Happiness

Aristonoë, the fading shepherdess,
Gathers the young girls round her in a ring,
Teaching them wisdom of love,
What to say, how to dress,
How frown, how smile,
How suitors to their dancing feet to bring,
How in mere walking to beguile,
What words cunningly said in what a way
Will draw man's busy fancy astray,
All the alphabet, grammar and syntax of love.

The garden smells are sweet,
Daisies spring in the turf under the high-heeled feet,
Dense, dark banks of laurel grow
Behind the wavering row
Of golden, flaxen, black, brown, auburn heads,
Behind the light and shimmering dresses
Of these unreal, modern shepherdesses;
And gaudy flowers in formal patterned beds
Vary the dim long vistas of the park,
Far as the eye can see,
Till at the fore...

The lights have faded from the little casement,
    As though her closing eyes had brought on night;
    And now she dreams--Ah! dreams supremely bright,
While silence reigns around from roof to basement.
    And slow the moon is mounting up the sky,
Drawing Heaven's myriads in her queenly train,
    Flinging rich largesse, as she passes by,
Of beauty freely over hill and plain.

Around the lattice creep the pure white roses,
    And one light bough rests gently on the pane,
    The diamond pane, through which the angel train
Gaze on the sister saint who there reposes;
    The moonlight silvers softly o'er it now;
And round the eaves the south wind whispers lowly,
    Waving the leaves like curls on maiden's brow;
The peace and stillness make the place seem ho...

Dry light reverberates, colour withdrawing
Into a sky so white, sight cannot follow it.
While in the shadows cast, rich hues, intenser
Far than in light spaces, offer me gladness.
Sun reigns triumphantly, thinning all vapour
Into translucency, through which the foliage
Bears out in sparkles of full golden greenery.
O'er this, short dashes of keen grey-green masses lie;
Even the cooler tints, pitched in this higher key -
Purpling and greening greys - are fierce as fires.
All the vast universe lives in one beautiful
Summer - made lambent light, offering gladness.
Who can accept of it? Hearts where no echo rings
Wildly recalling deeds done by old Destiny -
Deeds of finality, darkening the spirit -
Rousing the echoes of thought to reverberate
Ever and ever "Alas!"...

Whose head, befringed with bescattered tresses,
Shows like Apollo's when the morn he dresses,[B]
Or like Aurora when with pearl she sets
Her long, dishevell'd, rose-crown'd trammelets:
Her forehead smooth, full, polish'd, bright and high
Bears in itself a graceful majesty,
Under the which two crawling eyebrows twine
Like to the tendrils of a flatt'ring vine,
Under whose shade two starry sparkling eyes
Are beautifi'd with fair fring'd canopies.
Her comely nose, with uniformal grace,
Like purest white, stands in the middle place,
Parting the pair, as we may well suppose.
Each cheek resembling still a damask rose,
Which like a garden manifestly show
How roses, lilies, and carnations grow,
Which sweetly mixed both with white and red,
Like rose leav...

Dearest, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.

The very flowers that bend and meet,
In sweetening others, grow more sweet;
The clouds by day, the stars by night,
Inweave their floating locks of light;
The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid,
Is but the embrace of sun and shade.

Oh! in the hour when I shall feel
Those shadows round my senses steal,
When gentle eyes are weeping o'er
The clay that feels their tears no more,
Then let thy spirit with me be,
Or some sweet angel, likest thee!

How few that love us have we found!
How wide the world that girds them round
Like mountain streams we ...

For The Semi-Centennial Celebration Of The Settlement Of Cambridge, Mass., December 28, 1880

Your home was mine, - kind Nature's gift;
My love no years can chill;
In vain their flakes the storm-winds sift,
The snow-drop hides beneath the drift,
A living blossom still.

Mute are a hundred long-famed lyres,
Hushed all their golden strings;
One lay the coldest bosom fires,
One song, one only, never tires
While sweet-voiced memory sings.

No spot so lone but echo knows
That dear familiar strain;
In tropic isles, on arctic snows,
Through burning lips its music flows
And rings its fond refrain.

From Pisa's tower my straining sight
Roamed wandering leagues away,
When lo! a frigate's banner bright,
The starry blue, the red, the whi...

I could but see thee yesterday
Stung by a fretful bee;
And I the javelin suck'd away,
And heal'd the wound in thee.

A thousand thorns, and briars, and stings
I have in my poor breast;
Yet ne'er can see that salve which brings
My passions any rest.

As Love shall help me, I admire
How thou canst sit and smile
To see me bleed, and not desire
To staunch the blood the while.

If thou, composed of gentle mould,
Art so unkind to me;
What dismal stories will be told
Of those that cruel be!

    I would not venture to dispraise or praise.
    Too well I know the indifference which bounds
    A poet in the narrow working-grounds
    Where he is blind and deaf in all his ways.

    He must work out alone his path to glory;
    A thousand breaths are fanning him along;
    A thousand tears end in one little song,
    A thousand conflicts in one little story;

    A thousand notes swell to a single chord.
    He cannot tell where his direction tends;
    He strives unguided towards indefinite ends;
    He is an ignorant though absolute lord.

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven
All's right with the world!

"Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,
Sleep, oh, sleep!"
Eugene Field.



Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
The soft wind sang to the dead below:
"Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
And the task that was joyous be weary at last."

To the winter sky when the nights were long
The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
"Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
And the path grow rough when the night came down."

In the grey twilight of the autumn eves,
It sighed as it sang through the dying leaves:
"Ye think with regret that th...

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,
Fade slowly from the last gray height,
And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve
The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem
Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;
In the dusk forest, dreamingly,
Droops slowly down each plumèd head;
The river flowing softly by
Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea
Dreams of the unseen stars; and I
Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,
But red rays of the sunset stain
Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,
Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree
Glow like the figures on a pane
Of some old church by twilight seen,
Or like the rich devices wrought
In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat
Through shi...

Phoebus make haste, the day's too long, begone,
The silent night's the fittest time for moan;
But stay this once, unto my suit give ear,
And tell my griefs in either Hemisphere:
(And if the whirling of thy wheels do n't drown'd
The woful accents of my doleful sound),
If in thy swift career thou canst make stay,
I crave this boon, this errand by the way:
Commend me to the man more lov'd than life,
Show him the sorrows of his widow'd wife,
My dumpish thoughts, my groans, my brackish tears,
My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears,
And, if he love, how can he there abide?
My interest's more than all the world beside.
He that can tell the stars or Ocean sand,
Or all the grass that in the meads do stand,
The leaves in th' woods, the hail or drops of rain,
...

'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand
Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand
To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due;
It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true
Thy comic muse, from the exalted line
Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline
From that her zenith, and foretells a red
And blushing evening, when she goes to bed;
Yet such as shall outshine the glimmering light
With which all stars shall gild the following night.
Nor think it much, since all thy eaglets may
Endure the sunny trial, if we say
This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine
Trick'd up in fairer plumes, since all are thine.
Who hath his flock of cackling geese compar'd
With thy tun'd choir of swans? or else who dar'd
To call thy births deform'd? But if thou bind

Grant me a moment of peace,
Let me but open mine eyes,
Forgetting the empire of lies
And warfare’s majestic increase
Of national folly and hate;
Ere I return to my fate,
Grant me a moment of peace.

To what is I would turn from what seems
From a world where men fall and adore
The god that Fear shuddering bore
To Greed in the desert of dreams,
Unholy, inhuman, impure;
From the State to the loves that endure,
To what is I would turn from what seems.

No man has been richer than I,
Though he staggered with infinite gold
And bought of whatever is sold
Of the beauty that money can buy.
In the wealth that is lost in the mart
And is stored in the innermost heart
No man has been richer than I.

Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood,
W...

If I should wish hereafter that your heart
Should beat with one fair memory of me,
May Time's hard hand our footsteps guide apart,
But lead yours back one spring-time to the Lea.
Nodding Anemones,
Wind-flowers pale,
Bloom with the budding trees,
Dancing to every breeze,
Mock hopes more fair than these,
Love's vows more frail.

For then the grass we loved grows green again,
And April showers make April woods more fair;
But no sun dries the sad salt tears of pain,
Or brings back summer lights on faded hair,
Nodding Anemones,
Wind-flowers pale,
Bloom with the budding trees,
Dancing to every breeze,
Mock hopes more frail than these,
Love's vows more frail.

Bereave me not of Fancy's shadowy dreams,
Which won my heart, or when the gay career
Of life begun, or when at times a tear
Sat sad on memory's cheek--though loftier themes
Await the awakened mind to the high prize
Of wisdom, hardly earned with toil and pain,
Aspiring patient; yet on life's wide plain
Left fatherless, where many a wanderer sighs
Hourly, and oft our road is lone and long,
'Twere not a crime should we a while delay
Amid the sunny field; and happier they
Who, as they journey, woo the charm of song,
To cheer their way; till they forget to weep,
And the tired sense is hushed, and sinks to sleep.

    A poem is perishable and,
    like it,
    so much of life is spent
    in intervals -
    the jarring second
    regaining consciousness,
    a post-mortem flick
    of the lank equestrian eyelid
    that signals morning's first crepuscular move.

    ... a little salad consciousness
    about the tumescent room
    with the sentient purr of a cat;
    her musky oils
    a green verdure
    lapping primordial scent
    to engross a little readiness
    as the day progresses
    to its Oedipal stage
    and arrested development.

Thou hadst no home, and thou couldst see
In every street the windows' light:
Dragging thy limbs about all night,
No window kept a light for thee.

However much thou wert distressed,
Or tired of moving, and felt sick,
Thy life was on the open deck,
Thou hadst no cabin for thy rest.

Thy barque was helpless 'neath the sky,
No pilot thought thee worth his pains
To guide for love or money gains,
Like phantom ships the rich sailed by.

Thy shadow mocked thee night and day,
Thy life's companion, it alone;
It did not sigh, it did not moan,
But mocked thy moves in every way.

In spite of all, the mind had force,
And, like a stream whose surface flows
The wrong way when a strong wind blows,
It underneath maintained its course.