Happiness

See, Thaliarch mine, how, white with snow,
Soracte mocks the sullen sky;
How, groaning loud, the woods are bowed,
And chained with frost the rivers lie.

Pile, pile the logs upon the hearth;
We'll melt away the envious cold:
And, better yet, sweet friend, we'll wet
Our whistles with some four-year-old.

Commit all else unto the gods,
Who, when it pleaseth them, shall bring
To fretful deeps and wooded steeps
The mild, persuasive grace of Spring.

Let not To-morrow, but To-day,
Your ever active thoughts engage;
Frisk, dance, and sing, and have your fling,
Unharmed, unawed of crabbed Age.

Let's steal content from Winter's wrath,
And glory in the artful theft,
That years from now folks shall allow
'T was cold indeed when we got ...

In this old garden, fair, I walk to-day
Heart-charmed with all the beauty of the scene:
The rich, luxuriant grasses' cooling green,
The wall's environ, ivy-decked and gray,
The waving branches with the wind at play,
The slight and tremulous blooms that show between,
Sweet all: and yet my yearning heart doth lean
Toward Love's Egyptian fleshpots far away.

Beside the wall, the slim Laburnum grows
And flings its golden flow'rs to every breeze.
But e'en among such soothing sights as these,
I pant and nurse my soul-devouring woes.
Of all the longings that our hearts wot of,
There is no hunger like the want of love!

Dear Chloe, how blubber'd is that pretty face;
Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurl'd:
Prythee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaff says)
Let us e'en talk a little like folks of this world.

How canst thou presume, thou hast leave to destroy
The beauties, which Venus but lent to thy keeping?
Those looks were design'd to inspire love and joy:
More ord'nary eyes may serve people for weeping.

To be vext at a trifle or two that I writ,
Your judgment at once, and my passion you wrong:
You take that for fact, which will scarce be found wit:
Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?

What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The diff'rence there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
An...

Time, never wand'ring from his annual round,
Bids Zephyr breathe the Spring, and thaw the ground;
Bleak Winter flies, new verdure clothes the plain,
And earth assumes her transient youth again.
Dream I, or also to the Spring belong
Increase of Genius, and new pow'rs of song?
Spring gives them, and, how strange soere it seem,
Impels me now to some harmonious theme.
Castalia's fountain and the forked hill[1]
By day, by night, my raptur'd fancy fill,
My bosom burns and heaves, I hear within
A sacred sound that prompts me to begin,
Lo! Phoebus comes, with his bright hair he blends
The radiant laurel wreath; Phoebus descends;
I mount, and, undepress'd by cumb'rous clay,
Through cloudy regions win my easy way;
Rapt through poetic shadowy haunts I fly:

I Had this thought awhile ago,
‘My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.’

And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;

That every year I have cried, ‘At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call.’

That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

Oh the snow, - the bright fleecy snow!
Isn't it grand when the north breezes blow?
Isn't it bracing the ice to skim o'er,
With a jovial friend or the one you adore?
How the ice crackles, and how the skates ring,
How friends flit past you like birds on the wing.
How the gay laugh ripples through the clear air,
How bloom the roses on cheeks of the fair!
Few are the pleasures that life can bestow,
To equal the charms of the beautiful snow.

Oh, the snow,-the pitiless snow!
Cruel and cold, as the shelterless know;
Huddled in nooks on the mud or the flags,
Wrapp'd in a few scanty, fluttering rags.
Gently it rests on the roof and the spire,
And filling the streets with its slush and the mire,
Freezing the life out of poor, starving souls,
Wild whirling and...

I should be glad of loneliness
And hours that go on broken wings,
A thirsty body, a tired heart
And the unchanging ache of things,

If I could make a single song
As lovely and as full of light,
As hushed and brief as a falling star
On a winter night.

Go, little flutt'rer! seek thy feather'd loves,
And leave a wretched mourner to his woe;
Seek out the bow'rs of bliss, seek happier groves,
Nor here unheeded let thy music flow.

Yet think me not ungrateful for thy song,
If meant to cheer me in my lone retreat;
Ah! not to thee, my little friend! belong
The pow'rs to soothe the pangs of adverse fate.

Fly, then! the window of the wretched, fly!
And be thy harmless life for ever blest;
I only can reward thee with a sigh,
And wish that joys may crown thy peaceful nest.

I.

    Deluded swain, the pleasure
        The fickle fair can give thee,
    Is but a fairy treasure -
        Thy hopes will soon deceive thee.

II.

    The billows on the ocean,
        The breezes idly roaming,
    The clouds uncertain motion -
        They are but types of woman.

III.

    O! art thou not ashamed
        To doat upon a feature?
    If man thou wouldst be named,
        Despise the silly creature.

IV.

    Go find an honest fellow;
        Good claret set before thee:
    Hold on till thou art mellow,
        And then to bed in glory.

Of all the days in memory's list,
Those motley banish'd days;
Some overhung with sorrow's mist,
Some gilt with hopeful rays;
There is a day 'bove all the rest
That has a lovely sound,
There is a day I love the best--
When Patty first was found.

When first I look'd upon her eye,
And all her charms I met,
There's many a day gone heedless by,
But that I'll ne'er forget;
I met my love beneath the tree,
I help'd her o'er the stile,
The very shade is dear to me
That blest me with her smile.

Strange to the world my artless fair,
But artless as she be,
She found the witching art when there
To win my heart from me;
And all the days the year can bring,
As sweet as they may prove,
There'll ne'er come one like that I sing,
Wh...

In the beautiful May weather,
        Lapsing soon into June;
    On a golden, golden day
    Of the green and golden May,
        When our hearts were beating tune
        To the coming feet of June,
Walked we in the woods together.

    Silver fine
        Gleamed the ash buds through the darkness
            of the pine,
And the waters of the stream
Glance and gleam,
Like a silver-footed dream--
    Beckoning, calling,
    Flashing, falling,
Into shadows dun and brown
    Slipping down,
Calling still--Oh hear! Oh follow!
    Follow--follow!
Down through glen and ferny hollow,
Lit with patches of the sky,
Shining through the trees so high,
Hand in hand we went together,
In the golden, golden weather
        Of the...

What mean the joyous sounds from yonder vine-clad height?
What the exulting Evoe? [63]
Why glows the cheek? Whom is't that I, with pinions light,
Swinging the lofty Thyrsus see?

Is it the genius whom the gladsome throng obeys?
Do I his numerous train descry?
In plenty's teeming horn the gifts of heaven he sways,
And reels from very ecstacy!

See how the golden grape in glorious beauty shines,
Kissed by the earliest morning-beams!
The shadow of yon bower, how lovingly it signs,
As it with countless blessings teams!

Ha! glad October, thou art welcome unto me!
October's first-born, welcome thou!
Thanks of a purer kind, than all who worship thee,
More heartfelt thanks I'm bringing now!

For thou to me the one whom I have loved so well,
A...

(Student's Love-song)



Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
Soon their intangible track will be run,
    And dusk grow strong
    And they be fled.

Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
And I have wasted another day . . .
But wasted WASTED, do I say?
Is it a waste to have imaged one
Beyond the hills there, who, anon,
    My great deeds done
    Will be mine alway?

Ay, 'twas here, on this spot,
In that summer of yore,
Atalanta did not
Vote my presence a bore,
Nor reply to my tenderest talk "She had
heard all that nonsense before."

She'd the brooch I had bought
And the necklace and sash on,
And her heart, as I thought,
Was alive to my passion;
And she'd done up her hair in the style that
the Empress had brought into fashion.

I had been to the play
With my pearl of a Peri,
But, for all I could say,
She declared she was weary,
That "the place was so crowded and hot,
and she couldn't abide that Dundreary."

Then I thought "Lucky boy!
'Tis for you that she whimpers!"
And I noted with joy
Those sensational simpers:
And I said "This is scrumptious!"
a phrase I had learned from...

1.

The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me: -
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand? -
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong and life itself not weak.


2.

Thus am I mine own prison. Everything
Around me free and sunny and at ease:
Or if in shadow, in a shade of trees
Which...

I

The cool grass blowing in a breeze
Of April valleys sooms and sways;
On slopes that dip to quiet seas
Through far, faint drifts of yellowing haze.
I lie like one who, in a dream
Of sounds and splendid coloured things,
Seems lifted into life supreme
And has a sense of waxing wings.
For through a great arch-light which floods
And breaks and spreads and swims along
High royal-robed autumnal woods,
I hear a glorious sunset song.
But, ah, Euterpe! I that pause
And listen to the strain divine
Can never learn its words, because
I am no son of thine.

How sweet is wandering where the west
Is full of thee, what time the morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest
Across green miles of gleaming corn!

How sweet are dreams in shady n...

That I were Keats! And with a golden pen
Could for all time preserve these golden days
In rich and glowing verse, for poorer men,
Who felt their wonder, but could only gaze
With silent joy upon sweet Autumn's face,
And not record in any wise its grace!
Alas! But I am even dumb as they -
I cannot bid the fleeting hours stay,
Nor chain one moment on a page's space.

That I were Grieg! Then, with a haunting air
Of murmurs soft, and swelling, grand refrains
Would I express my love of Autumn fair
With all its wealth of harvest, and warm rains:
And with fantastic melodies inspire
A memory of each mad sunset's fire
In which the day goes slowly to its death
As through the fragrant woods dim Evening's breath
Doth soothe to sleep the drowsy songbirds' choir.

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's, he takes the lead
In summer luxury, he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.