Happiness

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
For there the river comes winding down,
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, “Welcome home!”

And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands o’er;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
’Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel.

Once, in the old Colonial days,
Two hundred years ago and more,
A boat sailed down through the winding ways
Of Hampton River to that low...

After the feast, my Shapcot, see
The fairy court I give to thee;
Where we'll present our Oberon, led
Half-tipsy to the fairy bed,
Where Mab he finds, who there doth lie,
Not without mickle majesty.
Which done, and thence remov'd the light,
We'll wish both them and thee good-night.

Full as a bee with thyme, and red
As cherry harvest, now high fed
For lust and action, on he'll go
To lie with Mab, though all say no.
Lust has no ears; he's sharp as thorn,
And fretful, carries hay in's horn,
And lightning in his eyes; and flings
Among the elves, if moved, the stings
Of peltish wasps; well know his guard -
Kings, though they're hated, will be fear'd.
Wine lead[s] him on. Thus to a grove,
Sometimes devoted unto love,
Tinselled with tw...

Once in a lonely hamlet I sojourned
In which a Lady driven from France did dwell;
The big and lesser griefs with which she mourned,
In friendship she to me would often tell.
This Lady, dwelling upon British ground,
Where she was childless, daily would repair
To a poor neighbouring cottage; as I found,
For sake of a young Child whose home was there.

Once having seen her clasp with fond embrace
This Child, I chanted to myself a lay,
Endeavouring, in our English tongue, to trace
Such things as she unto the Babe might say:
And thus, from what I heard and knew, or guessed,
My song the workings of her heart expressed.

I

"Dear Babe, thou daughter of another,
One moment let me be thy mother!
An infant's face and looks are thine,
And sure a ...

        I.


My two-score years and ten are over,
Never again shall youth be mine.
The years are ready-winged for flying,
What crav'st thou still of feast and wine?
Wilt thou still court man's acclamation,
Forgetting what the Lord hath said?
And forfeiting thy weal eternal,
By thine own guilty heart misled?
Shalt thou have never done with folly,
Still fresh and new must it arise?
Oh heed it not, heed not the senses,
But follow God, be meek and wise;
Yea, profit by thy days remaining,
They hurry swiftly to the goal.
Be zealous in the Lord's high service,
And banish falsehood from thy soul.
Use all thy strength, use all thy fervor,
Defy thine own desires, awaken!
Be not afraid when seas are foaming,
And earth to her foundations shak...

Falling upon the frozen world last night,
    I heard the slow beat of the Winter rain -
    Poor foolish drops, down-dripping all in vain;
The ice-bound Earth but mocked their puny might,
Far better had the fixedness of white
And uncomplaining snows - which make no sign,
But coldly smile, when pitying moonbeams shine -
Concealed its sorrow from all human sight.
Long, long ago, in blurred and burdened years,
    I learned the uselessness of uttered woe.
    Though sinewy Fate deals her most skillful blow,
I do not waste the gall now of my tears,
But feed my pride upon its bitter, while
I look straight in the world's bold eyes, and smile.

Who do you think stands watching
    The snow-tops shining rosy
In heaven, now that the darkness
    Takes all but the tallest posy?

Who then sees the two-winged
    Boat down there, all alone
And asleep on the snow's last shadow,
    Like a moth on a stone?

The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,
    Have all gone dark, gone black.
And now in the dark my soul to you
    Turns back.

To you, my little darling,
    To you, out of Italy.
For what is loveliness, my love,
    Save you have it with me!

So, there's an oxen wagon
    Comes darkly into sight:
A man with a lantern, swinging
    A little light.

What does he see, my darling
    Here by the darkened lake?
Here, in the sloping shadow
    The mou...

(Athenaeum, October 21, 1848)


I did not chide him, though I knew
    That he was false to me.
Chide the exhaling of the dew,
    The ebbing of the sea,
The fading of a rosy hue, -
    But not inconstancy.

Why strive for love when love is o'er?
    Why bind a restive heart? -
He never knew the pain I bore
    In saying: 'We must part;
Let us be friends and nothing more.'
    - Oh, woman's shallow art!

But it is over, it is done, -
    I hardly heed it now;
So many weary years have run
    Since then, I think not how
Things might have been, - but greet each one
    With an unruffled brow.

What time I am where others be,
    My heart seems very calm -
Stone calm; but if all go from me,
    There c...

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS


‘Cursed be he that moves my bones.’

Shakespeare’s Epitaph.



You might have won the Poet’s name,
If such be worth the winning now,
And gain’d a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim;

But you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Thro’ troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice.

And you have miss’d the irreverent doom
Of those that wear the Poet’s crown;
Hereafter, neither knave nor clown
Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry:

‘Proclaim the faults he would not show;
Br...

I would not always reason. The straight path
Wearies us with its never-varying lines,
And we grow melancholy. I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counsellor,
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions, in the mind of man,
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time,
Illusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over nature. Look, even now,
Where two bright planets in the twilight meet,
Upon the saffron heaven, the imperial star
Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn
Pours forth t...

(Oscar Wilde.)


I gazed upon thee desolate and heard
    Thine anguished cry when fell the iron gin
That all but broke thy soul, yet gave thy word
    The strength to ask forgiveness of thy sin.

I saw thee fleeing from the cruel light
    Of thine own fame; I saw thee hide thy face
In alien dust to cover up the blight
    Upon thy brow that time may yet erase.

I knew thy creed, although thy lips were mute;
    I knew the gods thou didst not dare to own;
I knew the Upas poison at the root
    Of thy last flower of song, in prison blown.

And out of all thy woe there came to me
    This miracle of dogma, like a cry:
"No law but freedom for the vagrant bee--
    No love but summer for the butterfly."

A joy from my soul's departed,
A bliss from my heart is flown,
As weary, weary-hearted,
I wander alone - alone!
The night wind sadly sigheth
A withering, wild refrain,
And my heart within me dieth
For the light in the window pane.

The stars overhead are shining,
As brightly as e'er they shone,
As heartless - sad - repining,
I wander alone - alone!
A sudden flash comes streaming,
And flickers adown the lane,
But no more for me is gleaming
The light in the window pane.

The voices that pass are cheerful,
Men laugh as the night winds moan;
They cannot tell how fearful
'Tis to wander alone - alone!
For them, with each night's returning,
Life singeth its tenderest strain,
Where the beacon of love is burning -
The light ...

written on the first of January, 1794

Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
        With me engarland now
        The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!

Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
        For well the funeral song
        Befits this solemn hour.

But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
        This consecrated day,
        To Mirth and Indolence.

Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant hand
Fills to the brim thy cup of happiness,
        Whilst her unclouded sun
        Illumes thy summer day,

Canst thou rejoice--rejoice that Time flies fast?
That Night shall shadow soon thy summer sun?
        That s...

Over the banisters bends a face,
    Daringly sweet and beguiling.
Somebody stands in careless grace,
    And watches the picture, smiling.

The light burns dim in the hall below,
    Nobody sees her standing,
Saying good-night again, soft and slow,
    Half way up to the landing.

Nobody only the eyes of brown,
    Tender and full of meaning,
That smile on the fairest face in town,
    Over the banisters leaning.

Tired and sleepy, with drooping head,
    I wonder why she lingers;
Now, when the good-nights all are said,
    Why somebody holds her fingers.

He holds her fingers and draws her down,
    Suddenly growing bolder,
Till the loose hair drops its masses brown
    Like a mantle over his shoulder.

Over the b...

He hurried away, young heart of joy, under our Devon sky!
And I watched him go, my beautiful boy, and a weary woman was I.
For my hair is grey, and his was gold; he'd the best of his life to live;
And I'd loved him so, and I'm old, I'm old; and he's all I had to give.

Ah yes, he was proud and swift and gay, but oh how my eyes were dim!
With the sun in his heart he went away, but he took the sun with him.
For look! How the leaves are falling now, and the winter won't be long. . . .
Oh boy, my boy with the sunny brow, and the lips of love and of song!

How we used to sit at the day's sweet end, we two by the firelight's gleam,
And we'd drift to the Valley of Let's Pretend, on the beautiful river of Dream.
Oh dear little heart! All wealth untold would I gladly, gladly pay
Coul...

The source of laughter lies so near to tears,
And pain to rapture, that one fountain flows
From forth the two Love's; in whose deeps appears
The image of the Heaven each man knows.

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,
Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,
Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;
Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind;
Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart:
Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's
Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones,
Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,
And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,
To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier.
Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere;
And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,
And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;
And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun...

I

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show,
Having performed some function, should forego
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural. But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything, whose sole office was to exist,
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb
Of Nature than to our unworthy view
She grants for a possession, may be true:
The cycle of the birthplace and ...

I hate this City, seated on the Plain,
    The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar,
Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain,
    This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar.

The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight,
    Screening my happiness as evening fell.
It was well worth - that most Enchanted Night -
    This life in torment, and the next in Hell!

People are kind to me; one More than Kind,
    Her lashes lie like fans upon her cheek,
But kindness is a burden on my mind,
    And it is weariness to hear her speak.

For though that Kaffir's bullet holds me here,
    My thoughts are ever free, and wander far,
To where the Lilac Hills rise, soft and clear,
    Beyond the Almond Groves of Kandahar.

He followed me to Sibi, to the Fair,
  ...