Happiness

Steely stars and moon of brass,
How mockingly you watch me pass!
You know as well as I how soon
I shall be blind to stars and moon,
Deaf to the wind in the hemlock tree,
Dumb when the brown earth weighs on me.

With envious dark rage I bear,
Stars, your cold complacent stare;
Heart-broken in my hate look up,
Moon, at your clear immortal cup,
Changing to gold from dusky red,
Age after age when I am dead
To be filled up with light, and then
Emptied, to be refilled again.

What has man done that only he
Is slave to death, so brutally
Beaten back into the earth
Impatient for him since his birth?

Oh let me shut my eyes, close out
The sight of stars and earth and be
Sheltered a minute by this tree.
Hemlock, through your fragr...

Down in the vale the lazy sheep
    Are roaming at their will,
But I would be away to weep
    Upon the windy hill,

For Summer's song is in my heart,
    Her kiss is on my brow,
As here I kneel alone, apart,
    To consecrate our vow.

Ah, doubly poor the gift shall be
    That links my soul with hers,
For she has given her all to me
    While I can give but tears!

Out of my heart, one day, I wrote a song,
With my heart's blood imbued,
Instinct with passion, tremulously strong,
With grief subdued;
Breathing a fortitude
Pain-bought.
And one who claimed much love for what I wrought,
Read and considered it,
And spoke:
"Ay, brother,--'t is well writ,
But where's the joke?"

Return, Content! for fondly I pursued,
Even when a child, the Streams, unheard, unseen;
Through tangled woods, impending rocks between;
Or, free as air, with flying inquest viewed
The sullen reservoirs whence their bold brood
Pure as the morning, fretful, boisterous, keen,
Green as the salt-sea billows, white and green
Poured down the hills, a choral multitude!
Nor have I tracked their course for scanty gains;
They taught me random cares and truant joys,
That shield from mischief and preserve from stains
Vague minds, while men are growing out of boys;
Maturer Fancy owes to their rough noise
Impetuous thoughts that brook not servile reins.

The ferny places gleam at morn,
The dew drips off the leaves of corn;
Along the brook a mist of white
Fades as a kiss on lips of light;
For, lo! the poet with his pipe
Finds all these melodies are ripe!

Far up within the cadenced June
Floats, silver-winged, a living tune
That winds within the morning's chime
And sets the earth and sky to rhyme;
For, lo! the poet, absent long,
Breathes the first raptures of his song!

Across the clover-blossoms, wet,
With dainty clumps of violet,
And wild red roses in her hair,
There comes a little maiden fair.
I cannot more of June rehearse--
She is the ending of my verse.

Ah, nay! For through perpetual days
Of summer gold and filmy haze,
When Autumn dies in Winter's sleet,
I yet will ...

What magic through your snowy crystal gleams!
Your hollow spar, Spring brims with fragrancy;
That, like the cup of Comus, drugs with dreams
This woodland place, so drowsed with mystery.
What miracle evolved you from the mold?

Dreamed you, as 't were, into reality
Out of the Winter's death and night and cold?
Are you a sign, a message, that the Spring
Out of her soul unto the eye reveals?
A symboled something, telling many a thing
Of beauty she within her breast conceals?
The word significant, that conquers Death;
That through eternity with Nature deals,
As did the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth.

Or, of the rapture of the Earth a part,
Are you a thought that crystallized from dew
Into a flower? Nature, on her heart,
Bewildered with the hope from whe...

Of Prometheus, how undaunted
    On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chanted,
    Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition
    Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition
Of the theft and the transmission
    Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,
    Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,--the despairing
    Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted
    Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
    Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,
    In thei...

It'S All I Have To Bring To-Day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
Some one the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

With heavy groans did I approach my friends,
Heavy as though the mountains I would move.
The flagon they were murdering; they poured
Into the cup, wild-eyed, the grape's red blood.
No, they killed not, they breathed new life therein.
Then, too, in fiery rapture, burned my veins,
But soon the fumes had fled. In vain, in vain!
Ye cannot fill the breach of the rent heart.
Ye crave a sensuous joy; ye strive in vain
To cheat with flames of passion, my despair.
So when the sinking sun draws near to night,
The sky's bright cheeks fade 'neath those tresses black.
Ye laugh - but silently the soul weeps on;
Ye cannot stifle her sincere lament.

Solomon Ben Judah Gabirol (Died Between 1070-80.)

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1869.)


I

I would not if I could undo my past,
    Tho' for its sake my future is a blank;
    My past, for which I have myself to thank,
For all its faults and follies first and last.
I would not cast anew the lot once cast,
    Or launch a second ship for one that sank,
    Or drug with sweets the bitterness I drank,
Or break by feasting my perpetual fast.
I would not if I could: for much more dear
    Is one remembrance than a hundred joys,
    More than a thousand hopes in jubilee;
    Dearer the music of one tearful voice
    That unforgotten calls and calls to me,
'Follow me here, rise up, and follow here.'

II

What seekest thou far in the unknown land?
    In hope I follow joy gon...

A poor owd man wi' tott'ring gait,
Wi' body bent, an snowy pate,
Aw met one day; -
An daan o'th' rooad side grassy banks
He sat to rest his weary shanks;
An aw, to while away mi time,
O'th' neighbourin hillock did recline,
An bade "gooid day."

Said aw, "Owd friend, pray tell me true,
If in your heart yo nivver rue
Th' time 'at's past?
Does envy nivver fill yor breast
When passin fowk wi' riches blest?
An do yo nivver think it wrang
At yo should have to trudge along,
Soa poor to th' last?"

"Young man," he sed, "aw envy nooan;
But ther are times aw pity some,
Wi' all mi heart;
To see what trubbl'd lives they spend,
What cares upon their hands depend;
Then aw in thowtfulness declare
'At 'little cattle little care'
Is...

Instead of orient pearls of jet
I sent my love a carcanet;
About her spotless neck she knit
The lace, to honour me or it:
Then think how rapt was I to see
My jet t'enthral such ivory.

The days go by, the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”

Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms,
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!

Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they,
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?

My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling cons...

A treasured link of shining pearls,
    A by-gone melody,
A shower of tears with smiles between--
    And this is memory.
A thing so light a breath of air
    May waft its life away;
A thing so dark that moments of pain
    Seem like some endless day.

A careless word may wound the heart,
    And quickly it may die;
Yet in the seas of memory
    Forever it will lie.
And sometimes when the tide rolls back
    Its waves of joy and pain,
That careless word, though long forgot,
    Will wound the heart again.

The restless seas of memory
    Are vast and deep and wide;
And every deed that we can know
    Sleeps in that tireless tide.
Upon the thoughtless lives of men
    Its waves in mockery roll;
And sweep a might of bitter...

Fountains that frisk and sprinkle
The moss they overspill;
Pools that the breezes crinkle;
The wheel beside the mill,
With its wet, weedy frill;
Wind-shadows in the wheat;
A water-cart in the street;
The fringe of foam that girds
An islet's ferneries;
A green sky's minor thirds -
To live, I think of these!

Of ice and glass the tinkle,
Pellucid, silver-shrill;
Peaches without a wrinkle;
Cherries and snow at will,
From china bowls that fill
The senses with a sweet
Incuriousness of heat;
A melon's dripping sherds;
Cream-clotted strawberries;
Dusk dairies set with curds -
To live, I think of these!

Vale-lily and periwinkle;
Wet stone-crop on the sill;
The look of leaves a-twinkle
With windlets clear and stil...

Apollo sings, his harp resounds: give room,
For now behold the golden pomp is come,
Thy pomp of plays which thousands come to see
With admiration both of them and thee.
O volume! worthy, leaf by leaf and cover,
To be with juice of cedar wash'd all over;
Here words with lines and lines with scenes consent
To raise an act to full astonishment;
Here melting numbers, words of power to move
Young men to swoon and maids to die for love.
Love lies a-bleeding here, Evadne, there
Swells with brave rage, yet comely everywhere;
Here's A mad lover, there that high design
Of King and no King, and the rare plot thine.
So that whene'er we circumvolve our eyes,
Such rich, such fresh, such sweet varieties
Ravish our spirits, that entranc'd we see

Where have they gone to - the little girls
With natural manners and natural curls;
Who love their dollies and like their toys,
And talk of something besides the boys?

Little old women in plenty I find,
Mature in manners and old of mind;
Little old flirts who talk of their "beaux,"
And vie with each other in stylish clothes.

Little old belles who, at nine and ten,
Are sick of pleasure and tired of men;
Weary of travel, of balls, of fun,
And find no new thing under the sun.

Once, in the beautiful long ago,
Some dear little children I used to know;
Girls who were merry as lambs at play,
And laughed and rollicked the livelong day.

They thought not at all of the "style" of their clothes,
They never imagined that boys were "beaux" -

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH

It was the season, when through all the land
    The merle and mavis build, and building sing
Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand,
    Whom Saxon Caedmon calls the Blitheheart King;
When on the boughs the purple buds expand,
    The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,
And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
    Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
    Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
And hungry crows assembled in a crowd,
    Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said:
"Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bre...