Happiness

See, I have climbed the mountain side
Up to this holy house of God,
Where once that Angel-Painter trod
Who saw the heavens opened wide,

And throned upon the crescent moon
The Virginal white Queen of Grace,
Mary! could I but see thy face
Death could not come at all too soon.

O crowned by God with thorns and pain!
Mother of Christ! O mystic wife!
My heart is weary of this life
And over-sad to sing again.

O crowned by God with love and flame!
O crowned by Christ the Holy One!
O listen ere the searching sun
Show to the world my sin and shame.

        Some time, far hence, when Autumn sheds
            Her frost upon your hair,
        And you together sit at dusk,
            May I come to you there?
        And lightly will our hearts turn back
            To this, then distant, day
        When, while the world was clad in flowers,
            You two were wed in May.

        When we shall sit about your board
            Three old friends met again,
        Joy will be with us, but not much
            Of jest and laughter then;
        For Autumn's large content and calm,
            Like heaven's own smile, will bless
        The harvest of your happy lives
            With store of happiness.

        May you, who, flankt about with flowers,
            Will plight your faith ...

Siddons! the Muse, for many a joy refin'd,
    Feelings which ever seem too swiftly fled -
    For those delicious tears she loves to shed,
Around thy brow the wreath of praise would bind -
But can her feeble notes thy praise unfold?
    Repeat the tones each changing passion gives,
    Or mark where nature in thy action lives,
Where, in thy pause, she speaks a pang untold!
When fierce ambition steels thy daring breast,
    When from thy frantic look our glance recedes;
Or oh, divine enthusiast! when opprest
    By anxious love, that eye of softness pleads -
The sun-beam all can feel, but who can trace
The instant light, and catch the radiant grace!

A sloop of amber slips away
Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy.

The song that lightens the languid way,
        When brows are glowing,
        And faint with rowing,
Is like the spell of Hope's airy lay,
To whose sound thro' life we stray;
The beams that flash on the oar awhile,
    As we row along thro' the waves so clear,
Illume its spray, like the fleeting smile
    That shines o'er sorrow's tear.

Nothing is lost on him who sees
    With an eye that feeling gave;--
For him there's a story in every breeze,
    And a picture in every wave.
Then sing to lighten the languid way;
        When brows are glowing,
        And faint with rowing,
'Tis like the spell of Hope's airy lay,
To whose sound thro' life we stray.

            *            *            *            *            *

'Tis sweet...

        Burns sang so sweet behind the plow,
        Daisies we'll wreath around his brow,
        Musing on thee what visions throng,
        Of floods you poured of Scottish song.
        Scott he did write romancing rhymes
        Of chivalry of ancient times;
        For tender feeling none can cope
        With Campbell the sweet Bard of hope.
        Eye with sympathetic tear in
        Will shed it for Exile of Erin,
        And Tannahill while at his loom
        Wove flowers of song will ever bloom.
        Hogg, Ettrick Shepherd, did gain fame
        By singing when the kye comes hame,
        With good time coming Bard McKay
        Still merrily doth cheer the way.

    A mind is a ray of light running to the sea;
    an arch of wood upon which birds rest.

    Minds roam the ocean's crest, sit as antlers upon a beach,
    watch eddies of water trap themselves in the sand.

    And minds are in anything but a state of rest - they violate
    physics, make mockery of other bodies not in ready motion.

    I have seen a mind enclosed above fresh air and sunshine,
    frolicking on its own strength, the elasticity of its thought lassoing
    all the stars assembled.

    Golden points of light caught in this sand with an oval sun
    marching blue legions across the sky bring more harmony than
    all the stars assembled.

    Admiral. Fakir. Harem. They are all here as is batik, geisha,
    sarong, teak and gingha...

Three of us without a care
In the red September
Tramping down the roads of Maine,
Making merry with the rain,
With the fellow winds a-fare
Where the winds remember.

Three of us with shocking hats,
Tattered and unbarbered,
Happy with the splash of mud,
With the highways in our blood,
Bearing down on Deacon Platt's
Where last year we harbored.

We've come down from Kennebec,
Tramping since last Sunday,
Loping down the coast of Maine,
With the sea for a refrain,
And the maples neck and neck
All the way to Fundy.

Sometimes lodging in an inn,
Cosey as a dormouse--
Sometimes sleeping on a knoll
With no rooftree but the Pole--
Sometimes halely welcomed in
At an old-time farmhouse.

Loafing under ledge and ...

"I leave my child to Heaven."    And with these words
Upon her lips, the Lady Mildred passed
Unto the rest prepared for her pure soul;
Words that meant only this: I cannot trust
Unto her earthly parent my young child,
So leave her to her heavenly Father's care;
And Heaven was gentle to the motherless,
And fair and sweet the maiden, Gladys, grew,
A pure white rose in the old castle set,
The while her father rioted abroad.

But as the day drew near when he should give,
By his dead lady's will, his child her own,
He having basely squandered all her wealth
To him intrusted, to his land returned,
And thrilled her trusting heart with terrors vague,
Of peril, of some shame to come to him,
Did she not yield unto his prayer - command,
That she would to Our La...

What counsel has the hooded moon
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,
Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet,
A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?

Believe me rather that am wise
In disregard of the divine,
A glory kindles in those eyes
Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!
No more be tears in moon or mist
For thee, sweet sentimentalist.

I listened to the hunger-hearted clown,
Sadder than he: I heard a woman sing, -
A tall dark woman in a scarlet gown -
And saw those golden toys the jugglers fling.
I found a tawdry room and there sat I,
There angled for each murmur soft and strange,
The pavement-cries from darkness and below:
I watched the drinkers laugh, the lovers sigh,
And thought how little all the world would change
If clowns were audience, and we the Show.

What starry music are they playing now?
What dancing in this dreary theatre?
Who is she with the moon upon her brow,
And who the fire-foot god that follows her? -
Follows among those unbelieved-in trees
Back-shadowing in their parody of light
Across the little cardboard balustrade;
And we, like that poor Faun who pipes and f...

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
    Our hearts, in glad surprise,
    To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
    And lifts us unawares
    Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
    And by their overflow
    Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
    The trenches cold and damp,
    The starved and frozen camp,--

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
    The cheerless corridors,
    The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
    Pass through the glimmer...

Far off in the sea is Marlena,
A land of shades and streams,
A land of many delights,
Dark and bold, thy shores, Marlena;
But green, and timorous, thy soft knolls,
Crouching behind the woodlands.
All shady thy hills; all gleaming thy springs,
Like eyes in the earth looking at you.
How charming thy haunts, Marlena!--
Oh, the waters that flow through Onimoo;
Oh, the leaves that rustle through Ponoo:
Oh, the roses that blossom in Tarma.
Come, and see the valley of Vina:
How sweet, how sweet, the Isles from Hina:
'Tis aye afternoon of the full, full moon,
And ever the season of fruit,
And ever the hour of flowers,
And never the time of rains and gales,
All in and about Marlena.
Soft sigh the boughs in the stilly air,
Soft lap the beach the bill...

Darling, my darling, my heart is on the wing,
It flies to thee this morning like a bird,
Like happy birds in springtime my spirits soar and sing,
The same sweet song thine ears have often heard.

The sun is in my window, the shadow on the lea,
The wind is moving in the branches green,
And all my life, my darling, is turning unto thee,
And kneeling at thy feet, my own, my queen.

The golden bells are ringing across the distant hill,
Their merry peals come to me soft and clear,
But in my heart's deep chapel all incense-filled and still
A sweeter bell is sounding for thee, dear.

The bell of love invites thee to come and seek the shrine
Whose altar is erected unto thee,
The offerings, the sacrifice, the prayers, the chants are thine,
And I, my love, thy...

These summer days when all the poets sing
    I have no voice for song.
I see the birds of summer taking wing,
    And days so sweet and long,
Each seemed a little heaven with no end,
I know are gone for evermore, dear friend.

Nay, by and by comes another Spring;
    And long, sweet, perfect days.
And by and by I shall have voice to sing
    My old glad, happy lays.
More blithesome songs, more days that have no end;
More golden summers; but like thee no friend.

I feel the stirrings in me of great things.
New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,
And tremble on the margin of their nest,
Then flutter back, and hide within my breast.

Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.
Beholding men, they fear them.    But at length,
Grown all too great and active for the heart
That broods them with such tender mother art,
Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour,
Save the impelling consciousness of power
That stirs within them - they shall soar away
Up to the very portals of the Day.

Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through
When I contemplate all those thoughts may do;
Like snow-white eagles penetrating space,
They may explore full many an unknown place,
And build their nests on mountai...

    "Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
    Sweet'ner of life and solder of society!
    I owe thee much!"

Blair.


    Dear Smith, the sleest, paukie thief,
    That e'er attempted stealth or rief,
    Ye surely hae some warlock-breef
    Owre human hearts;
    For ne'er a bosom yet was prief
    Against your arts.

    For me, I swear by sun an' moon,
    And ev'ry star that blinks aboon,
    Ye've cost me twenty pair o' shoon
    Just gaun to see you;
    And ev'ry ither pair that's done,
    Mair ta'en I'm wi' you.

    That auld capricious carlin, Nature,
    To mak amends for scrimpit stature,
    She's turn'd you aff, a human creature
    On her first plan;
    And in her freaks, on every feature

Baroque, but beautiful, between the lunes,
The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell,
Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bell
Of some strange blossom that long afternoons
Of summer coax to open: all the moon's
Chaste lustre in it; hues that only dwell
With purity … It takes me, like a spell,
Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes,
A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks,
Searching for shells deep in the creek's slow swirl,
Unconscious of the pearls that 'round me lay:
While, 'mid wild-roses, all her tomboy locks
Blond-blowing, stood, unnoticed then, a girl,
My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away.