Happiness

[1]

Two parrots lived, a sire and son,
On roastings from a royal fire.
Two demigods, a son and sire,
These parrots pension'd for their fun.
Time tied the knot of love sincere:
The sires grew to each other dear;
The sons, in spite of their frivolity,
Grew comrades boon, in joke and jollity;
At mess they mated, hot or cool;
Were fellow-scholars at a school.
Which did the bird no little honour, since
The boy, by king begotten, was a prince.
By nature fond of birds, the prince, too, petted
A sparrow, which delightfully coquetted.
These rivals, both of unripe feather,
One day were frolicking together:
As oft befalls such little folks,
A quarrel follow'd from their jokes.
The sparrow, quite uncircumspect,
Was by the parrot sadly ...

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, ‘O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.’

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish’d brass
I chose. The ranged ramparts bright
From level meadow-bases of deep grass
Suddenly scaled the light.

Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf
The rock rose clear, or winding stair.
My soul would live alone unto herself
In her high palace there.

And ‘while the world runs round and round,’ I said,
‘Reign thou apart, a quiet king,
Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade
Sleeps on his luminous ring.’

To which my soul made answer readily:
‘Trust me, in bliss I shall abide
In this great mansion, that is built for me,
So royal...

Giovane piano, e semplicetto amante
Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,
Madonna a voi del mio cuor l'humil dono
Faro divoto; io certo a prove tante
L'hebbi fedele, intrepido, costante,
De pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono;
Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il tuono,
S 'arma di se, e d' intero diamante,
Tanto del forse, e d' invidia sicuro,
Di timori, e speranze al popol use
Quanto d'ingegno, e d' alto valor vago,
E di cetra sonora, e delle muse:
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro
Ove amor mise l 'insanabil ago.

(To E. H. P.)


Melik the Sultán, tired and wan,
Nodded at noon on his diván.

Beside the fountain lingered near
JAMÍL the bard, and the vizier--

Old YÚSUF, sour and hard to please;
Then JAMÍL sang, in words like these.

Slim is Butheina--slim is she
As boughs of the Aráka tree!

"Nay," quoth the other, teeth between,
"Lean, if you will,--I call her lean."

Sweet is Butheina--sweet as wine,
With smiles that like red bubbles shine!

"True,--by the Prophet!" YÚSUF said,
"She makes men wander in the head!"

Dear is Butheina--ah! more dear
Than all the maidens of Kashmeer!

"Dear," came the answer, quick as thought,
"Dear ... and yet always to be bought."

So JAMÍL ceased. But still Life's page...

I.

There is one road, one only, to the Light:
    A narrow way, but Freedom walks therein;
A straight, firm road through Chaos and old Night,
    And all these wandering Jack-o-Lents of Sin.

It is the road of Law, where Pilate stays
    To hear, at last, the answer to his cry;
And mighty sages, groping through their maze
    Of eager questions, hear a child reply.

Truth? What is Truth? Come, look upon my tables.
    Begin at your beginnings once again.
Twice one is two! Though all the rest be fables,
    Here's one poor glimpse of Truth to keep you sane.

For Truth, at first, is clean accord with fact,
Whether in line or thought, or word, or act.


II.

Then, by those first, those clean, precise, accords,

I


There came no change from week to week
On all the land, but all one way,
Like ghosts that cannot touch nor speak,
Day followed day.

Within the palace court the rounds
Of glare and shadow, day and night,
Went ever with the same dull sounds,
The same dull flight:

The motion of slow forms of state,
The far-off murmur of the street,
The din of couriers at the gate,
Half-mad with heat;

Sometimes a distant shout of boys
At play upon the terrace walk,
The shutting of great doors, and noise
Of muttered talk.

In one red corner of the wall,
That fronted with its granite stain
The town, the palms, and, beyond all,
The burning plain,

As listless as the hour, alone,
The poet by his broken lute
S...

Down in the deeps of dark despair and woe; -
Of Death expectant; - Hope I put aside;
Counting the heartbeats, slowly, yet more slow, -
Marking the lazy ebb of life's last tide.
Sweet Resignation, with her opiate breath,
Spread a light veil, oblivious, o'er the past,
And all unwilling handmaid to remorseless Death,
Shut out the pain of life's great scene, - the last.

When, lo! from out the mist a slender form
Took shape and forward pressed and two bright eyes
Shone as two stars that gleam athwart the storm,
Grandly serene, amid the cloud-fleck'd skies.
"Not yet," she said, "there are some sands to run,
Ere he has reached life's limit, and no grain
Shall lie unused. Then, when his fight is done,
Pronounce the verdict, - be it loss or gain."

I felt he...

Some are laughing, some are weeping;
She is sleeping, only sleeping.
Round her rest wild flowers are creeping;
There the wind is heaping, heaping
Sweetest sweets of Summer's keeping.
By the corn-fields ripe for reaping.

There are lilies, and there blushes
The deep rose, and there the thrushes
Sing till latest sunlight flushes
In the west; a fresh wind brushes
Through the leaves while evening hushes.

There by day the lark is singing
And the grass and weeds are springing;
There by night the bat is winging;
There for ever winds are bringing
Far-off chimes of church-bells ringing.

Night and morning, noon and even,
Their sound fills her dreams with Heaven:
The long strife at lent is striven:
Till her grave-bands shall be riven
...

    Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
        Beats upon my heart.
    People twist and scream in pain,--
    Dawn will find them still again;
    This has neither wax nor wane,
        Neither stop nor start.

    People dress and go to town;
        I sit in my chair.
    All my thoughts are slow and brown:
    Standing up or sitting down
    Little matters, or what gown
        Or what shoes I wear.

I saw a child some four years old,
Along a meadow stray;
Alone she went unchecked untold
Her home not far away.

She gazed around on earth and sky
Now paused, and now proceeded;
Hill, valley, wood, she passed them by,
Unmarked, perchance unheeded.

And now gay groups of roses bright,
In circling thickets bound her
Yet on she went with footsteps light,
Still gazing all around her.

And now she paused, and now she stooped,
And plucked a little flower
A simple daisy 'twas, that drooped
Within a rosy bower.

The child did kiss the little gem,
And to her bosom pressed it;
And there she placed the fragile stem,
And with soft words caressed it.

I love to read a lesson true,
From nature's open book
And oft I lear...

When I seek the world through
For images of you,
Though apple-blossom is glad
And the lily stately-sad,
Gilliflowers kind of breath,
Rosemary true till death;
Though the wind can stir the grass
To memories as you pass.
And the soft-singing streams
Are music like your dreams;
Though constant stars embrace
The quiet of your face,
Your smile lights up sunrise,
And evening's in your eyes,
Each so shadows its part,
All cannot show your heart;
And weighing the beauty of earth
I see it so little worth,
When reckoned beside you,
That I hold heaven for true
But all my heaven is you.

Now is the time when swallows twitter round,
And robin redbreasts carol in the trees,
When the grass grows very green on lower ground,
And opening buds embalm the buxom breeze,
When orchards murmur with the half-blind bees,
Freed till th' uncellared hives again be full,
The time when old men smile and maidens please,
Loose-zoned in summer dresses light and cool,
And laughing urchins shirk the lessons of the school.

Perchance it is the hour when dawn unveils
The visage of the day; when o'er the bar
The radiant morning rides with saffron sails,
Streamers of light on each resplendent spar,
Fraught with rich gifts. Now, sunk, each faded star.
The Sun, the Sun, - the glorious Lord of Day!
Behold, he comes! before his orbèd car,
Caparisoned with gold, in dazzl...

Let us halt now for a space in our hurrying;
Let us take time to look up and look out;
Let us refuse for a spell to be worrying;
Let us decline to both question and doubt.
If one goes cavilling,
Hair splitting, flaw hunting - ready for strife -
All the best pleasure is missed in the travelling
Onward through life.

Just for to-day we will put away sorrowing -
Just for to-day not a tear shall be shed;
Nor will we fear anything, or go borrowing
Pain from the future by profitless dread.
Thought shall go frolicking,
Pleasuring, treasuring everything bright -
Tasting the joy that is found just in rollicking
On through the light.

Just for to-day all the ills that need bettering
We will omit from our notebook of mind;
All that is good we will mar...

We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent, sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.

Among the fields the camomile
Seems blown mist in the lightning's glare:
Cool, rainy odors drench the air;
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.

The way that I shall take to-night
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with double darkness, till,
Between the boughs, a window's light
Shines out upon the hill.

The fence; and then the path that goes
Around a trailer-tangled rock,
Through puckered pink and hollyhock,
Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,
And door whereat I knock.

Bright on the oldtime flower place
The lamp streams through the foggy pane;
The door is opened to the rain:
And in the door - her happy face
And outstretched arms again.

'Tis once in life our dreams come true,
    The myths of long ago,
Quite real though fairy-like their view,
    They surge with ebb and flow;
Thus thou, O haunt of childhood dreams,
    More beauteous and fair
Than Nature's landscape and her streams,
    Historic Harvard Square.

My soul hath panted long for thee,
    Like as the wounded hart
That vainly strives himself to free
    Full from the archer's dart;
And struggled oft all, all alone
    With burdens hard to bear,
But now I stand at Wisdom's throne
    To-night in Harvard Square.

A night most tranquil, - I was proud
    My thoughts soared up afar,
To moonbeams pouring through the cloud,
    Or some lone twinkling star;
And musing thus, my quickened pace
    Beat to ...

Nought is but beauty weareth, near and far,
Under the pale, blue sky and lonely star.
This is that quick hour when the city turns
Her troubled harsh distortion and blind care
Into brief loveliness seen everywhere,
While in the fuming west the low sun smouldering burns.

Not brick nor marble the rich beauty owns,
Not this is held in starward-pointing stones.
Sun, wind and smoke the threefold magic stir,
Kissing each favourless poor ruin with kiss
Like that when lovers lovers lure to bliss,
And earth than towered heaven awhile is heavenlier.

Tall shafts that show the sky how far away!
The thousand-window'd house gilded with day
That fades to night; the arches low, the streamer
Everywhere of the ruddy'd smoke.... Is aught
Of loveliness so rich e'er sol...

(For Joyce Kilmer)


When the dreamy night is on, up the Hudson river,
And the sheen of modern taste is dim and far away,
Ghostly men on phantom rafts make the waters shiver,
Laughing in the sibilance of the silver spray.
Yea, and up the woodlands, staunch in moonlit weather,
Go the ghostly horsemen, adventuresome to ride,
White as mist the doublet-braize, bandolier and feather,
Fleet as gallant Robin Hood in an eventide.

Times are gone that knew the craft in the role of rovers,
Fellows of the open, care could never load:
Unalarmed for bed or board, they were leisure's lovers,
Summer bloomed in story on the Hyde Park Road.
Summer was a blossom, but the fruit was autumn,
Fragrant haylofts for a bed, cider-cakes in store,
Warmer was a cup they know, w...