Happiness

Underneath an apple-tree
Sat a dame of comely seeming,
With her work upon her knee,
And her great eyes idly dreaming.
O'er the harvest-acres bright,
Came her husband's din of reaping;
Near to her, an infant wight
Through the tangled grass was creeping.

On the branches long and high,
And the great green apples growing,
Rested she her wandering eye,
With a retrospective knowing.
"This," she said, "the shelter is,
Where, when gay and raven-headed,
I consented to be his,
And our willing hearts were wedded.

"Laughing words and peals of mirth,
Long are changed to grave endeavor;
Sorrow's winds have swept to earth
Many a blossomed hope forever.
Thunder-heads have hovered o'er -
Storms my path have chilled and shaded;
Of the b...

I 'm ashamed, - that 's the fact, - it 's a pitiful case, -
Won't any kind classmate get up in my place?
Just remember how often I've risen before, -
I blush as I straighten my legs on the floor!

There are stories, once pleasing, too many times told, -
There are beauties once charming, too fearfully old, -
There are voices we've heard till we know them so well,
Though they talked for an hour they'd have nothing to tell.

Yet, Classmates! Friends! Brothers! Dear blessed old boys!
Made one by a lifetime of sorrows and joys,
What lips have such sounds as the poorest of these,
Though honeyed, like Plato's, by musical bees?

What voice is so sweet and what greeting so dear
As the simple, warm welcome that waits for us here?
The love of our boyhood still breat...

I.
Mystery of mysteries,
Faintly smiling Adeline,
Scarce of earth nor all divine,
Nor unhappy, nor at rest,
But beyond expression fair
With thy floating flaxen hair;
Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes
Take the heart from out my breast.
Wherefore those dim looks of thine,
Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

II.
Whence that aery bloom of thine,
Like a lily which the sun
Looks thro’ in his sad decline,
And a rose-bush leans upon,
Thou that faintly smilest still,
As a Naiad in a well,
Looking at the set of day,
Or a phantom two hours old
Of a maiden passed away,
Ere the placid lips be cold?
Wherefore those faint smiles of thine,
Spiritual Adeline?

III.
What hope or fear or joy is thine?
Who talketh with thee, Adel...

I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born

In secret pleasure, secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away
As friendless after eighteen years
As lone as on my natal day

There have been times I cannot hide
There have been times when this was drear
When my sad soul forgot its pride
And longed for one to love me here

But those were in the early glow
Of feelings since subdued by care
And they have died so long ago
I hardly now believe they were

First melted off the hope of youth
Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew

'Twas grief enough to think mankind
All...

[1]

While one philosopher[2] affirms
That by our senses we're deceived,
Another[3] swears, in plainest terms,
The senses are to be believed.
The twain are right. Philosophy
Correctly calls us dupes whene'er
Upon mere senses we rely.
But when we wisely rectify
The raw report of eye or ear,
By distance, medium, circumstance,
In real knowledge we advance.
These things hath nature wisely plann'd -
Whereof the proof shall be at hand.
I see the sun: its dazzling glow
Seems but a hand-breadth here below;
But should I see it in its home,
That azure, star-besprinkled dome,
Of all the universe the eye,
Its blaze would fill one half the sky.
The powers of trigonometry
Have set my mind from blunder free.

O waters fresh and sweet and clear,
Where bathed her lovely frame,
Who seems the only lady unto me;
O gentle branch and dear,
(Sighing I speak thy name,)
Thou column for her shapely thighs, her supple knee;
O grass, O flowers, which she
Swept with her gown that veiled
The angelic breast unseen;
O sacred air serene,
Whence the divine-eyed Love my heart assailed,
By all of ye be heard
This my supreme lament, my dying word.


Oh, if it be my fate
(As Heaven shall so decree)
That Love shall close for me my weeping eyes,
Some courteous friend I supplicate
Midst these to bury me,
Whilst my enfranchised spirit homeward flies;
Less dreadful death shall rise,
If I may bear this hope
To that mysterious goal.
For ne'er did weary so...

Oh, sweet content, that turns the labourer's sweat
To tears of joy, and shines the roughest face;
How often have I sought you high and low,
And found you still in some lone quiet place;

Here, in my room, when full of happy dreams,
With no life heard beyond that merry sound
Of moths that on my lighted ceiling kiss
Their shadows as they dance and dance around;

Or in a garden, on a summer's night,
When I have seen the dark and solemn air
Blink with the blind bats' wings, and heaven's bright face
Twitch with the stars that shine in thousands there.

When panting sighs the bosom fill,
And hands by chance united thrill
At once with one delicious pain
The pulses and the nerves of twain;
When eyes that erst could meet with ease,
Do seek, yet, seeking, shyly shun
Extatic conscious unison,
The sure beginnings, say, be these
Prelusive to the strain of love
Which angels sing in heaven above?

Or is it but the vulgar tune,
Which all that breathe beneath the moon
So accurately learn so soon?
With variations duly blent;
Yet that same song to all intent,
Set for the finer instrument;
It is; and it would sound the same
In beasts, were not the bestial frame,
Less subtly organised, to blame;
And but that soul and spirit add
To pleasures, even base and bad,
A zest the soulless never had.

The figure that thou here seest . . . Tut!
Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?
- B. JORSON. (Adapted.)



I “next poet?” No, my hearties,
I nor am nor fain would be!
Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,
Not one soul revolt to me!
I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?
I, a schism in verse provoke?
I, blown up by bard’s ambition,
Burst, your bubble-king? You joke.

Come, be grave! The sherris mantling
Still about each mouth, mayhap,
Breeds you insight, just a scantling,
Brings me truth out, just a scrap.
Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
Here’s my life-long work: and where
Where’s your warrant or my token
I’m the dead king’s son and heir?

Here’s my work: does work discover,
What was rest from work, my life?

The Demon, in my chamber high,
This morning came to visit me,
And, thinking he would find some fault,
He whispered: "I would know of thee

Among the many lovely things
That make the magic of her face,
Among the beauties, black and rose,
That make her body's charm and grace,

Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply
To the Abhorred, O soul of mine:
"No single beauty is the best
When she is all one flower divine.

When all things charm me I ignore
Which one alone brings most delight;
She shines before me like the dawn,
And she consoles me like the night.

The harmony is far too great,
That governs all her body fair,
For impotence to analyse
And say which note is sweetest there.

O mystic metamorphosis!
My senses int...

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond’rous,
And the parle of voices thund’rous;
With the whisper of heaven’s trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On...

    I.

    An afternoon as ripe with heat
        As might the golden pippin be
    With mellowness if at my feet
        It dropped now from the apple-tree
        My hammock swings in lazily.


    II.

    The boughs about me spread a shade
        That shields me from the sun, but weaves
        With breezy shuttles through the leaves
    Blue rifts of skies, to gleam and fade
        Upon the eyes that only see
        Just of themselves, all drowsily.


    III.

    Above me drifts the fallen skein
        Of some tired spider, looped and blown,
    As fragile as a strand of rain,
        Across the air, and upward thrown
        By breaths of hayfields newly mown -
    So glimmering it is and fine,

My worthiness is all my doubt,
His merit all my fear,
Contrasting which, my qualities
Do lowlier appear;

Lest I should insufficient prove
For his beloved need,
The chiefest apprehension
Within my loving creed.

So I, the undivine abode
Of his elect content,
Conform my soul as 't were a church
Unto her sacrament.

I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace,
Radiant palace, reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion,
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This, all this, was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.

III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.<...

Here sparrows build upon the trees,
And stockdove hides her nest;
The leaves are winnowed by the breeze
Into a calmer rest;
The black-cap's song was very sweet,
That used the rose to kiss;
It made the Paradise complete:
My early home was this.

The red-breast from the sweetbriar bush
Drop't down to pick the worm;
On the horse-chestnut sang the thrush,
O'er the house where I was born;
The moonlight, like a shower of pearls,
Fell o'er this "bower of bliss,"
And on the bench sat boys and girls:
My early home was this.

The old house stooped just like a cave,
Thatched o'er with mosses green;
Winter around the walls would rave,
But all was calm within;
The trees are here all green agen,
Here bees the flowers still kiss,
But f...

Nature in charms is exhaustless, in beauty ever reviving;
And, like Nature, fair art is inexhaustible too.
Hail, thou honored old man! for both in thy heart thou preservest
Living sensations, and thus ne'er-ending youth is thy lot!

For Mademoiselle De Sillery.[1]

I had the Phrygian quit,
Charm'd with Italian wit;[2]
But a divinity
Would on Parnassus see
A fable more from me.
Such challenge to refuse,
Without a good excuse,
Is not the way to use
Divinity or muse.
Especially to one
Of those who truly are,
By force of being fair,
Made queens of human will.
A thing should not be done
In all respects so ill.
For, be it known to all,
From Sillery the call
Has come for bird, and beast,
And insects, to the least;
To clothe their thoughts sublime
In this my simple rhyme.
In saying Sillery,
All's said that need to be.
Her claim to it so good,
Few fail to give her place
Above the human race:
How could they, if they w...

    I come upon it suddenly, alone -
        A little pathway winding in the weeds
    That fringe the roadside; and with dreams my own,
        I wander as it leads.

    Full wistfully along the slender way,
        Through summer tan of freckled shade and shine,
    I take the path that leads me as it may -
        Its every choice is mine.

    A chipmunk, or a sudden-whirring quail,
        Is startled by my step as on I fare -
    A garter-snake across the dusty trail
        Glances and - is not there.

    Above the arching jimson-weeds flare twos
        And twos of sallow-yellow butterflies,
    Like blooms of lorn primroses blowing loose
        When autumn winds arise.

    The trail dips - dwindles - broadens then, and lifts