Friendship

My lady love lives far away,
And oh my heart is sad by day,
And ah my tears fall fast by night,
What may I do in such a plight.

Why, miles grow few when love is fleet,
And love, you know, hath flying feet;
Break off thy sighs and witness this,
How poor a thing mere distance is.

My love knows not I love her so,
And would she scorn me, did she know?
How may the tale I would impart
Attract her ear and storm her heart?

Calm thou the tempest in my breast,
Who loves in silence loves the best,
But bide thy time, she will awake,
No night so dark but morn will break.

But though my heart so strongly yearn,
My lady loves me not in turn,
How may I win the blest reply
That my void heart shall satisfy.

Love breedeth love, be...

Oh, who will hush that cry outside the doors,
    While we are glad within?
Go forth, go forth, all you my servitors;
    (And gather close, my kin.)
Go out to her. Tell her we keep a feast,--
    Lost Loveliness who will not sit her down
        Though we implore.
It is her silence binds me unreleased,
    It is her silence that no flute can drown,
        It is her moonlit silence at the door,
Wide as the whiteness, but a fire on high
    That frights my heart with an immortal Cry,
        Calling me evermore.

Louder, you viols;--louder, O my harp;
    Let me not hear her voice;
And drown her keener silence, silver-sharp,
    With waves of golden noise!
For she is wise as Eden, even mute,
    To search my spirit through the deep and height

I.

This is the place where visions come to dance,
Dreams of the trees and flowers, glimmeringly;
Where the white moon and the pale stars can see,
Sitting with Legend and with dim Romance.
This is the place where all the silvery clans
Of Music meet: music of bird and bee;
Music of falling water; melody
Mated with magic, with her golden lance.
This is the place made holy by Love's feet,
And dedicate to wonder and to dreams,
The ministers of Beauty. 'Twas with these
Love filled the place, making all splendours meet
And all despairs, as once in woods and streams
Of Ida and the gold Hesperides.

II.

Here is the place where Loveliness keeps house,
Between the river and the wooded hills,
Within a valley where the Springtime spills
Her ...

Brown foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,
Surroundings new, and curious faces,
As though ten centuries were not
Imprisoned in thy shining cases.

Thou bring’st me back the halcyon days
Of grateful rest, the week of leisure,
The journey lapped in autumn haze,
The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant
The jay-bird, that in frolic casts
From some high yard his broad blue pennant.

The apple trees are hung with gold,
And birds are loud in Arcady,
The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
The wild goat runs across the wold,
But yesterday his love he told,
I know he will come back to me.
O rising moon! O Lady moon!
Be you my lover's sentinel,
You cannot choose but know him well,
For he is shod with purple shoon,
You cannot choose but know my love,
For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,
And he is soft as any dove,
And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call
Upon her crimson-footed groom,
The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
The lily's singing seneschal
Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all
The violet hills are lost in gloom.
O risen moon! O holy moon!
Stand on the top of Helice,
And if my own t...

"Never fear!" said The Brass to the Clay
Of two Jars that the flood bore away:
"Keep you close to my side!"
But the porcelain replied,
"I'll be smashed if beside you I stay."

Our Friend Our Enemy

The elder folks shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal passed.
To simple ways like ours unused,
Half solemnized and half amused,
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest
His sense of glad relief expressed.
Outside, the hills lay warm in sun;
The cattle in the meadow-run
Stood half-leg deep; a single bird
The green repose above us stirred.
"What part or lot have you," he said,
"In these dull rites of drowsy-head?
Is silence worship? Seek it where
It soothes with dreams the summer air,
Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
But where soft lights and shadows fall,
And all the slow, sleep-walking hours
Glide soundless over grass and flowers!
From time and place and form apart,
Its holy ground the human heart,
Nor ritual-bound nor...

'Now did you mark a falcon,
    Sister dear, sister dear,
Flying toward my window
    In the morning cool and clear?
With jingling bells about her neck,
    But what beneath her wing?
It may have been a ribbon,
    Or it may have been a ring.'--
            'I marked a falcon swooping
                At the break of day;
            And for your love, my sister dove,
                I 'frayed the thief away.'--

'Or did you spy a ruddy hound,
    Sister fair and tall,
Went snuffing round my garden bound,
    Or crouched by my bower wall?
With a silken leash about his neck;
    But in his mouth may be
A chain of gold and silver links,
    Or a letter writ to me.'--
            'I heard a hound, highborn sister,
                Stoo...

'Midst the noise of merriment and glee,

'Midst full many a sorrow, many a care,
Charlotte, I remember, we remember thee,

How, at evening's hour so fair,
Thou a kindly hand didst reach us,

When thou, in some happy place

Where more fair is Nature s face,

Many a lightly-hidden trace
Of a spirit loved didst teach us.

Well 'tis that thy worth I rightly knew,

That I, in the hour when first we met,

While the first impression fill'd me yet,
Call'd thee then a girl both good and true.

Rear'd in silence, calmly, knowing nought,

On the world we suddenly are thrown;
Hundred thousand billows round us sport;

All things charm us many please alone,
Many grieve us, and as hour on hour is stealing,

To-day the plant by Williams set
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.

Once more the Island State repeats
The lesson that he taught her,
And binds his pearl of charity
Upon her brown-locked daughter.

Is 't fancy that he watches still
His Providence plantations?
That still the careful Founder takes
A part on these occasions.

Methinks I see that reverend form,
Which all of us so well know
He rises up to speak; he jogs
The presidential elbow.

"Good friends," he says, "you reap a field
I sowed in self-denial,
For toleration had its griefs
And charity its trial.

"Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,
To him must needs be given
Who heareth heresy ...

The larks are loud above our leagues of whin
Now the sun’s perfume fills their glorious gold
With odour like the colour: all the wold
Is only light and song and wind wherein
These twain are blent in one with shining din.
And now your gift, a giver’s kingly-souled,
Dear old fast friend whose honours grow not old,
Bids memory’s note as loud and sweet begin.
Though all but we from life be now gone forth
Of that bright household in our joyous north
Where I, scarce clear of boyhood just at end,
First met your hand; yet under life’s clear dome,
Now seventy strenuous years have crowned my friend,
Shines no less bright his full-sheaved harvest-home.

Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers
Are lying in field and lane,
With dandelions to tell the hours
That never are told again.
Oh may I squire you round the meads
And pick you posies gay?
-'Twill do no harm to take my arm.
"You may, young man, you may."

Ah, spring was sent for lass and lad,
'Tis now the blood runs gold,
And man and maid had best be glad
Before the world is old.
What flowers to-day may flower to-morrow,
But never as good as new.
-Suppose I wound my arm right round-
" 'Tis true, young man, 'tis true."

Some lads there are, 'tis shame to say,
That only court to thieve,
And once they bear the bloom away
'Tis little enough they leave.
Then keep your heart for men like me
And safe from trustless chaps.
My lov...

O! were I one of the Olympian twelve,
Their godships should pass this into law,
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,
Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,
A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller's lips.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1.
The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I;
And the moon, all silve-proud,
Might as well be in a cloud.

2.
And O the spring the spring!
I lead the life of a king!
Couch'd in the teeming grass,
I spy each pretty lass.

3.
I look where no one dares,
And I st...

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

When I bought you for a song,
Years ago Lord knows how long!
I was struck I may be wrong
By your features,
And a something in your air
That I couldn’t quite compare
To my other plain or fair
Fellow creatures.

In your simple, oval frame
You were not well known to fame,
But to me ’twas all the same
Whoe’er drew you;
For your face I can’t forget,
Though I oftentimes regret
That, somehow, I never yet
Saw quite through you.

Yet each morning, when I rise,
I go first to greet your eyes;
And, in turn, you scrutinize
My presentment.
And when shades of evening fall,
As you hang upon my wall,
You’re the last thing I recall
With contentment.

It is weakness, yet I know
That I never turned to go
Anywhere, f...

Ah, often do I wait and watch,
And look up, straining through the Real
With longing eyes, my friend, to catch
Faint glimpses of your white Ideal.

I know she loved to rest her feet
By slumbrous seas and hidden strand;
But mostly hints of her I meet
On moony spots of mountain land.

I’ve never reached her shining place,
And only cross at times a gleam;
As one might pass a fleeting face
Just on the outside of a Dream.

But you may climb, her happy Choice!
She knows your step, the maiden true,
And ever when she hears your voice,
She turns and sits and waits for you.

How sweet to rest on breezy crest
With such a Love, what time the Morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest,
Across green miles of gleaming corn!

How sweet ...

Before she has her floor swept
    Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
    A-sunning in the sun!

It's long after midnight
    Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
    Till past ten o'clock!

She digs in her garden
    With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
    By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
    Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
    And pays you back cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,
    And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
    And the Queen Anne's lace!

Good-night, my love, for I have dreamed of thee
In waking dreams, until my soul is lost--
Is lost in passion's wide and shoreless sea,
Where, like a ship, unruddered, it is tost
Hither and thither at the wild waves' will.
There is no potent Master's voice to still
This newer, more tempestuous Galilee!

The stormy petrels of my fancy fly
In warning course across the darkening green,
And, like a frightened bird, my heart doth cry
And seek to find some rock of rest between
The threatening sky and the relentless wave.
It is not length of life that grief doth crave,
But only calm and peace in which to die.

Here let me rest upon this single hope,
For oh, my wings are weary of the wind,
And with its stress no more may strive or cope.
One cry has dulle...