing?
Like a brook among trees,
Like the humming of bees,
Like the ripple of wine:
Had you heard, would you stay
Blowing bubbles so long?
You have ears for the spheres -
Have you heard the heart sing?

*            *            *            *            *

Have you loved the good books of the world, -
And written none?
Have you loved the great poet, -
And burnt your little rhyme?
'O be my friend, and teach me to be thine.'

*            *            *            *            *

By many hands the work of God is done,
Swart toil, pale thought, flushed dream, he spurneth none:
Yea! and the weaver of a little rhyme
Is seen his worker in his own full time.

Wilt thou my true friend be?
Then love not mine, but me.

Laughter not time destroyed my voice
And put that crack in it,
And when the moon’s pot-bellied
I get a laughing fit,
For that old Madge comes down the lane,
A stone upon her breast,
And a cloak wrapped about the stone,
And she can get no rest
With singing hush and hush-a-bye;
She that has been wild
And barren as a breaking wave
Thinks that the stone’s a child.

And Peter that had great affairs
And was a pushing man
Shrieks, ‘I am King of the Peacocks,’
And perches on a stone;
And then I laugh till tears run down
And the heart thumps at my side,
Remembering that her shriek was love
And that he shrieks from pride.

Those breathing Tokens of your kind regard,
(Suspect not, Anna, that their fate is hard;
Not soon does aught to which mild fancies cling
In lonely spots, become a slighted thing;)
Those silent Inmates now no longer share,
Nor do they need, our hospitable care,
Removed in kindness from their glassy Cell
To the fresh waters of a living Well
An elfin pool so sheltered that its rest
No winds disturb; the mirror of whose breast
Is smooth as clear, save where with dimples small
A fly may settle, or a blossom fall.
'There' swims, of blazing sun and beating shower
Fearless (but how obscured!) the golden Power,
That from his bauble prison used to cast
Gleams by the richest jewel unsurpast;
And near him, darkling like a sullen Gnome,
The silver Tenant of the crysta...

A Conversation

We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.

`Now, Matthew!' said I, `let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon;

`Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made!'

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee:

`No check, no stay, this streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!

There are moments we can look to, we can cherish in the past,
As the fleeting days that numbered them are dwindling to their last,
Like the roses in the autumn that are severed from their stem,
Like the dew-bespangled petals when we sit and sigh for them.

There were sweetnesses unrivalled in those halcyon days of truth,
Yet fairy hopes are budding in the sunset glow of youth,
When like the cloudlets o'er the far horizon of the sea,
Each fringed with sheeny splendour, are the days of infancy.

Yet there are days and moments for enjoyment on before,
Tho' the golden skies of youth shall never smile upon us more,
When the brow of early womanhood looks forth to pleasures new,
And sweeter, lovelier visions are unfolding to the view.

O take the gift and when though look...

We will not speak of years to-night, -
For what have years to bring
But larger floods of love and light,
And sweeter songs to sing?

We will not drown in wordy praise
The kindly thoughts that rise;
If Friendship own one tender phrase,
He reads it in our eyes.

We need not waste our school-boy art
To gild this notch of Time; -
Forgive me if my wayward heart
Has throbbed in artless rhyme.

Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet's radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.

Strength to his hours of manly toil!
Peace to his starlit dreams!
Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
The music-haunted streams!

Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
The sunshine on his lips,
And fa...

Come, dear old friend, and with us twain
To calm Digentian groves repair;
The turtle coos his sweet refrain
And posies are a-blooming there;
And there the romping Sabine girls
Bind myrtle in their lustrous curls.

I know a certain ilex-tree
Whence leaps a fountain cool and clear.
Its voices summon you and me;
Come, let us haste to share its cheer!
Methinks the rapturous song it sings
Should woo our thoughts from mortal things.

But, good old friend, I charge thee well,
Watch thou my brother all the while,
Lest some fair Lydia cast her spell
Round him unschooled in female guile.
Those damsels have no charms for me;
Guard thou that brother,--I'll guard thee!

And, lo, sweet friend! behold this cup,
Round which the garlands intertwin...

I

Peradventure of old, some bard in Ionian Islands,
    Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves,
Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac,
    Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea.

For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations,
    Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats,
So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous,
    Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows?

II

Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet
    Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.

III

Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet;
    Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.

Sore in need was I of a faithful friend,
    And it seemed to me that life
Had come to its much desired end -
    Just then God gave me a wife.

I had seen the beauty of fairy things,
    And seen the women walk;
I had heard the voice of the seven sins
    And all the wonderful talk.

Ah, the promising earth that seems so kind,
    And the comrades with outstretched hand -
But did you ever stand alone
    In a black, forsaken land?
Then the wonderful things that God can do
    One comes to understand:

How He turns the desert dust to a dream,
    And the lonely wind to a friend,
And makes a bright beginning
    Of what had seemed the end:
'Twas in such an hour God placed in mine
    The moonbeam hand of a friend.

Beside the brook the boy reclined
And wove his flowery wreath,
And to the waves the wreath consigned
The waves that danced beneath.
"So fleet mine hours," he sighed, "away
Like waves that restless flow:
And so my flowers of youth decay
Like those that float below."

"Ask not why I, alone on earth,
Am sad in life's young time;
To all the rest are hope and mirth
When spring renews its prime.
Alas! the music Nature makes,
In thousand songs of gladness
While charming all around me, wakes
My heavy heart to sadness."

"Ah! vain to me the joys that break
From spring, voluptuous are;
For only one 't is mine to seek
The near, yet ever far!
I stretch my arms, that shadow-shape
In fond embrace to hold;
Still doth the shade the clas...

Through the dark wood
    There came to me a friend,
Bringing in his cold hands
    Two words - 'The End.'

His face was fair
    As fading autumn flowers,
And the lost joy
    Of unforgotten hours.

His voice was sweet
    As rain upon a grave;
'Be brave,' he smiled.
    And yet again - 'be brave.'

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry we mean to the simple love of the antique and that, again, a third of even the proper poetic sentiment inspired by their writings should be ascribed to a fact which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems.

Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he wo...

Friend of my many years
When the great silence falls, at last, on me,
Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee,
A memory of tears,

But pleasant thoughts alone
Of one who was thy friendship’s honored guest
And drank the wine of consolation pressed
From sorrows of thy own.

I leave with thee a sense
Of hands upheld and trials rendered less
The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness
Its own great recompense;

The knowledge that from thine,
As from the garments of the Master, stole
Calmness and strength, the virtue which makes whole
And heals without a sign;

Yea more, the assurance strong
That love, which fails of perfect utterance here,
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere
With its immortal song.

At length, my friend, the far-sent letters come,
Charged with thy kindness, to their destin'd home,
They come, at length, from Deva's[2] Western side,
Where prone she seeks the salt Vergivian tide.[3]
Trust me, my joy is great that thou shouldst be,
Though born of foreign race, yet born for me,
And that my sprightly friend, now free to roam,
Must seek again so soon his wonted home.
I well content, where Thames with refluent tide
My native city laves, meantime reside,
Nor zeal nor duty, now, my steps impell
To reedy Cam,[4] and my forbidden cell.[5]
Nor aught of pleasure in those fields have I,
That, to the musing bard, all shade deny.
Tis time, that I, a pedant's threats[6] disdain,
And fly from wrongs, my soul...