Happiness

A nightingale, that all day long
Had cheer’d the village with his song,
Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
Nor yet when eventide was ended,
Began to feel, as well he might,
The keen demands of appetite;
When, looking eagerly around,
He spied far off, upon the ground,
A something shining in the dark,
And knew the glowworm by his spark;
So stooping down from hawthorn top,
He thought to put him in his crop.
The worm, aware of his intent,
Harangued his thus, right eloquent—
Did you admire my lamp, quoth he,
As much as I your minstrelsy,
You would abhor to do me wrong
As much as I to spoil your song;
For ‘twas the self-same Power divine
Taught you to sing, and me to shine;
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify and cheer the nigh...

Thus all things lead to Charity secured
By them who blessed the soft and happy gale
That landward urged the great Deliverer's sail,
Till in the sunny bay his fleet was moored!
Propitious hour! had we, like them, endured
Sore stress of apprehension, with a mind
Sickened by injuries, dreading worse designed,
From month to month trembling and unassured,
How had we then rejoiced! But we have felt,
As a loved substance, their futurity:
Good, which they dared not hope for, we have seen;
A State whose generous will through earth is dealt;
A State which, balancing herself between
License and slavish order, dares be free.

For three whole days across the sky,
In sullen packs that loomed and broke,
With flying fringes dim as smoke,
The columns of the rain went by;
At every hour the wind awoke;
The darkness passed upon the plain;
The great drops rattled at the pane.

Now piped the wind, or far aloof
Fell to a sough remote and dull;
And all night long with rush and lull
The rain kept drumming on the roof:
I heard till ear and sense were full
The clash or silence of the leaves,
The gurgle in the creaking eaves.

But when the fourth day came - at noon,
The darkness and the rain were by;
The sunward roofs were steaming dry;
And all the world was flecked and strewn
With shadows from a fleecy sky.
The haymakers were forth and gone,
And every rillet laughed ...

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves
Exult in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves,
Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life
Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife,
Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.

But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before,
When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore,
Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong,
Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song,
O you envy the blessed dead that can live no more!

A hundred times the bells of Brown
    Have rung to sleep the idle summers,
And still to-day clangs clamouring down
    A greeting to the welcome comers.

And far, like waves of morning, pours
    Her call, in airy ripples breaking,
And wanders to the farthest shores,
    Her children's drowsy hearts awaking.

The wild vibration floats along,
    O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying,
And wakes in every breast its song
    Of love and gratitude undying.

My heart to meet the summons leaps
    At limit of its straining tether,
Where the fresh western sunlight steeps
    In golden flame the prairie heather.

And others, happier, rise and fare
    To pass within the hallowed portal,
And see the glory shining there
    Shrine...

From the first gleam of morning to the gray
Of peaceful evening, lo, a life unrolled!
In woven pictures all its changes told,
Its lights, its shadows, every flitting ray,
Till the long curtain, falling, dims the day,
Steals from the dial's disk the sunlight's gold,
And all the graven hours grow dark and cold
Where late the glowing blaze of noontide lay.
Ah! the warm blood runs wild in youthful veins, -
Let me no longer play with painted fire;
New songs for new-born days! I would not tire
The listening ears that wait for fresher strains
In phrase new-moulded, new-forged rhythmic chains,
With plaintive measures from a worn-out lyre.

If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
    But who can answer, or who can trust,
    No dreams would harry the windblown dust?

Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
    Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
    Had I done aught better or otherwise?

Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
    But time for silence and song is done,
    You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!

W...

11.30 P.M., DEC. 31


Friend, when the year is on the wing,
'Tis held a fair and comely thing
To turn reflective glances
Over the days' forbidden Scroll,
See if we're better on the whole,
And average our chances.

Yet 'tis an awful thing to drag
Each separate deed from out the bag
That up till now has hidden 't,
And bring before the shuddering view
All that we swore we wouldn't do,
Or should have done, but didn't.

The broken code, the baffled laws
Our little private faults and flaws,
And every naughty habit,
Come whistling through the Waste of Life,
Until one longs to take a knife,
Feel for his heart, and stab it.

Unchanged, exultant, one and all
Rise up spontaneous to the call,
And bring their stings behind ...

When the beautiful mountain ash is turning -
    As lovely a sight as the eyes desire;
When the leaves of the sumac bush are burning,
    Like the steady flame of a winter fire;
When the weeds by the roadside all grow golden,
    When maples are glowing and asters gleam,
It is then that the new is changed to the olden,
    And back to my heart comes the past like a dream.

Like a mirage I see the blue haze o'er me,
    The City of Youth that I left behind.
Oh! whitely its turrets are gleaming before me,
    And out of the window lean faces kind.
And I hear the echo of jubilant voices;
    There are cheeks of beauty and eyes of truth:
And every pulse in my heart rejoices -
    There's no other place like the City of Youth.

And lo! the City is full of...

The big mountains sit still in the afternoon light
Shadows in their lap;
The bees roll round in the wild-thyme with delight.

We sitting here among the cranberries
So still in the gap
Of rock, distilling our memories

Are sinners! Strange! The bee that blunders
Against me goes off with a laugh.
A squirrel cocks his head on the fence, and wonders

What about sin? - For, it seems
The mountains have
No shadow of us on their snowy forehead of dreams

As they ought to have. They rise above us
Dreaming
For ever. One even might think that they love us.

    Little red cranberries cheek to cheek,
Two great dragon-flies wrestling;
You, with your forehead nestling
Against me, and bright peak shining to peak - 

There's...

Last night I saw Helena. She whose praise
    Of late all men have sounded. She for whom
    Young Angus rashly sought a silent tomb
Rather than live without her all his days.

Wise men go mad who look upon her long,
    She is so ripe with dangers. Yet meanwhile
    I find no fascination in her smile,
Although I make her theme of this poor song.

"Her golden tresses?" yes, they may be fair,
    And yet to me each shining silken tress
    Seems robbed of beauty and all lusterless -
Too many hands have stroked Helena's hair.

(I know a little maiden so demure
    She will not let her one true lover's hands
    In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands,
So dainty-minded is she, and so pure.)

"Her great dark eyes that flash like gems at ...

Non numero horas nisi serenas

When Fall drowns morns in mist, it seems
In soul I am a part of it;
A portion of its humid beams,
A form of fog, I seem to flit
From dreams to dreams....
An old château sleeps 'mid the hills
Of France: an avenue of sorbs
Conceals it: drifts of daffodils
Bloom by a 'scutcheoned gate with barbs
Like iron bills.
I pass the gate unquestioned; yet,
I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make
Dark pools of restless violet.
Between high bramble banks a lake,
As in a net
The tangled scales twist silver, shines....
Gray, mossy turrets swell above
A sea of leaves. And where the pines
Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,
My heart divines.
I know her window, slimly seen
From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged...

I.

Come with me where April twilights
Wigwam blue the April hills;
Where the shadows and the high lights
Swarm the woods that Springtime fills.
Tents where dwell the tribes of beauty,
Tasseled scouts whose camp-fires glow
Over leagues of wild-flower booty
Rescued from the camps of snow.

II.

A thousand windflowers blowing!
They print the ways with palest pearl,
As if with raiment flowing
Here passed some glimmering girl.
A thousand bluets breaking!
They take the heart with glad surprise,
As if some wild girl waking
Looked at you with bewildered eyes.
A thousand buds and flowers,
A thousand birds and bees:
What spirit haunts the bowers!
What dream that no one sees!

III.

Her kirtle is white as the w...

Every day, when it gets so very dark
That I can read no more,
I walk along the street singing,
Look at every girl...
Whether perhaps - who knows -
Today of all days a miracle will take place:
That I shall come home redeemed,
Peaceful and forever free...
From such pursuits I come back
To the house tired and confused,
I know a secret remedy
That can extinguish all suffering -

Rose-red lilies that bloom on the banner;
Rose-cheeked gardens that revel in spring;
Rose-mouthed acacias that laugh as they climb,
Like plumes for a queen's hand fashioned to fan her
With wind more soft than a wild dove's wing,
What do they sing in the spring of their time

If this be the rose that the world hears singing,
Soft in the soft night, loud in the day,
Songs for the fireflies to dance as they hear;
If that be the song of the nightingale, springing
Forth in the form of a rose in May,
What do they say of the way of the year?

What of the way of the world gone Maying,
What of the work of the buds in the bowers,
What of the will of the wind on the wall,
Fluttering the wall-flowers, sighing and playing,
Shrinking again as a bird that cowers,

A spirit is out to-night!
His steeds are the winds; oh, list,
How he madly sweeps o'er the clouds,
And scatters the driving mist.

We will let the curtains fall
Between us and the storm;
Wheel the sofa up to the hearth,
Where the fire is glowing warm.

Little student, leave your book,
And come and sit by my side;
If you dote on Tennyson so,
I'll be jealous of him, my bride.

There, now I can call you my own!
Let me push back the curls from your brow,
And look in your dark eyes and see
What my bird is thinking of now.

Is she thinking of some high perch
Of freedom, and lofty flight?
You smile; oh, little wild bird,
You are hopelessly bound to-night!

You are bound with a golden ring,
And your captor, like some g...

The Fear Of Death.


Thou! whose superior, and aspiring mind
Can leave the weakness of thy sex behind;
Above its follies, and its fears can rise,
Quit the low earth, and gain the distant skies:
Whom strength of soul and innocence have taught
To think of death, nor shudder at the thought;
Say! whence the dread, that can alike engage
Vain thoughtless youth, and deep-reflecting age;
Can shake the feeble, and appal the strong;
Say! whence the terrors, that to death belong?
Guilt must be fearful: but the guiltless too
Start from the grave, and tremble at the view.
The blood-stained pirate, who in neighbouring climes,
Might fear, lest justice should o'ertake his crimes,
Wisely may bear the sea's tempestuous roar,
And rather wait the storm, than make the sh...

In secret place where once I stood
Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;
The other Spirit, who did rear
Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.
"Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on
Nothing but Meditation?
Doth Contemplation feed thee so
Regardlessly to let earth go?
Can Speculation satisfy
Notion without Reality?
Dost dream of things beyond the Moon
And dost thou hope to dwell there soon?
Hast treasures there laid up in store
That all in th' world thou count'st but poor?
Art fancy-sick or turn'd a Sot
To catch at shadows which are not?
Come, come. I'll show unto thy sense,
Industry hath its recompen...