Happiness

I.

O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,
Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,
Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,
Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,
Blinking at o'er-bright science, smit with desire
To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.
Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street,
Thy halfness hot with His rebuke would swell;
Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat
His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell.
`Nay' (so, dear Heart, thou whisperest in my soul),
`'Tis a half time, yet Time will make it whole.'


II.

Now at thy soft recalling voice I rise
Where tho...

I did not know that life could be so sweet,
I did not know the hours could speed so fleet,
Till I knew you, and life was sweet again.
The days grew brief with love and lack of pain--

I was a slave a few short days ago,
The powers of Kings and Princes now I know;
I would not be again in bondage, save
I had your smile, the liberty I crave.

Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll,
World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul.
Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed,
Your plains wind-tossed, and grass enswathed.

Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly,
Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky,
Hemm'd through the purple mists afar
By peaks that gleam like star on star.

Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line,
Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine,
Sleeping until the zephyrs throng
To kiss their silence into song.

Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air,
Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where
The angels' songs are less divine
Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine.

Laughing into the fo...

There is a castle on a hill,
    So far into the sky,
That birds that from the valley-beds
    Up to the turrets fly,
Climbing towards the sun can feel
    The clouds go tumbling by.

But always far above the clouds
    The sun is shining there,
It shines for ever on those walls;
    And the great boughs that bear
Harvests of never fading fruit
    Are golden everywhere.

Who journeys to that castled crest
    Finds, with his journey done,
All ages and all colours in
    Cascades of light that run
Over the broad weirs of the air
    For ever from the sun.

Two things are silver: flower of plum
    When April yet is cold;
And willowed floods that of the moon
    Quiet leases hold.
That castle in the sky alone
  ...

'Twas on a day of cold and sleet,
A little nomad of the street
With tattered garments, shoeless feet,
    And face with hunger wan,
Great wonder-eyes, though beautiful,
Hedged in by features pinched and dull,
Betraying lines so pitiful
    By sorrow sharply drawn;

Ere yet the service half was o'er,
Approached the great cathedral door
As choir and organ joined to pour
    Their sweetness on the air;
Then, sudden, bold, impelled to glide
With fleetness to the altar's side,
Her trembling form she sought to hide
    Amid the shadows there,

Half fearful lest some worshiper,
Enveloped close in robes of fur,
Had cast a scornful glance at her
    As she had stolen by,
But soon the swelling anthem, fraught
With reverence, her spirit...

Heigh ho! to sleep I vainly try;
Since twelve I haven't closed an eye,
And now it's three, and as I lie,
From Notre Dame to St. Denis
The bells of Paris chime to me;
"You're young," they say, "and strong and free."

I do not turn with sighs and groans
To ease my limbs, to rest my bones,
As if my bed were stuffed with stones,
No peevish murmur tips my tongue -
Ah no! for every sound upflung
Says: "Lad, you're free and strong and young."

And so beneath the sheet's caress
My body purrs with happiness;
Joy bubbles in my veins. . . . Ah yes,
My very blood that leaps along
Is chiming in a joyous song,
Because I'm young and free and strong.






Maybe it is the springtide.
I am so happy I am afraid.
The se...

Dear Governor, if my skiff might brave
The winds that lift the ocean wave,
The mountain stream that loops and swerves
Through my broad meadow's channelled curves
Should waft me on from bound to bound
To where the River weds the Sound,
The Sound should give me to the Sea,
That to the Bay, the Bay to thee.

It may not be; too long the track
To follow down or struggle back.
The sun has set on fair Naushon
Long ere my western blaze is gone;
The ocean disk is rolling dark
In shadows round your swinging bark,
While yet the yellow sunset fills
The stream that scarfs my spruce-clad hills;
The day-star wakes your island deer
Long ere my barnyard chanticleer;
Your mists are soaring in the blue
While mine are sparks of glittering dew.

It ma...

I.

There's the rose and the lily, the daisy and pink,
And many rare flowers which others may think
Are the fairest and best, the sweetest that blow,
With delicious perfume, and colors that glow--
But go to the orchard and sniff the delight
Of the incense that's shed by the pink and the white,
And let the soul float away in a swoon
On the ambient air where the apple trees bloom!


II.

There's the cowslip, narcissus, and sweet mignonette,
The asters, verbenas, the fuschias; and yet,
As much as I love them in Summer array,
It's the white and the pink I dream of to-day,
And I walk 'neath the branches that just interlace
And shower their blossoms right down in my face
When the breeze that is laden with rarest perfume
Is wafted along where...

    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
    Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel -
    Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens -
    But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
    The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
    And what is love but a rose that fades?
    Life all around me here in the village:
    Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
    Courage, constancy, heroism, failure -
    All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
    Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers -
    Blind to all of it all my life long.
    Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
    Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
    W...

I thought those youthful hearts were bleak and bare,
That not a germ had ever flourished there,
Unless perchance the night-shade of despair,
Which blooms amid the sunless wilderness.

But I was told that flowers of fairest kind
Graced what I deemed a desert of the mind,
That for these hapless beings man had twined
A fadeless wreath to make their sorrows less.

And then I feared, like sunbeams of the morn
Which spoil the frost-work they awhile adorn,
That rays of light might render more forlorn
The expanding bosoms they were meant to cheer.

I feared those glittering beams would vainly show
That the best charms of life they ne'er could know,
"The feast of reason and the soul's calm flow,"
The witchery of sound, the bliss to hear.

But when I...

Now Morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill;
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright
Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below;
Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light
Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:
There saw the swan his neck of arched snow,
And oar'd himself along with majesty;
Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show
Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony,
And on his back a ...

Out of the window a sea of green trees
Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer,
They beckon and call me, "Come out in the sun!"
But I cannot answer.

I am alone with Weakness and Pain,
Sick abed and June is going,
I cannot keep her, she hurries by
With the silver-green of her garments blowing.

Men and women pass in the street
Glad of the shining sapphire weather,
But we know more of it than they,
Pain and I together.

They are the runners in the sun,
Breathless and blinded by the race,
But we are watchers in the shade
Who speak with Wonder face to face.

I
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.

Orbed as appointed,
Sister with brother
Joins, ne’er disjointed
One from the other.
All’s lend-and-borrow;
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil!

“Which things must, why be?”
Vain our endeavor!
So shall things aye be
As they were ever.
“Such things should so be!”
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed, man’s existence!

Man, wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish,
Keep each his corner!
Honey yet gall of it!
There’s the life lying,
And I see all ...

Come long-lost blessing! heaven-lov'd seraph, haste,
On pity's wings upborne, a world's wide woes
Invoke thy smiles extatic, long effac'd,
Beneath the tear which all corrosive flows;
While reason shudders, let ambition weep,
When wounding truth records what it has done:
Records the hosts consign'd to death's cold sleep,
Conspicuous 'mid the pomp of conflicts won!
Shall not the fiend relent, while groaning age
Pours its deep sorrows o'er its offspring slain;
While sire-robb'd infants mourn the deathful rage,
In many a penury enfeebled strain?
Sweet maid, return! behold affliction's tear,
And in my theme accept a nation's prayer.

To teach the grey earth like a child,
To bid the heavens repent,
I only ask from Fate the gift
Of one man well content.

Him will I find: though when in vain
I search the feast and mart,
The fading flowers of liberty,
The painted masks of art.

I only find him at the last,
On one old hill where nod
Golgotha's ghastly trinity--
Three persons and one god.

Thanks for thy song, sweet Bird! thanks for thy song!
O! 'twas delightful; how have I been lost
As in a blissful dream! how has my soul
Been wafted in a sea of melody!
Scarce yet am I awake, yet scarce myself:
Still with the enchanting music's dying breath
The air is kept in motion, and conveys
Sweet whispers to the finely-listening ear;
Or is it but an echo from the cell
Of memory that deludes my doating sense?
Ah! now 'tis gone; Silence resumes her sway,
And o'er my hearing spreads her subtile web;
But she resumes it, changed, methinks, in nature,
More soft, more amiable, as if inform'd
With the departed soul of harmony.

Thanks for thy song, sweet Bird! it well deserves
All my heart's gratitude; for it has still'd
Its anxious throbbings, and remov...

The air is perfumed with the morning's fresh breeze,
From the bush peer the sunbeams all purple and bright,
While they gleam through the clefts of the dark-waving trees,
And the cloud-crested mountains are golden with light.

With joyful, melodious, ravishing, strain,
The lark, as he wakens, salutes the glad sun,
Who glows in the arms of Aurora again,
And blissfully smiling, his race 'gins to run.

    All hail, light of day!
    Thy sweet gushing ray
Pours down its soft warmth over pasture and field;
    With hues silver-tinged
    The meadows are fringed,
And numberless suns in the dewdrop revealed.

    Young Nature invades
    The whispering shades,
    Displaying each ravishing charm;
    The soft zephyr blows,
    And kisses the ...

PROLOGUE

O Lady Flora, let me speak:
A pleasant hour has passed away
While, dreaming on your damask cheek,
The dewy sister-eyelids lay.
As by the lattice you reclined,
I went thro’ many wayward moods
To see you dreaming–and, behind,
A summer crisp with shining woods.
And I too dream’d, until at last
Across my fancy, brooding warm,
The reflex of a legend past,
And loosely settled into form.
And would you have the thought I had,
And see the vision that I saw,
Then take the broidery-frame, and add
A crimson to the quaint Macaw,
And I will tell it. Turn your face,
Nor look with that too-earnest eye–
The rhymes are dazzled from their place
And order’d words asunder fly.



THE SLEEPING PALACE

I.

Th...