Happiness

'T is eight miles out and eight miles in,
    Just at the break of morn.
'T is ice without and flame within,
    To gain a kiss at dawn!

Far, where the Lilac Hills arise
    Soft from the misty plain,
A lone enchanted hollow lies
    Where I at last drew rein.

Midwinter grips this lonely land,
    This stony, treeless waste,
Where East, due East, across the sand,
    We fly in fevered haste.

Pull up! the East will soon be red,
    The wild duck westward fly,
And make above my anxious head,
    Triangles in the sky.

Like wind we go; we both are still
    So young; all thanks to Fate!
(It cuts like knives, this air so chill,)
    Dear God! if I am late!

Behind us, wrapped in mist and sleep
    The Ruined Cit...

[1]

The apologue[2] is from the immortal gods;
Or, if the gift of man it is,
Its author merits apotheosis.
Whoever magic genius lauds
Will do what in him lies
To raise this art's inventor to the skies.
It hath the potence of a charm,
On dulness lays a conquering arm,
Subjects the mind to its control,
And works its will upon the soul.
O lady, arm'd with equal power,
If e'er within celestial bower,
With messmate gods reclined,
My muse ambrosially hath dined,
Lend me the favour of a smile
On this her playful toil.
If you support, the tooth of time will shun,
And let my work the envious years outrun.
If authors would themselves survive,
To gain your suffrage they should strive.
On you my verses wait to get their...

A tide of beauty with returning May
Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume
Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom
The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.
Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe;
The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound;
And through the streets, like veins when they abound,
The lust for pleasure throbs itself away.
Here let me live, here let me still pursue
Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -
Thy strange allurements, City that I love,
Maze of romance, where I have followed too
The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need
And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.

How she would have loved
A party to-day! -
Bright-hatted and gloved,
With table and tray
And chairs on the lawn
Her smiles would have shone
With welcomings . . . But
She is shut, she is shut
    From friendship's spell
    In the jailing shell
    Of her tiny cell.

Or she would have reigned
At a dinner to-night
With ardours unfeigned,
And a generous delight;
All in her abode
She'd have freely bestowed
On her guests . . . But alas,
She is shut under grass
    Where no cups flow,
    Powerless to know
    That it might be so.

And she would have sought
With a child's eager glance
The shy snowdrops brought
By the new year's advance,
And peered in the rime
Of Candlemas-time
For crocuses . . . c...

One Morn as through Hyde Park we walk’d.
My friend and I, by chance we talk’d
Of Lessing’s famed Laocoön;
And after we awhile had gone
In Lessing’s track, and tried to see
What painting is, what poetry,
Diverging to another thought,
‘Ah,’ cries my friend, ‘but who hath taught
Why music and the other arts
Oftener perform aright their parts
Than poetry? why she, than they,
Fewer real successes can display?

‘For ’tis so, surely! Even in Greece
Where best the poet framed his piece,
Even in that Phoebus-guarded ground
Pausanias on his travels found
Good poems, if he look’d, more rare
(Though many) than good statues were,
For these, in truth, were everywhere!
Of bards full many a stroke divine
In Dante’s, Petrarch’s, Tasso’s line,
The ...

Maytime is to the meadows coming in,
And cowslip peeps have gotten eer so big,
And water blobs and all their golden kin
Crowd round the shallows by the striding brig.
Daisies and buttercups and ladysmocks
Are all abouten shining here and there,
Nodding about their gold and yellow locks
Like morts of folken flocking at a fair.
The sheep and cows are crowding for a share
And snatch the blossoms in such eager haste
That basket-bearing children running there
Do think within their hearts they'll get them all
And hoot and drive them from their graceless waste
As though there wa'n't a cowslip peep to spare.
--For they want some for tea and some for wine
And some to maken up a cuckaball
To throw across the garland's silken line
That reaches oer the street from wa...

Mirth the halls of Troy was filling,
Ere its lofty ramparts fell;
From the golden lute so thrilling
Hymns of joy were heard to swell.
From the sad and tearful slaughter
All had laid their arms aside,
For Pelides Priam's daughter
Claimed then as his own fair bride.

Laurel branches with them bearing,
Troop on troop in bright array
To the temples were repairing,
Owning Thymbrius' sovereign sway.
Through the streets, with frantic measure,
Danced the bacchanal mad round,
And, amid the radiant pleasure,
Only one sad breast was found.

Joyless in the midst of gladness,
None to heed her, none to love,
Roamed Cassandra, plunged in sadness,
To Apollo's laurel grove.
To its dark and deep recesses
Swift the sorrowing priestess hied,

While thou didst keep thy candour undefil'd,
Dearly I lov'd thee as my first-born child,
But when I saw thee wantonly to roam
From house to house, and never stay at home,
I brake my bonds of love, and bade thee go,
Regardless whether well thou sped'st or no.
On with thy fortunes then, whate'er they be:
If good, I'll smile; if bad, I'll sigh for thee.

Wine can invest the most disgusting hole
With wonders to our eyes,
And make the fabled porticoes arise
In its red vapour's gold
That show in sunsets seen through hazy skies.

Opium will expand beyond all measures,
Stretch out the limitless,
Will deepen time, make rapture bottomless,
With dismal pleasures
Surfeit the soul to point of helplessness.

But that is nothing to the poison flow
Out of your eyes, those round
Green lakes in which my soul turns upside-down...
To these my dreams all go
At these most bitter gulfs to drink or drown.

But all that is not worth the prodigy
Of your saliva, girl,
That bites my soul, and dizzies it, and swirls
It down remorselessly,
Rolling it, fainting, to the underworld!

So closed our tale, of which I give you all
The random scheme as wildly as it rose:
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,
'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me,
'What, if you drest it up poetically?'
So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent:
Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven
Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
The men required that I should give throughout
The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,
With which we bantered little Lilia first:
The women--and perhaps they felt their power,
For something in the ballads which they sang,
Or in their silent influence as they sat,
Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close--
They hated banter, wi...

The piping of our slender, peaceful reeds
Whispers uncared for while the trumpets bray;
Song is thin air; our hearts' exulting play
Beats time but to the tread of marching deeds,
Following the mighty van that Freedom leads,
Her glorious standard flaming to the day!
The crimsoned pavement where a hero bleeds
Breathes nobler lessons than the poet's lay.
Strong arms, broad breasts, brave hearts, are better worth
Than strains that sing the ravished echoes dumb.
Hark! 't is the loud reverberating drum
Rolls o'er the prairied West, the rock-bound North
The myriad-handed Future stretches forth
Its shadowy palms. Behold, we come, - we come!

Turn o'er these idle leaves. Such toys as these
Were not unsought for, as, in languid dreams,
We lay beside our lotus-feedi...

Too much my heart of Beauty's power hath known,
Too long to Love hath reason left her throne;
Too long my genius mourn'd his myrtle chain,
And three rich years of youth consum'd in vain.
My wishes, lull'd with soft inglorious dreams,
Forgot the patriot's and the sage's themes:
Through each Elysian vale and fairy grove,
Through all the enchanted paradise of love,
Misled by sickly hope's deceitful flame,
Averse to action, and renouncing fame.

At last the visionary scenes decay,
My eyes, exulting, bless the new-born day,
Whose faithful beams detect the dangerous road
In which my heedless feet securely trod,
And strip the phantoms of their lying charms
That lur'd my soul from Wisdom's peaceful arms.

For silver streams and banks bespread with flowers,

I bring a message from the stream
To fan the burning cheeks of town,
From morning's tower
Of pearl and rose
I bring this cup of crystal down,
With brimming dews agleam,
And from my lady's garden close
I bring this flower.

O walk with me, ye jaded brows,
And I will sing the song I found
Making a lonely rippling sound
Under the boughs.
The tinkle of the brook is there,
And cow-bells wandering through the fern,
And silver calls
From waterfalls,
And echoes floating through the air
From happiness I know not where,
And hum and drone where'er I turn
Of little lives that buzz and die;
And sudden lucent melodies,
Like hidden strings among the trees
Roofing the summer sky.

The soft breath of the briar I bring,
And waft...

Were they but dreams?    Upon the darkening world
Evening comes down, the wings of fire are furled,
On which the day soared to the sunny west:
The moon sits calmly, like a soul at rest,
Looking upon the never-resting earth;
All things in heaven wait on the solemn birth
Of night, but where has fled the happy dream
That at this hour, last night, our life did seem?
Where are the mountains with their tangled hair,
The leafy hollow, and the rocky stair?
Where are the shadows of the solemn hills,
And the fresh music of the summer rills?
Where are the wood-paths, winding, long and steep,
And the great, glorious river, broad and deep,
And the thick copses, where soft breezes meet,
And the wild torrent's snowy, leaping feet,
The rustling, rocking boughs, the running st...

If ther's ony sooart o' fowk aw hate, it's them at's allus lukkin' aght for faults; - hang it up! they get soa used to it, wol they willn't see ony beauties if they are thear. They remind me ov a chap 'at aw knew at wed a woman 'at had a wart at th' end ov her nooas, but it war nobbut a little en, an' shoo wor a varry bonny lass for all that; but when they'd been wed a bit, an' th' newness had getten warn off, he began to fancy at this wart grew bigger ivery day, an' he stared at it, an' studied abaght it, wol when he luk'd at his wife he could see nowt else, an' he kept dinging her up wi' it wol shoo felt varry mich troubled. But one day, as they wor gettin' ther dinner, he said, "Nay, lass, aw niver did see sich a thing as that wart o' thy nooas is growing into; if it gooas on tha'll be like a rhynockoroo or a newnicorn or summat!"

Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length,
But no matter! I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead,
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart:- ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!

The sickness- the nausea,
The pitiless pain,
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain,
With the fever called "Living"
That b...

An aged satyr sought
Around my Muse to pass,
Attempting to pay court,
And eyed her fondly through his glass.

By Phoebus' golden torch,
By Luna's pallid light,
Around her temple's porch
Crept the unhappy sharp-eared wight;

And warbled many a lay,
Her beauty's praise to sing,
And fiercely scraped away
On his discordant fiddle-string.

With tears, too, swelled his eyes,
As large as nuts, or larger;
He gasped forth heavy sighs,
Like music from Silenus' charger.

The Muse sat still, and played
Within her grotto fair,
And peevishly surveyed
Signor Adonis Goatsfoot there.

"Who ever would kiss thee,
Thou ugly, dirty dunce?
Wouldst thou a gallant be,
As Midas was Apollo once?

"Speak out, old horn...

Beyond Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain,
In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

The motion of that man's heart is fine
Whom want could not make píne, píne
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.