Happiness

The snow-flakes were softly falling
    Adown on the landscape white,
When the violet eyes of my first born
    Opened unto the light;
And I thought as I pressed him to me,
    With loving, rapturous thrill,
He was pure and fair as the snow-flakes
    That lay on the landscape still.

I smiled when they spoke of the weary
    Length of the winter's night,
Of the days so short and so dreary,
    Of the sun's cold cheerless light -
I listened, but in their murmurs
    Nor by word nor thought took part,
For the smiles of my gentle darling
    Brought light to my home and heart.

Oh! quickly the joyous springtime
    Came back to our ice-bound earth,
Filling meadows and woods with sunshine,
    And hearts with gladsome mirth,
But, ah!...

When, casting many a look behind,
    I leave the friends I cherish here--
Perchance some other friends to find,
    But surely finding none so dear--

Haply the little simple page,
    Which votive thus I've traced for thee,
May now and then a look engage,
    And steal one moment's thought for me.

But, oh! in pity let not those
    Whose hearts are not of gentle mould,
Let not the eye that seldom flows
    With feeling's tear, my song behold.

For, trust me, they who never melt
    With pity, never melt with love;
And such will frown at all I've felt,
    And all my loving lays reprove.

But if, perhaps, some gentler mind,
    Which rather loves to praise than blame,
Should in my page an interest find.
    And linger kindl...

Whether the way be dark or light
    My soul shall sing as I journey on,
As sweetly sing in the deeps of night
    As it sang in the burst of the golden dawn.

Nothing can crush me, or silence me long,
    Though the heart be bowed, yet the soul will rise,
Higher and higher on wings of song,
    Till it swims like the lark in a sea of skies.

Though youth may fade, and love grow cold,
    And friends prove false, and best hopes blight,
Yet the sun will wade in waves of gold,
    And the stars in glory will shine at night.

Though all earth's joys from my life are missed,
    And I of the whole world stand bereft,
Yet dawns will be purple and amethyst,
    And I cannot be sad while the seas are left.

For I am a part of the mighty whole;

Subtly conscious, all awake,
Let us clear our eyes, and break
Through the cloudy chrysalis,
See the wonder as it is.
Down a narrow alley, blind,
Touch and vision, heart and mind;
Turned sharply inward, still we plod,
Till the calmly smiling god
Leaves us, and our spirits grow
More thin, more acrid, as we go.
Creeping by the sullen wall,
We forego the power to see,
The threads that bind us to the All,
God or the Immensity;
Whereof on the eternal road
Man is but a passing mode.

Too blind we are, too little see
Of the magic pageantry,
Every minute, every hour,
From the cloudflake to the flower,
Forever old, forever strange,
Issuing in perpetual change
From the rainbow gates of Time.

But he who through this common air...

I

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well? -
The path that takes me in the spring
Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing,
And peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.

II

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well? -
Another path that leads me, when
The summer time is here again,
Past hollyhocks that shame the west
When the red sun has sunk to rest;
To roses bowering a nest,
A lattice, 'neath which mignonette
And deep geraniums surge and sough,
Where, in the twilight, starless yet,
A fair girl's eyes are stars enough.

III

Cantai, or piango; e non men di dolcezza.

THOUGH IN THE MIDST OF PAIN, HE DEEMS HIMSELF THE HAPPIEST OF MEN.


    I sang, who now lament; nor less delight
Than in my song I found, in tears I find;
For on the cause and not effect inclined,
My senses still desire to scale that height:
Whence, mildly if she smile or hardly smite,
Cruel and cold her acts, or meek and kind,
All I endure, nor care what weights they bind,
E'en though her rage would break my armour quite.
Let Love and Laura, world and fortune join,
And still pursue their usual course for me,
I care not, if unblest, in life to be.
Let me or burn to death or living pine,
No gentler state than mine beneath the sun,
Since from a source so sweet my bitters run.

MACGREGOR.

This was my dream:

It seemed the afternoon
Of some deep tropic day; and yet the moon
Stood round and bright with golden alchemy
High in a heaven bluer than the sea.
Long lawny lengths of perishable cloud
Hung in a west o'er rolling forests bowed;
Clouds raining colours, gold and violet,
That, opening, seemed from mystic worlds to let
Hints down of Parian beauty and lost charms
Of dim immortals, young, with floating forms.
And all about me fruited orchards grew,
Pear, quince and peach, and plums of dusty blue;
Rose-apricots and apples streaked with fire,
Kissed into ripeness by the sun's desire
And big with juice. And on far, fading hills,
Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills
Flashed rushing silver, vines and vines and vines
Of purple vi...

A:
Not far from hence. From yonder pointed hill,
Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may behold
A dark and barren field, through which there flows,
Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream,
Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon
Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there.
Follow the herbless banks of that strange brook
Until you pause beside a darksome pond,
The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush
Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night
That lives beneath the overhanging rock
That shades the pool - an endless spring of gloom,
Upon whose edge hovers the tender light,
Trembling to mingle with its paramour, -
But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,
Or, with most sullen and regardless hate,
Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace.
On one side of...

‘Tis not that I design to rob
Thee of thy birthright, gentle Bob,
For thou art born sole heir, and single,
Of dear Mat Prior’s easy jingle;
Not that I mean, while thus I knit
My threadbare sentiments together,
To show my genius or my wit,
When God and you know I have neither;
Or such as might be better shown
By letting poetry alone.
‘Tis not with either of these views
That I presumed to address the muse:
But to divert a fierce banditti
(Sworn foes to every thing that’s witty!)
That, with a black, infernal train,
Make cruel inroads in my brain,
And daily threaten to drive thence
My little garrison of sense;
The fierce banditti which I mean
Are gloomy thoughts led on by spleen.
Then there’s another reason yet,
Which is, that I may fairly...

The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
O, beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love,
With youth, a singing voice, and eyes
To take earth's wonder with surprise?

Why have I put off my pride,
Why am I unsatisfied,
I, for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,
I, for whom all beauty burns
Like incense in a million urns?
O beauty, are ...

Montparnasse,

April 1914.

All day the sun has shone into my little attic, a bitter sunshine that brightened yet did not warm. And so as I toiled and toiled doggedly enough, many were the looks I cast at the three faggots I had saved to cook my evening meal. Now, however, my supper is over, my pipe alight, and as I stretch my legs before the embers I have at last a glow of comfort, a glimpse of peace.




My Garret



Here is my Garret up five flights of stairs;
Here's where I deal in dreams and ply in fancies,
Here is the wonder-shop of all my wares,
My sounding sonnets and my red romances.
Here's where I challenge Fate and ring my rhymes,
And grope at glory - aye, and starve at times.

Here is my Stronghold: stout of heart am I,
Gre...

The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower-face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running till the night was black,
Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the ...

INGRATITUDE, how deadly is thy smart
    Proceeding from the Form we fondly love!
    How light, compared, all other sorrows prove!
    THOU shed'st a Night of Woe, from whence depart
The gentle beams of Patience, that the heart
    'Mid lesser ills, illume. - Thy Victims rove
    Unquiet as the Ghost that haunts the Grove
    Where MURDER spilt the life-blood. - O! thy dart
Kills more than Life, - e'en all that makes Life dear;
    Till we "the sensible of pain" wou'd change
    For Phrenzy, that defies the bitter tear;
Or wish, in kindred callousness, to range
    Where moon-ey'd IDIOCY, with fallen lip,
    Drags the loose knee, and intermitting step.

July 1773.

When I am in hell or some such place,
A-groaning over my sorry case,
What will those seven women say to me
Who, when I coaxed them, answered "Aye" to me?

"I did not understand your sign!"
Will be the words of Caroline;
While Jane will cry, "If I'd had proof of you,
I should have learnt to hold aloof of you!"

"I won't reproach: it was to be!"
Will dryly murmur Cicely;
And Rosa: "I feel no hostility,
For I must own I lent facility."

Lizzy says: "Sharp was my regret,
And sometimes it is now! But yet
I joy that, though it brought notoriousness,
I knew Love once and all its gloriousness!"

Says Patience: "Why are we apart?
Small harm did you, my poor Sweet Heart!
A manchild born, now tall and beautiful,
Was worth the ache of da...

for Maxime du Camp

I.

The wide-eyed child in love with maps and plans
Finds the world equal to his appetite.
How grand the universe by light of lamps,
How petty in the memory's clear sight.

One day we leave, with fire in the brain,
Heart great with rancour, bitter in its mood;
Outward we travel on the rolling main,
Lulling infinity in finitude:

Some gladly flee their homelands gripped in vice,
Some, horrors of their childhood, others still
Astrologers lost in a woman's eyes
Some perfumed Circe with a tyrant's will.

Not to become a beast, each desperate one
Makes himself drunk on space and blazing skies;
The gnawing ice, the copper-burning sun
Efface the scars of kisses and of lies.

But the true voyagers set out to ...

How dull and dead are books that cannot show
A prince of Pembroke, and that Pembroke you!
You who are high born, and a lord no less
Free by your fate than fortune's mightiness,
Who hug our poems, honour'd sir, and then
The paper gild and laureate the pen.
Nor suffer you the poets to sit cold,
But warm their wits and turn their lines to gold.
Others there be who righteously will swear
Those smooth-paced numbers amble everywhere,
And these brave measures go a stately trot;
Love those, like these, regard, reward them not.
But you, my lord, are one whose hand along
Goes with your mouth or does outrun your tongue;
Paying before you praise, and, cockering wit,
Give both the gold and garland unto it.

Where ships of purple gently toss
On seas of daffodil,
Fantastic sailors mingle,
And then -- the wharf is still.

The little old poem that nobody reads
    Blooms in a crowded space,
Like a ground-vine blossom, so low in the weeds
    That nobody sees its face -
    Unless, perchance, the reader's eye
    Stares through a yawn, and hurries by,
    For no one wants, or loves, or heeds,
    The little old poem that nobody reads.

The little old poem that nobody reads
    Was written - where? - and when?
Maybe a hand of goodly deeds
    Thrilled as it held the pen:
    Maybe the fountain whence it came
    Was a heart brimmed o'er with tears of shame,
    And maybe its creed is the worst of creeds -
    The little old poem that nobody reads.

But, little old poem that nobody reads,
    Holding you here above
The wound of a heart that warmly bleeds
  ...