Happiness

What is it now that I shall seek
Where woods dip downward, in the hills;
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.

Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines?

With red-bud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.

Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest trees?
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among th' anemones.

As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleam,
My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,
And drink the magic of her dreams.

        1.

        I AM a little weary of my life--
        Not thy life, blessed Father! Or the blood
        Too slowly laves the coral shores of thought,
        Or I am weary of weariness and strife.
        Open my soul-gates to thy living flood;
        I ask not larger heart-throbs, vigour-fraught,
        I pray thy presence, with strong patience rife.

        2.

        I will what thou will'st--only keep me sure
        That thou art willing; call to me now and then.
        So, ceasing to enjoy, I shall endure
        With perfect patience--willing beyond my ken
        Beyond my love, beyond my thinking scope;
        Willing to be because thy will is pure;
        Willing thy will beyond all bounds of hope.

        3.
...

Here, far from all the pomp Ambition seeks,
Much sought, but only whilst untasted prais'd,
Content and Innocence, with rosy cheeks,
Enjoy the simple shed their hands have rais'd.

On a gray rock it stands, whose fretted base
The distant cat'ract's murm'ring waters lave,
Whilst o'er its mossy roof, with varying grace,
The slender branches of the white birch wave.

Around the forest-fir is heard to sigh,
On which the pensive ear delights to dwell,
Whilst, as the gazing trav'ller passes by,
The gray goat, starting, sounds his tinkling bell.
Oh! in my native land, ere life's decline,
May such a spot, so wild, so sweet, be mine!

Right Trusty, and so forth - we let you know
We are very ill used by you mortals below.
For, first, I have often by chemists been told,
(Though I know nothing on't,) it is I that make gold;
Which when you have got, you so carefully hide it,
That, since I was born, I hardly have spied it.
Then it must be allow'd, that, whenever I shine,
I forward the grass, and I ripen the vine;
To me the good fellows apply for relief,
Without whom they could get neither claret nor beef:
Yet their wine and their victuals, those curmudgeon lubbards
Lock up from my sight in cellars and cupboards.
That I have an ill eye, they wickedly think,
And taint all their meat, and sour all their drink.
But, thirdly and lastly, it must be allow'd,
I alone can inspire the poetical crowd:
This...

I.

Spring On The Hills

Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crabapple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?
In redbud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With white, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?
In valleys of wild strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries,
With which the south winds grapple,
That brook and byway dapple?
With eyes of far forgetfulness,
Like some wild wood-thing's daughter,
Whose feet are beelike fretfulness,
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.
O Spring, to seek, yet find you not!
To search, ...

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
T...

Tell me the witching tale again,
    For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
    So pure to feel, so sweet to hear.

Say, Love, in all thy prime of fame,
    When the high heaven itself was thine;
When piety confest the flame,
    And even thy errors were divine;

Did ever Muse's hand, so fair,
    A glory round thy temple spread?
Did ever lip's ambrosial air
    Such fragrance o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre
    The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed;--
But all her sighs were sighs of fire,
    The myrtle withered as she breathed.

Oh! you that love's celestial dream,
    In all its purity, would know,
Let not the senses' ardent beam
    Too strongly through the visio...

Say, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
The Lute neglected, and the Lyric muse;
Love taught my tears in adder notes to flow,
And tun'd my heart to Elegies of woe,
I burn, I burn, as when thro' ripen'd corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne!
Phaon to Aetna's scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than Aetna's fires!
No more my soul a charm in music finds,
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds.
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please,
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
Once the dear objects of m...

The look that thy sweet eyes on mine impress

The pledge thy lips to mine convey, the kiss,

He who, like me, hath knowledge sure of this,
Can he in aught beside find happiness?

Removed from thee, friend-sever'd, in distress,

These thoughts I vainly struggle to dismiss:

They still return to that one hour of bliss,
The only one; then tears my grief confess.

But unawares the tear makes haste to dry:

He loves, methinks, e'en to these glades so still,

And shalt not thou to distant lands extend?

Receive the murmurs of his loving sigh;

My only joy on earth is in thy will,

Thy kindly will tow'rd me; a token send!

                Leave the early bells at chime,
                Leave the kindled hearth to blaze,
        Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time,
        Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,
        Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days.

                Pass them by! even while our soul
                Yearns to them with keen distress.
        Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole.
        Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press;
        Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness.

                We have felt the ancient swaying
                Of the earth before the sun,
        On the darkened marge of midnight heard ...

Now overhead,
Where the rivulet loiters and stops,
The bittersweet hangs from the tops
Of the alders and cherries
Its bunches of beautiful berries,
Orange and red.

And the snowbirds flee,
Tossing up on the far brown field,
Now flashing and now concealed,
Like fringes of spray
That vanish and gleam on the gray
Field of the sea.

Flickering light,
Come the last of the leaves down borne,
And patches of pale white corn
In the wind complain,
Like the slow rustle of rain
Noticed by night.

Withered and thinned,
The sentinel mullein looms,
With the pale gray shadowy plumes
Of the goldenrod;
And the milkweed opens its pod,
Tempting the wind.

Aloft on the hill,
A cloudrift opens and shines
Through ...

        Changed? Yes, I will confess it - I have changed.
    I do not love in the old fond way.
        I am your friend still - time has not estranged
    One kindly feeling of that vanished day.

        But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
    The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
        Like visions of a sleeper's brain they seem -
    And yet I cannot tell you how they went.

        Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
    Upon me, dear? Is it so very strange
        That hearts, like all things underneath God's skies
    Should sometimes feel the influence of change?

        The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
    The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime,
        Vast continents and the eternal seas -
...

'Tis true, Idoloclastes Satyrane!
(So call him, for so mingling blame with praise,
And smiles with anxious looks, his earliest friends,
Masking his birth-name, wont to character
His wild-wood fancy and impetuous zeal,)
'Tis true that, passionate for ancient truths,
And honouring with religious love the Great
Of elder times, he hated to excess,
With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,
The hollow Puppets of an hollow Age,
Ever idolatrous, and changing ever
Its worthless Idols! Learning, Power, and Time,
(Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war
Of fervid colloquy. Sickness, 'tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintaine...

Golden-locked Erato, and thou, sweet lute,
The comfort of the sad and destitute,
Calm thou my sorrow, lest I too become
A marble pillar shedding through the dumb
But living stone my almost bloody tears,
A monument of grief for coming years.
For when we think of mankind's evil chance
Does not our private grief gain temperance?
Unhappy mother (if 'tis evil hap
We blame when caught in our own folly's trap)
Where are thy sons and daughters, seven each,
The joyful cause of thy too boastful speech?
I see their fourteen stones, and thou, alas,
Who from thy misery wouldst gladly pass
To death, dost kiss the tombs, O wretched one,
Where lies thy fruit so cruelly undone.
Thus blossoms fall where some keen sickle passes
And so, when rain doth level them, green grass...

I drew the letter out, while gleamed
The sloping sun from under a roof
Of cloud whose verge rose visibly.

The burning ball flung rays that seemed
Stretched like a warp without a woof
Across the levels of the lea

To where I stood, and where they beamed
As brightly on the page of proof
That she had shown her false to me

As if it had shown her true - had teemed
With passionate thought for my behoof
Expressed with their own ardency!

I've been home a long time among the vast porticos,
Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires,
Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold
Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires.

The swells' overwhelming accords of rich music,
Heaving images of heaven to the skies,
Mingle in a way solemn and mystic
With the colors of the horizon reflected by my eyes.

It was here I was true to the voluptuous calm,
The milieu of azure, the waves, the splendors,
And the nude slaves, all impregnated with odors,

Who refreshed my brow with waving palms
My only care to bring to meaning from anguish
The sad secret in which I languish.

    The leaves are fresh after the rain,
        The air is cool and clear,
    The sun is shining warm again,
        The sparrows hopping in the lane
    Are brisk and full of cheer.

    And that is why we dance and play,
        And that is why we sing,
    Calling out in voices gay,
        We will not go to school to-day
    Or learn anything:

    It is a happy thing, I say,
    To be alive on such a day.

Harmonious Powers with Nature work
On sky, earth, river, lake and sea;
Sunshine and cloud, whirlwind and breeze,
All in one duteous task agree.

Once did I see a slip of earth
(By throbbing waves long undermined)
Loosed from its hold; how, no one knew,
But all might see it float, obedient to the wind;

Might see it, from the mossy shore
Dissevered, float upon the Lake,
Float with its crest of trees adorned
On which the warbling birds their pastime take.

Food, shelter, safety, there they find;
There berries ripen, flowerets bloom;
There insects live their lives, and die;
A peopled world it is; in size a tiny room.

And thus through many seasons' space
This little Island may survive;
But Nature, though we mark her not,
Will ta...