Happiness

    "I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
    I woke, and found that life was duty.
    Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
    Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
    And thou shall find thy dream to be
    A noonday light and truth to thee."

She must be honest, both in thought and deed,
Of generous impulse, and above all greed;
Not seeking praise, or place, or power, or pelf,
But life's best blessings for her higher self,
Which means the best for all.
    She must have faith,
To make good friends of Trouble, Pain, and Death,
And understand their message.
    She should be
As redolent with tender sympathy
As is a rose with fragrance.
    Cheerfulness
Should be her mantle, even though her dress
May be of Sorrow's weaving.
    On her face
A loyal nature leaves its seal of grace,
And chastity is in her atmosphere.
Not that chill chastity which seems austere
(Like untrod snow-peaks, lovely to behold
Till once attained - then barren, loveless, cold);
But the white flame that feeds up...

TO MY FRIEND CHARLES BOOTH NETTLETON

I

The young queen Nature, ever sweet and fair,
Once on a time fell upon evil days.
From hearing oft herself discussed with praise,
There grew within her heart the longing rare
To see herself; and every passing air
The warm desire fanned into lusty blaze.
Full oft she sought this end by devious ways,
But sought in vain, so fell she in despair.
For none within her train nor by her side
Could solve the task or give the envied boon.
So day and night, beneath the sun and moon,
She wandered to and fro unsatisfied,
Till Art came by, a blithe inventive elf,
And made a glass wherein she saw herself.


II

Enrapt, the queen gazed on her glorious self,
Then trembling with the thrill of sudden thoug...

Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!
How they yearn to ramble and love to range
Down through the vales of the years long gone,
Up through the future that fast rolls on.

To-days are dull -- so they wend their ways
Back to their beautiful yesterdays;
The present is blank -- so they wing their flight
To future to-morrows where all seems bright.

Build them a bright and beautiful home,
They'll soon grow weary and want to roam;
Find them a spot without sorrow or pain,
They may stay a day, but they're off again.

Those hearts of ours -- how wild! how wild!
They're as hard to tame as an Indian child;
They're as restless as waves on the sounding sea,
Like the breeze and the bird are they fickle and free.

Those hearts of ours -- how l...

    Elfin & gold bug,
    genie in the
    twilight of a cave.

    Virgin On The Rocks
    - Da Vinci's painting -
    aura light seeping toward
    sun-lit crack of day,
    the Master's Mona Lisa
    in the Louvre
    raptured,
    luminescence amid aging pigment
    steeping about rapt multitude.

    Betwixt pit & pendulum,
    another canvas -
    Da Vinci in a beatific pose
    (warm light of the room),
    gentle finger pointing upward,
    a puzzled crowd
    with nowhere to see.

1.
The keen stars were twinkling,
And the fair moon was rising among them,
Dear Jane!
The guitar was tinkling,
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again.

2.
As the moon's soft splendour
O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
Is thrown,
So your voice most tender
To the strings without soul had then given
Its own.

3.
The stars will awaken,
Though the moon sleep a full hour later,
To-night;
No leaf will be shaken
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.

4.
Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

Slow sail’d the weary mariners and saw,
Betwixt the green brink and the running foam,
Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest
To little harps of gold; and while they mused,
Whispering to each other half in fear,
Shrill music reach’d them on the middle sea.

Whither away, whither away, whither away? fly no more.
Whither away, from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore?
Day and night to the billow the fountain calls;
Down shower the gambolling waterfalls
From wandering over the lea;
Out of the live-green heart of the dells
They freshen the silvery-crimson shells,
And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells
High over the full-toned sea.
O, hither, come hither and furl your sails,
Come hither to me and to me;
Hither, come hither ...

When Grief comes this way by
With her wan lip and drooping eye,
Bid her welcome, woo her boldly;
Soon she'll look on thee less coldly.

Her tears soon cease to flow.
'Tis now not Grief but Joy we know;
From her smiling face the roses
Tell the glad metempsychosis.

I.

The hills are full of prophecies
And ancient voices of the dead;
Of hidden shapes that no man sees,
Pale, visionary presences,
That speak the things no tongue hath said,
No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.
The streams are full of oracles,
And momentary whisperings;
An immaterial beauty swells
Its breezy silver o'er the shells
With wordless speech that sings and sings
The message of diviner things.
No indeterminable thought is theirs,
The stars', the sunsets' and the flowers';
Whose inexpressible speech declares
Th' immortal Beautiful, who shares
This mortal riddle which is ours,
Beyond the forward-flying hours.

II.

It holds and beckons in the streams;
It lures and touches us in all
The flowers of the golde...

The train draws forth from the station-yard,
And with it carries me.
I rise, and stretch out, and regard
The platform left, and see
An airy slim blue form there standing,
And know that it is she.

While with strained vision I watch on,
The figure turns round quite
To greet friends gaily; then is gone . . .
The import may be slight,
But why remained she not hard gazing
Till I was out of sight?

"O do not chat with others there,"
I brood. "They are not I.
O strain your thoughts as if they were
Gold bands between us; eye
All neighbour scenes as so much blankness
Till I again am by!

"A troubled soughing in the breeze
And the sky overhead
Let yourself feel; and shadeful trees,
Ripe corn, and apples red,
Read as things b...

        God had called us, and we came;
            Our loved Earth to ashes left;
        Heaven was a neighbor's house,
            Open to us, bereft.

        Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
            And 'twas God who walked ahead;
        Yet I wept along the road,
            Wanting my own house instead.

        Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
            "All you things my eyes have kissed,
        Fare you well!    We meet no more,
            Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

        Weary wings that rise and fall
            All day long above the fire!"--
        Red with heat was every wall,
            Rough with heat was every wire--

        "Fare you well, you little winds
            That the flying embers chase!
...

Forth from the dust and din,
The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,
The wrangle and jangle of unrests,
Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win -
As from swart August to the green lap of May -
To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts
Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware
In any of her innumerable nests
Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,
Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day
In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
And spins into the outlook of the Sun
(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge),
...

"Phoebe! Phoebe! Where is the chit?
When I want her most she's out of the way.
Child, you're running a long account
Up, to be squared on Judgment-day.

"Where have you been? and what have you there?"
"To the pasture for buttercups wet with dew."
"My patience! I think you are out of your wits;
I wonder what good will buttercups do?

"There's pennyroyal you might have got,-
It might have been useful to you or me,
But I never heard, in all my life,
Of buttercup cordial or buttercup tea.

"I want you to stay and mind the bread,
I've just put two loaves in the oven to bake;
When they are clone take them carefully out,
And put in their place this loaf of cake,

"While I run over to Widow Brown's;
Her son, from the mines, has just got back.

If 'mongst my many poems I can see
One only worthy to be wash'd by thee,
I live for ever, let the rest all lie
In dens of darkness or condemn'd to die.

There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
Do I live in a house you would like to see?
Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
“Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?”

Invite the world, as my betters have done?
“Take notice: this building remains on view,
Its suites of reception every one,
Its private apartment and bedroom too;

“For a ticket, apply to the Publisher.”
No: thanking the public, I must decline.
A peep through my window, if folk prefer;
But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!

I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk
In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced
And a house stood gaping, naught to balk
Alan’s eye wherever he gazed or glanced.

The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
The inside gaped: exposed to da...