Happiness

For the courage which comes when we call,
While troubles like hailstones fall;
For the help that is somehow nigh,
In the deepest night when we cry;
For the path that is certainly shown
When we pray in the dark alone,
    Let us give thanks.

For the knowledge we gain if we wait
And bear all the buffets of fate;
For the vision that beautifies sight
If we look under wrong for the right;
For the gleam of the ultimate goal
That shines on each reverent soul:
    Let us give thanks.

For the consciousness stirring in creeds
That love is the thing the world needs;
For the cry of the travailing earth
That is giving a new faith birth;
For the God we are learning to find
In the heart and the soul and the mind:
    Let us give thanks.
<...

[In spite of Mr. Carlyle's assertion of Schiller's "total deficiency in humor," [12] we think that the following poem suffices to show that he possessed the gift in no ordinary degree, and that if the aims of a genius so essentially earnest had allowed him to indulge it he would have justified the opinion of the experienced Iffland as to his capacities for original comedy.]

Can I, my friend, with thee condole?
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?
Poor martyr, most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;
A faithless wife, I grant the curse,
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale of sorro...

Ah! not now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring
Light-foot dance in the woods, whisper of life, woo me to wayfaring;
Ah! not now should you come, now when the road beckons, and good friends call,
Where are songs to be sung, fights to be fought, yea! and the best of all,
Love, on myriad lips fairer than yours, kisses you could not give! . . .
Dearest, why should I mourn, whimper, and whine, I that have yet to live?
Sorrow will I forget, tears for the best, love on the lips of you,
Now, when dawn in the blood wakes, and the sun laughs up the eastern blue;
I'll forget and be glad!
Only at length, dear, when the great day ends,
When love dies with the last light, and the last song has been sung, and friends
All are perished, and gloom strides on the heaven: then...

(Lyra Messianica, second edition, 1865.)


Once in a dream I saw the flowers
    That bud and bloom in Paradise;
    More fair they are than waking eyes
Have seen in all this world of ours.
And faint the perfume-bearing rose,
    And faint the lily on its stem,
And faint the perfect violet
    Compared with them.

I heard the songs of Paradise:
    Each bird sat singing in his place;
    A tender song so full of grace
It soared like incense to the skies.
Each bird sat singing to his mate
    Soft cooing notes among the trees:
The nightingale herself were cold
    To such as these.

I saw the fourfold River flow,
    And deep it was, with golden sand;
    It flowed between a mossy land
With murmured music grave and...

I.

The white broom flatt'ring her flowers in calm June weather,
    'O most sweet wear;
Forty-eight weeks of my life do none desire me,
    Four am I fair,'

    Quoth the brown bee
    'In thy white wear
    Four thou art fair.
    A mystery
    Of honeyed snow
    In scented air
    The bee lines flow
    Straight unto thee.
    Great boon and bliss
    All pure I wis,
    And sweet to grow
    Ay, so to give
    That many live.
    Now as for me,
    I,' quoth the bee,
    'Have not to give,
    Through long hours sunny
    Gathering I live:
    Aye debonair
    Sailing sweet air
    After my fare,
    Bee-bread and honey.
    In thy deep coombe,
    O thou white broom,
    Where no...

Home! Home!
Man may roam
While the blood of life is brimming,
While the head's with glory swimming;
But, when Love and Life are over,
Bring him to the village clover,
Home! Home!

Home! Home!
Bring him home,
Where the songs of sad hearts shrive him,
Where remorse no more shall rive him,
Where the ever weeping willow
Moults to make its leaves his pillow,
Home! Home!

Home! Home!
He is home,
Where his song was ever sounding,
Where his blood was ever bounding,
Here, at last, he leaves his madness,
All his love and all his sadness,
Home! Home!

    There dwelt a widow learned and devout,
    Behind our hamlet on the eastern hill.
    Three sons she had, who went to find the world.
    They promised to return, but wandered still.
    The cities used them well, they won their way,
    Rich gifts they sent, to still their mother's sighs.
    Worn out with honors, and apart from her,
    They died as many a self-made exile dies.
    The mother had a hearth that would not quench,
    The deathless embers fought the creeping gloom.
    She said to us who came with wondering eyes -
    "This is a magic fire, a magic room."
    The pine burned out, but still the coals glowed on,
    Her grave grew old beneath the pear-tree shade,
    And yet her crumbling home enshrined the light.
    The neighbors peering in wer...

They mock my toil the nymphs and am'rous swains
And whence this fond attempt to write, they cry,
Love-songs in language that thou little know'st?
How dar'st thou risque to sing these foreign strains?
Say truly. Find'st not oft thy purpose cross'd,
And that thy fairest flow'rs, Here, fade and die?
Then with pretence of admiration high
Thee other shores expect, and other tides,
Rivers on whose grassy sides
Her deathless laurel-leaf with which to bind
Thy flowing locks, already Fame provides;
Why then this burthen, better far declin'd?
Speak, Canzone! for me. The Fair One said who guides
My willing heart, and all my Fancy's flights,
"This is the language in which Love delights."

I.

There was moonlight in the garden and the chirr and chirp of crickets;
There was scent of pink and peony and deep syringa thickets,
When adown the pathway whitely, where the firefly glimmered brightly,
She came stepping, oh, so lightly,
To the old gate made of pickets.

II.

There were dew and musk and murmur and a voice that hummed odd snatches
Of a song while there she hurried, through the moonlight's silvery patches,
To the rose-grown gate, above her and her softly-singing lover,
With its blossom-tangled cover
And its weight and wooden latches.

III.

Whom she met there, whom she kissed there, mid the moonlight and the roses,
With his arms who there enclosed her, as a tiger-lily encloses
Some white moth that frailly settles on its go...

The baby sings not on its mother's breast;
Nor nightingales who nestle side by side;
Nor I by thine:    but let us only part,
Then lips which should but kiss, and so be still,
As having uttered all, must speak again -
O stunted thoughts!    O chill and fettered rhyme
Yet my great bliss, though still entirely blest,
Losing its proper home, can find no rest:
    So, like a child who whiles away the time
With dance and carol till the eventide,
Watching its mother homeward through the glen;
Or nightingale, who, sitting far apart,
Tells to his listening mate within the nest
The wonder of his star-entranced heart
Till all the wakened woodlands laugh and thrill -
    Forth all my being bubbles into song;
    And rings aloft, not smooth, yet clear and strong.

Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes
For him new suns are in the skies!

Thy soul a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into bloom sad Autumn by thee;
Night and desert, if they spy thee,
To gardens laugh with daylight shine,
Lit by those happy smiles of thine!
Dark with cloud the future far
Goldens itself beneath thy star.
Smilest thou to see the harmony
Of charm the laws of Nature keep?
Alas! to me the harmony
Brings only cause to weep!

Holds not Ha...

Now how could I, with gold to spare,
Who know the harlot's arms, and wine,
Sit in this green field all alone,
If Nature was not truly mine?

That Pleasure life wakes stale at morn,
From heavy sleep that no rest brings:
This life of quiet joy wakes fresh,
And claps its wings at morn, and sings.

So here sit I, alone till noon,
In one long dream of quiet bliss;
I hear the lark and share his joy,
With no more winedrops than were his.

Such, Nature, is thy charm and power,
Since I have made the Muse my wife,
To keep me from the harlot's arms,
And save me from a drunkard's life.

If Thou hadst been a Poet! On my heart
The thought dashed. It recoiled, as, with the gift,
Light-blinded, and joy-saddened, so bereft.
And the hot fountain-tears, with sudden start,
Thronged to mine eyes, as if with that same smart
The husk of vision had in twain been cleft,
Its hidden soul in naked beauty left,
And we beheld thee, Nature, as thou art.
O Poet, Poet, Poet! at thy feet
I should have lien, sainted with listening;
My pulses answering aye, in rhythmic beat,
Each parting word that with melodious wing
Moved on, creating still my being sweet;
My soul thy harp, thy word the quivering string.

Audley Court


‘The Bull, the Fleece are cramm’d, and not a room
For love or money. Let us picnic there
At Audley Court.’

I spoke, while Audley feast

Humm’d like a hive all round the narrow quay,
To Francis, with a basket on his arm,
To Francis just alighted from the boat,
And breathing of the sea. ‘With all my heart,’
Said Francis. Then we shoulder’d thro’ the swarm,
And rounded by the stillness of the beach
To where the bay runs up its latest horn.

We left the dying ebb that faintly lipp’d
The flat red granite; so by many a sweep
Of meadow smooth from aftermath we reach’d
The griffin-guarded gates, and pass’d thro’ all
The pillar’d dusk of sounding sycamores,
And cross’d the garden to the gardener’s lodge,
With all its c...

O partial MEMORY! Years, that fled too fast,
    From thee in more than pristine beauty rise,
    Forgotten all the transient tears and sighs
    Somewhat that dimm'd their brightness! Thou hast chas'd
Each hovering mist from the soft Suns, that grac'd
    Our fresh, gay morn of Youth; - the Heart's high prize,
    Friendship, - and all that charm'd us in the eyes
    Of yet unutter'd Love. - So pleasures past,
That in thy crystal prism thus glow sublime,
    Beam on the gloom'd and disappointed Mind
    When Youth and Health, in the chill'd grasp of Time,
Shudder and fade; - and cypress buds we find
    Ordain'd Life's blighted roses to supply,
    While but reflected shine the golden lights of Joy.

By many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.
Where was the beauty that the Lord gave man when first he towered in pride?
But one came by me at whose word the bitter condemnation died.
His brows were crowned with thorns of light: his eyes were bright as one who sees
The starry palaces shine o'er the sparkle of the heavenly seas.
'Is it not beautiful?' he cried. Our Faery Land of Hearts' Desire
Is mingled through the mire and mist, yet stainless keeps its lovely fire.
The pearly phantoms with blown hair are dancing where the drunkards reel:
Th...

On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
        On waves that battling beat and break with might,
While farther seaward in a bland delight,
        I see them shining where a rainbow shook.
On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
        On waves that like sea-armies swing to sight,
To send upon the shore their billows white,
        And, ebbing, to leave pearls in every nook.

Thus, Poet, in your youth when storms are wild
        And passions break upon the heart and brain,
To leave their ruin there--shipwreck and waste--
        Pick up your lute! Upon it undefiled
You'll find song-pearls that your heart-deeps retain,
        The crown the years have brought you, white and chaste.

[1]

Were I a pet of fair Calliope,
I would devote the gifts conferr'd on me
To dress in verse old Aesop's lies divine;
For verse, and they, and truth, do well combine;
But, not a favourite on the Muses' hill,
I dare not arrogate the magic skill,
To ornament these charming stories.
A bard might brighten up their glories,
No doubt. I try, - what one more wise must do.
Thus much I have accomplish'd hitherto: -
By help of my translation,
The beasts hold conversation,
In French, as ne'er they did before.
Indeed, to claim a little more,
The plants and trees,[2] with smiling features,
Are turn'd by me to talking creatures.
Who says, that this is not enchanting?
'Ah,' says the critics, 'hear what vaunting!
From one whose work...