Happiness

The fervid breath of our flushed Southern May
Is sweet upon the city's throat and lips,
As a lover's whose tired arm slips
Listlessly over the shoulder of a queen.

Far away
The river melts in the unseen.
Oh, beautiful Girl-City, how she dips
Her feet in the stream
With a touch that is half a kiss and half a dream!
Her face is very fair,
With flowers for smiles and sunlight in her hair.

My westland flower-town, how serene she is!
Here on this hill from which I look at her,
All is still as if a worshipper
Left at some shrine his offering.

Soft winds kiss
My cheek with a slow lingering.
A luring whisper where the laurels stir
Wiles my heart back to woodland-ward again.

But lo,
Across the sky the sunset couriers run,

Thy glance is the brightest,
Thy voice is the sweetest,
Thy step is the lightest,
Thy shape the completest:
Thy waist I could span, dear,
Thy neck's like a swan's, dear,
And roses the sweetest
On thy cheeks do appear.

The music of Spring
Is the voice of my charmer.
When the nightingales sing
She's as sweet; who would harm her?
Where the snowdrop or lily lies
They show her face, but her eyes
Are the dark clouds, yet warmer,
From which the quick lightning flies
O'er the face of my charmer.

Her faith is the snowdrop,
So pure on its stem;
And love in her bosom
She wears as a gem;
She is young as Spring flowers,
And sweet as May showers,
Swelling the clover buds, and bending the stem,
She's the sweetest of blossom...

I

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
But they were going.

II

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
But they were staying.

III

Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
Alike dissolving.

Silent was I, and so still,
As day followed day.
Imprisoned until
King Frost worked his will.
Held fast like a vice,
In his cold hand of ice,
For fear kept me silent, and lo
He had wrapped me around and about
with a mantle of snow.

But sudden there spake
One greater than he.
Then my heart was awake,
And my spirit ran free.

At His bidding my bands fell apart, He had burst them asunder.
I can feel the swift wind rushing by me, once more the old wonder
Of quickening sap stirs my pulses -- I shout in my gladness,
Forgetting the sadness,
For the Voice of the Lord fills the air!

And forth through the hollow I go, where in glad April weather,
The trees of the forest break out into singing together.
And here the frail windflowers ...

To-day the plant by Williams set
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.

Once more the Island State repeats
The lesson that he taught her,
And binds his pearl of charity
Upon her brown-locked daughter.

Is 't fancy that he watches still
His Providence plantations?
That still the careful Founder takes
A part on these occasions.

Methinks I see that reverend form,
Which all of us so well know
He rises up to speak; he jogs
The presidential elbow.

"Good friends," he says, "you reap a field
I sowed in self-denial,
For toleration had its griefs
And charity its trial.

"Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,
To him must needs be given
Who heareth heresy ...

In Memory's Mansion are wonderful rooms,
    And I wander about them at will;
And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms
    Are sending sweet scents o'er the sill.
I lean from a window that looks on a lawn:
    From a turret that looks on the wave.
But I draw down the shade, when I see on some glade,
    A stone standing guard, by a grave.

To Memory's attic I clambered one day,
    When the roof was resounding with rain.
And there, among relics long hidden away,
    I rummaged with heart-ache and pain.
A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,
    A pastime, out-grown, and forgot,
And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust,
    Were lying heaped up in one spot.

And there on the floor of that garret was tossed
    A friendshi...

Ye shadowy forms, again ye're drawing near,

So wont of yore to meet my troubled gaze!
Were it in vain to seek to keep you here?

Loves still my heart that dream of olden days?
Oh, come then! and in pristine force appear,

Parting the vapor mist that round me plays!
My bosom finds its youthful strength again,
Feeling the magic breeze that marks your train.

Ye bring the forms of happy days of yore,

And many a shadow loved attends you too;
Like some old lay, whose dream was well nigh o'er,

First-love appears again, and friendship true;
Upon life's labyrinthine path once more

Is heard the sigh, and grief revives anew;
The friends are told, who, in their hour of pride,
Deceived by fortune, vanish'd from my side.

No long...

O cameretta che già fosti un porto.

HE NO LONGER FINDS RELIEF IN SOLITUDE.


    Thou little chamber'd haven to the woes
Whose daily tempest overwhelms my soul!
From shame, I in Heaven's light my grief control;
Thou art its fountain, which each night o'erflows.
My couch! that oft hath woo'd me to repose,
'Mid sorrows vast--Love's iv'ried hand hath stole
Griefs turgid stream, which o'er thee it doth roll,
That hand which good on all but me bestows.
Not only quiet and sweet rest I fly,
But from myself and thought, whose vain pursuit
On pinion'd fancy doth my soul transport:
The multitude I did so long defy,
Now as my hope and refuge I salute,
So much I tremble solitude to court.

WOLLASTON.


    Room! which to me hast ...

The highest marble Sorrow vanishes
Before a weeping child.[2] The one doth seem,
The other is. And wherefore do we dream,
But that we live? So I rejoice in this,
That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the bliss
Of conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream,
(Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem)
Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss.
Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lie
Mean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity;
Full well I know that if they were as high
In holy song as prophet's ecstasy,
'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me!
Speak gently to a child for love of Thee.

Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts' full pleasure You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

Let the Nightingale still be renown'd for her song,
    The Eagle for strength, and for softness the Dove,
Higher praise to the Baya of India belongs,
    For gentle docility, duty and love.

The Baya, dear nymphs, is a delicate bird,
    Of intelligent zeal, in our climate unknown;
A bird, in the service of lovers preferr'd
    To the turtle, that Venus regards as her own.

The Baya not only will bear in his beak
    The letter a youth to his nymph would convey;
But if from her person some jewel he seek,
    This bird, at his nod, gently plucks it away.

It chanc'd in Circassia a lovely young maid,
    On her beautiful neck wore a crescent of gold,
Hermossan, her lover, the trinket survey'd,
    And wish'd in his bosom the gem to infold.

...

A long life's-day I've taken pains
For very little, or no gains;
The evening's come, here now I'll stop,
And work no more, but shut up shop.

Hear you r o music in the creaks
    Made by the sallow grasshopper,
Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks
    The mellow dryness with his cheer?
    Or did you by the hearthstones hear
The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost
    Worked mysteries of silver near
Upon the casement's panes, and lost
Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost?

Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night
    Green minstrels of the marshlands tune
Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight,
    Hailing the sickle of the moon
    From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune?
Or in the Summer, dry and loud,
    The hard cicada whirr aboon
His long lay in a poplar's cloud,
When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud?

The cloud that lids the naked moon,

    Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no,
        Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
        Than small white single poppies,--I can bear
    Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
    From left to right, not knowing where to go,
        I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
        Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
    So has it been with mist,--with moonlight so.

    Like him who day by day unto his draught
        Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
    Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
    Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
        Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
    I drink--and live--what has destroyed some men.

What I fancy I approve,
No dislike there is in love.
Be my mistress short or tall,
And distorted therewithal:
Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose:
Be her forehead and her eyes
Full of incongruities:
Be her cheeks so shallow too
As to show her tongue wag through;
Be her lips ill hung or set,
And her grinders black as jet:
Has she thin hair, hath she none,
She's to me a paragon.

THE LEGEND BEAUTIFUL

"Hads't thou stayed, I must have fled!"
That is what the Vision said.

In his chamber all alone,
Kneeling on the floor of stone,
Prayed the Monk in deep contrition
For his sins of indecision,
Prayed for greater self-denial
In temptation and in trial;
It was noonday by the dial,
And the Monk was all alone.

Suddenly, as if it lightened,
An unwonted splendor brightened
All within him and without him
In that narrow cell of stone;
And he saw the Blessed Vision
Of our Lord, with light Elysian
Like a vesture wrapped about him,
Like a garment round him thrown.

Not as crucified and slain,
Not in agonies of pain,
Not with bleeding hands and feet,
Did the Monk his Master see;
But as in the vil...

"Despairless? Hopeless? Join the cheerful hunt
Whose hounds are Science, high Desires the steeds,
And Misery the quarry. Use and Wont
No help to human anguish bring, that bleeds
For all two thousand years of Christian deeds.
Let Use and Wont in styes still feed and grunt,
Or, bovine, graze knee-deep in flowering meads.
Mount! follow! Onward urge Life's dragon-hunt!"
- So cries the sportsman brisk at break of day.
"The sound of hound and horn is well for thee,"
Thus I reply, "but I have other prey;
And friendly is my quest as you may see.
Though slow my pace, full surely in the dark
I'll chance on it at last, though none may mark."

[During an anti-saloon campaign, in central Illinois.]


    In the midst of the battle I turned,
    (For the thunders could flourish without me)
    And hid by a rose-hung wall,
    Forgetting the murder about me;
    And wrote, from my wound, on the stone,
    In mirth, half prayer, half play: -
    "Send me a picture book,
    Send me a song, to-day."

    I saw him there by the wall
    When I scarce had written the line,
    In the enemy's colors dressed
    And the serpent-standard of wine
    Writhing its withered length
    From his ghostly hands o'er the ground,
    And there by his shadowy breast
    The glorious poem I found.

    This was his world-old cry:
    Thus read the famous prayer:
    "Wine, wine, wine a...