Happiness

Dear Heart, this is my book of boyish song,
The changing story of the wandering quest
That found at last its ending in thy breast -
The love it sought and sang astray so long
With wild young heart and happy eager tongue.
Much meant it all to me to seek and sing,
Ah, Love, but how much more to-day to bring
This 'rhyme that first of all he made when young.'

Take it and love it, 'tis the prophecy
For whose poor silver thou hast given me gold;
Yea! those old faces for an hour seemed fair
Only because some hints of Thee they were:
Judge then, if I so loved weak types of old,
How good, dear Heart, the perfect gift of Thee.

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
They are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
C...

'... O she,
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of Nothing.' - Tennyson.


'Tis the hour when golden slumbers
Through th' Hesperian portals creep,
And the youth who lisps in numbers
Dreams of novel rhymes to 'sleep';
I shall merely note, at starting,
That responsive Nature thrills
To the twilight hour of parting
From my Lady of the Hills.

Lady, 'neath the deepening umbrage
We have wandered near and far,
To the ludicrously dumb rage
Of your truculent Mamma;
We have urged the long-tailed gallop;
Lightly danced the still night through;
Smacked the ball, and oared the shallop
(In a vis-à-vis canoe);

We have walked this fair Oasis,
Keeping...

        I

        IN NEW YORK

        He plays the deuce with my writing time,
        For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws;
        He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,
        And he leaves me--well, God knows
        It takes the shine from a tunester's line
        When a little mate of the deathless Nine
        Pipes up under your nose!

        For listen, there is his voice again,
        Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.
        Where did the boy find such a strain
        To make a dead heart beat?
        And how in the name of care can he bear
        To jet such a fountain into the air
        In this gray gulch of a street?

        Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?
        Umbria under the Apennine?

We stood by the window and hearkened
To the voice of the runnels sea-driven,
While, northward, the mountain-heads darkened,
Girt round with the clamours of heaven.
One peak with the storm at his portal
Loomed out to the left of his brothers:
Sustained, and sublime, and immortal,
A king, and the lord of the others!
Beneath him a cry from the surges
Rang shrill, like a clarion calling;
And about him, the wind of the gorges
Went falling, and rising, and falling.
But I, as the roofs of the thunder
Were cloven with manifold fires,
Turned back from the wail and the wonder,
And dreamed of old days and desires.
A song that was made, I remembered
A song that was made in the gloaming
Of suns which are sunken and numbered
With times that my heart hath no h...

Do I not tell thee surly Winter's flown,
    That the brook's verge is green; - and bid thee hear,
    In yon irriguous vale, the Blackbird clear,
    At measur'd intervals, with mellow tone,
Choiring [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear
    To the gay viol dinning in the dale,
    With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone
    To merry Shearer's dance; - or jest retail
From festal board, from choral roofs the song;
    And speak of Masque, or Pageant, to beguile
    The caustic memory of a cruel wrong? -
Thy lips acknowledge this a generous wile,
    And bid me still the effort kind prolong;
    But ah! they wear a cold and joyless smile.

1: "While Day arises, that sweet hour of prime." MILTON'S PAR. LOST.

Within the Great Mogul's domains there are
Familiar sprites of much domestic use:
They sweep the house, and take a tidy care
Of equipage, nor garden work refuse;
But, if you meddle with their toil,
The whole, at once, you're sure to spoil.
One, near the mighty Ganges flood,
The garden of a burgher good
Work'd noiselessly and well;
To master, mistress, garden, bore
A love that time and toil outwore,
And bound him like a spell.
Did friendly zephyrs blow,
The demon's pains to aid?
(For so they do, 'tis said.)
I own I do not know.
But for himself he rested not,
And richly bless'd his master's lot.
What mark'd his strength of love,
He lived a fixture on the place,
In spite of tendency to rove
So natural to his race.
But brother sprites...

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
    Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
    And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.

It is not so.    That which we most desire,
    With understanding, we at last obtain,
    In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.

Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
    The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
    And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.

We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
    With products of the soul we load the hold;
    Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?

T...

O fortress city, bathed by streams
Majestic as thy memories great,
Where mountains, floods, and forests mate
The grandeur of the glorious dreams,
Born of the hero hearts who died
In founding here an Empire's pride;
Prosperity attend thy fate,
And happiness in thee abide,
Pair Canada's strong tower and gate!

May Envy, that against thy might
Dashed hostile hosts to surge and break,
Bring Commerce, emulous to make
Thy people share her fruitful fight,
In filling argosies with store
Of grain and timber, and each ore,
And all a continent can shake
Into thy lap, till more and more
Thy praise in distant worlds awake.

Who hath not known delight whose feet
Have paced thy streets or terrace way;
From rampart sod or bastion grey
Hath m...

In the long run fame finds the deserving man.
    The lucky wight may prosper for a day,
But in good time true merit leads the van
    And vain pretence, unnoticed, goes its way.
There is no Chance, no Destiny, no Fate,
But Fortune smiles on those who work and wait,
    In the long run.

In the long run all godly sorrow pays,
    There is no better thing than righteous pain,
The sleepless nights, the awful thorn-crowned days,
    Bring sure reward to tortured soul and brain.
Unmeaning joys enervate in the end,
But sorrow yields a glorious dividend
    In the long run.

In the long run all hidden things are known,
    The eye of truth will penetrate the night,
And good or ill, thy secret shall be known,
    However well 'tis guarded from the ligh...

Genius of the Forest Shades!
Lend thy pow'r, and lend thine ear!
A Stranger trod thy lonely glades,
Amidst thy dark and bounding Deer;
Inquiring Childhood claims the verse,
O let them not inquire in vain;
Be with me while I thus rehearse
The glories of thy Sylvan Reign.

Thy Dells by wint'ry currents worn,
Secluded haunts, how dear to me!
From all but Nature's converse borne,
No ear to hear, no eye to see.
Their honour'd leaves the green Oaks rear'd,
And crown'd the upland's graceful swell;
While answering through the vale was heard
Each distant Heifer's tinkling bell.

Hail, Greenwood shades, that stretching far,
Defy e'en Summer's noontide pow'r,
When August in his burning Car
Withholds the Cloud, withholds the Show'r.
The deep-...

I would not ask thee back, fair May,
    With all your bright-eyed flowers;
Nor would I welcome April days
    With all their laughing showers;
For each bright season of the year
    Can claim its own sweet pleasures;
And we must take them as they come--
    These gladly-given treasures.

There's music in the rain that falls
    In bright October weather;
And we must learn to love them both--
    The sun and rain together.
A mist is 'round the mountain-tops
    Of gold-encircled splendor;
A dreamy spell is in the air
    Of beauty sad and tender.

The winter hath not wooed her yet,
    This fair October maiden;
And she is free to wander still
    With fruits and flowers laden.
She shakes the dew-drops from her hair
    In one...

Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope,
The freshness of the elder lays, the might
Of manly, modern passion shall alight
Upon my Muse's lips, nor may I cope
(Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope)
With the world's strong-armed warriors and recite
The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight;
Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope.
But if thou ever in some lake-floored cave
O'erbrowed by hard rocks, a wild voice wooed and heard,
Answering at once from heaven and earth and wave,
Lending elf-music to thy harshest word,
Misprize thou not these echoes that belong
To one in love with solitude and song.

Hear! hear! hear!
Listen! the word
Of the mocking-bird!
Hear! hear! hear!
I will make all clear;
I will let you know
Where the footfalls go
That through the thicket and over the hill
Allure, allure.
How the bird-voice cleaves
Through the weft of leaves
With a leap and a thrill
Like the flash of a weaver's shuttle, swift and sudden and sure!

And la, he is gone--even while I turn
The wisdom of his runes to learn.
He knows the mystery of the wood,
The secret of the solitude;
But he will not tell, he will not tell,
For all he promises so well.

Is it the world, or my eyes, that are sadder?
I see not the grace that I used to see
In the meadow-brook whose song was so glad, or
In the boughs of the willow tree.
The brook runs slower - its song seems lower
And not the song that it sang of old;
And the tree I admired looks weary and tired
Of the changeless story of heat and cold.

When the sun goes up, and the stars go under,
In that supreme hour of the breaking day,
Is it my eyes, or the dawn, I wonder,
That finds less of the gold, and more of the gray
I see not the splendour, the tints so tender,
The rose-hued glory I used to see;
And I often borrow a vague half-sorrow
That another morning has dawned for me.

When the royal smile of that welcome comer
Beams on the meadow and burns in the s...

I'll tell you how the sun rose, --
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"

    *    *    *

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

The singer only sang the Joy of Life,
    For all too well, alas! the singer knew
How hard the daily toil, how keen the strife,
    How salt the falling tear; the joys how few.

He who thinks hard soon finds it hard to live,
    Learning the Secret Bitterness of Things:
So, leaving thought, the singer strove to give
    A level lightness to his lyric strings.

He only sang of Love; its joy and pain,
    But each man in his early season loves;
Each finds the old, lost Paradise again,
    Unfolding leaves, and roses, nesting doves.

And though that sunlit time flies all too fleetly,
    Delightful Days that dance away too soon!
Its early morning freshness lingers sweetly
    Throughout life's grey and tedious afternoon.

And he, whose dreams ...