Happiness

RESIGNATION

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
    But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
    But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
    And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
    Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient!    These severe afflictions
    Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
    Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
    Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
    May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death!    What seems so is transition;
    This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysi...

I.

A woman, fair to look upon,
Where waters whiten with the moon;
While down the glimmer of the lawn
The white moths swoon.

A mouth of music; eyes of love;
And hands of blended snow and scent,
That touch the pearl-pale shadow of
An instrument.

And low and sweet that song of sleep
After the song of love is hushed;
While all the longing, here, to weep,
Is held and crushed.

Then leafy silence, that is musk
With breath of the magnolia-tree,
While dwindles, moon-white, through the dusk
Her drapery.

Let me remember how a heart,
Romantic, wrote upon that night!
My soul still helps me read each part
Of it aright.

And like a dead leaf shut between
A book's dull chapters, stained and dark,
That page,...

Draped in shadows stands the mountain
Against the eastern sky,
Above it the fair summer moon
Looks downward tenderly;
And Venus in the glowing west,
Opens her languid eye.

Now the winds breathe softer music,
Half a song, and half a sigh;
While twilight wraps her purple veil
Around us silently,
And our thoughts appear like pictures,
Pictures shaded wondrously.

Quiet landscapes, sweet and lonely,
Silvery sea, and shadowy glade,
Forest lakes by man forsaken,
Where the white fawn's steps are stayed;
And contadinos straying
'Neath the Pantheon's solemn shade.

And we see the wave bridged over
By the moonlight's mystic link,
Desert wells by tall palms shaded,
Where dusky camels drink;
While dark-eyed Arab maidens
F...

This was the tale Sher Afzul told to me,
While the spent camels bubbled on their knees,
And ruddy camp-fires twinkled through the gloom
Sweet with the fragrance from the Sinjib trees.

I had a friend who lay, condemned to death
In gaol for murder, wholly innocent,
Yet caught in webs of luckless circumstance; -
Thou know'st how lies, of good and ill intent,

Cluster like flies around a justice-court,
Wheel within wheel, revolving screw on screw; -
But from his prison he escaped and fled,
Keeping his liberty a night or two

Among the lonely hills, where, shackled still,
He braved a village, seeking for a file
To loose his irons; alas! he lost his life
Through the base sweetness of a woman's smile.

Lovely she was, and young, who gave the yout...

Feel for the wrongs to universal ken
Daily exposed, woe that unshrouded lies;
And seek the Sufferer in his darkest den,
Whether conducted to the spot by sighs
And moanings, or he dwells (as if the wren
Taught him concealment) hidden from all eyes
In silence and the awful modesties
Of sorrow; feel for all, as brother Men!
Rest not in hope want's icy chain to thaw
By casual boons and formal charities;
Learn to be just, just through impartial law;
Far as ye may, erect and equalise;
And, what ye cannot reach by statute, draw
Each from his fountain of self-sacrifice!

My faithful friend, if you can see
The fruit to grow up, or the tree;
If you can see the colour come
Into the blushing pear or plum;
If you can see the water grow
To cakes of ice, or flakes of snow;
If you can see that drop of rain
Lost in the wild sea once again;
If you can see how dreams do creep
Into the brain by easy sleep:
Then there is hope that you may see
Her love me once, who now hates me.

I cry your mercy, pity, love! aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen, without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, all, all, be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself, your soul, in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

Lone and alone she lies,
    Poor Miss 7,
Five steep flights from the earth,
    And one from heaven;
Dark hair and dark brown eyes, -
Not to be sad she tries,
Still - still it's lonely lies
    Poor Miss 7.

One day-long watch hath she,
    Poor Miss 7,
Not in some orchard sweet
    In April Devon -
Just four blank walls to see,
And dark come shadowily,
No moon, no stars, ah me!
    Poor Miss 7.

And then to wake again,
    Poor Miss 7,
To the cold night, to have
    Sour physic given;
Out of some dream of pain,
Then strive long hours in vain
Deep dreamless sleep to gain:
    Poor Miss 7.

Yet memory softly sings
    Poor Miss 7
Songs full of love and peace
    And gladness even;
Clear...

I saw a young heart in the grasp of pain;
    With bruised breast, and broken, bleeding wing
Shipwrecked on hopeless love's tempestuous main,
    Lay the poor tortured thing.

It pulsed with all the anguish of despair;
    It ached with all a fond heart's awful power;
Yet I, who stood unhurt above it there,
    Envied its lot that hour.

I, who have wasted all the sacred, deep
    Emotions of my soul in spendthrift fashion,
Until no sorrow now can make me weep -
    No joy stir me with passion.

I, who have scattered here and there the gold
    Of my heart's store, until I spent the whole;
Yet unto each so little gave to hold,
    That I enriched no soul.

I, who have sold the birthright of sweet tears,
    And no more feel a thrill in...

ON THE HILL.

The lights and shadows fly!
Yonder it brightens and darkens down on the plain.
A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover’s eye!
Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her window pane,
When the winds are up in the morning?

Clouds that are racing above,
And winds and lights and shadows that cannot be still,
All running on one way to the home of my love,
You are all running on, and I stand on the slope of the hill,
And the winds are up in the morning!

Follow, follow the chase!
And my thoughts are as quick and as quick, ever on, on, on.
O lights, are you flying over her sweet little face?
And my heart is there before you are come, and gone,
When the winds are up in the morning!

Follow them down the slope
And I follow them down to the wi...

ONCE through the forest

Alone I went;
To seek for nothing

My thoughts were bent.

I saw i' the shadow

A flower stand there
As stars it glisten'd,

As eyes 'twas fair.

I sought to pluck it,

It gently said:
"Shall I be gather'd

Only to fade?"

With all its roots

I dug it with care,
And took it home

To my garden fair.

In silent corner

Soon it was set;
There grows it ever,

There blooms it yet.

God gave a loaf to every bird,
But just a crumb to me;
I dare not eat it, though I starve, --
My poignant luxury
To own it, touch it, prove the feat
That made the pellet mine, --
Too happy in my sparrow chance
For ampler coveting.

It might be famine all around,
I could not miss an ear,
Such plenty smiles upon my board,
My garner shows so fair.
I wonder how the rich may feel, --
An Indiaman -- an Earl?
I deem that I with but a crumb
Am sovereign of them all.

ARGUMENT. i(Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the)
i(Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land)
i(among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so)
i(that their hearts were broken and they died.)

I HARDLY i(hear the curlew cry,)

On the heir of Uladh, Buan's son,
Baile, who had the honey mouth;
And that mild woman of the south,
Aillinn, who was King Lugaidh's heir.
Their love was never drowned in care
Of this or that thing, nor grew cold
Because their hodies had grown old.
Being forbid to marry on earth,
They blossomed to immortal mirth.>1
About the time when Christ was born,
When the long wars for the White Horn
And the Brown Bull had not yet come,
Young Baile Honey Mouth, whom some
Called rather Ba...

On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim
Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock and isle and glistening bay,
Fell the beautiful white day.

Said the Master to the youth
"We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery;
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment-hem of Cause,
Him, the endless, unbegun,
The Unnamable, the One
Light of all our light the Source,
Life of life, and Force of force.
As with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find...

I

Seek who will delight in fable
I shall tell you truth. A Lamb
Leapt from this steep bank to follow
'Cross the brook its thoughtless dam.

Far and wide on hill and valley
Rain had fallen, unceasing rain,
And the bleating mother's Young-one
Struggled with the flood in vain:

But, as chanced, a Cottage-maiden
(Ten years scarcely had she told)
Seeing, plunged into the torrent,
Clasped the Lamb and kept her hold.

Whirled adown the rocky channel,
Sinking, rising, on they go,
Peace and rest, as seems, before them
Only in the lake below.

Oh! it was a frightful current
Whose fierce wrath the Girl had braved;
Clap your hands with joy my Hearers,
Shout in triumph, both are saved;

Saved by courage that with dang...

[1]

Thou lust of gain, - foul fiend, whose evil eyes
Regard as nought the blessings of the skies,
Must I for ever battle thee in vain?
How long demandest thou to gain
The meaning of my lessons plain?
Will constant getting never cloy?
Will man ne'er slacken to enjoy?
Haste, friend; thou hast not long to live:
Let me the precious word repeat,
And listen to it, I entreat;
A richer lesson none can give -
The sovereign antidote for sorrow -
ENJOY! - 'I will.' - But when? - 'To-morrow. - '
Ah! death may take you on the way,
Why not enjoy, I ask, to-day?
Lest envious fate your hopes ingulf,
As once it served the hunter and the wolf.

The former, with his fatal bow,
A noble deer had laid full low:
A fawn approach'd, and quickl...

Bring not your dreams to me -
Blown dust, and vapour, and the running stream -
Saying, "He, too, doth dream,
Touched of the moon."

Nay! wouldst thou vanish see
Thy darling phantoms,
Bring them then to me!
For my hard business - though so soft it seems -
Was ever dreams and dreams.

And as some stern-eyed broker smiles disdain,
Valuing at nought
Her bosom's locket, with its little chain,
Love's all that Love hath brought;
So must I weigh and measure
Thy fading treasure,
Sighing to see it go
As surely as the snow.

For I have such sad knowledge of all things
That shine like dew a little, all that sings
And ends its song in weeping -
Such sowing and such reaping! -
There is no cure but sleeping.

Cool! cool! cool!
Cool and sweet
The feel of the moss at my feet!
And sweet and cool
The touch of the wind, of the wind!

Cool wind out of the blue,
At the touch of you
A little wave crinkles and flows
All over me down to my toes.

"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"
Hear the doves in the tree-tops croon.
"Coo-loo! Coo-loo!"
Love comes soon.

"June! June!"
The veery sings,
Sings and sings,
"June! June!"--
A pretty tune!

Wind with your weight of perfume,
Bring me the bluebells' bloom!