Happiness

        A flight of doves, with wanton wings,
            Flash white against the sky.
        In the leafy copse an oriole sings,
            And a robin sings hard by.
        Sun and shadow are out on the hills;
        The swallow has followed the daffodils;
        In leaf and blade, life throbs and thrills
            Through the wild, warm heart of May.

        To have seen the sun come back, to have seen
            Children again at play,
        To have heard the thrush where the woods are green
            Welcome the new-born day,
        To have felt the soft grass cool to the feet,
        To have smelt earth's incense, heavenly sweet,
        To have shared the laughter along the street,
            And, then, to have died in May!

  ...

The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.

She felt herself supremer, --
A raised, ethereal thing;
Henceforth for her what holiday!
Meanwhile, her wheeling king

Trailed slow along the orchards
His haughty, spangled hems,
Leaving a new necessity, --
The want of diadems!

The morning fluttered, staggered,
Felt feebly for her crown, --
Her unanointed forehead
Henceforth her only one.

Why is that wanton gossip Fame
    So dumb about this man's affairs?
Why do we titter at his name
    Who come to buy his curious wares?

Here is a shop of wonderment.
    From every land has come a prize;
Rich spices from the Orient,
    And fruit that knew Italian skies,

And figs that ripened by the sea
    In Smyrna, nuts from hot Brazil,
Strange pungent meats from Germany,
    And currants from a Grecian hill.

He is the lord of goodly things
    That make the poor man's table gay,
Yet of his worth no minstrel sings
    And on his tomb there is no bay.

Perhaps he lives and dies unpraised,
    This trafficker in humble sweets,
Because his little shops are raised
    By thousands in the city streets.

Yet stars ...

Just a few of the roses we gathered from the Isar
Are fallen, and their mauve-red petals on the cloth
Float like boats on a river, while other
Roses are ready to fall, reluctant and loth.

She laughs at me across the table, saying
I am beautiful. I look at the rumpled young roses
And suddenly realise, in them as in me,
How lovely the present is that this day discloses.

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

I Oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
As if on her the sumach copse had smiled.
Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,
Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,
Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and east them down;
The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,
Within a dingled valley near a fall,
Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wadi...

Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too;--
Besides, you need not be alone; the soul
Shall have society of its own rank.
Be great, be true, and all the Scipios,
The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome,
Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,
And comfort you with their high company.
Virtue alone is sweet society,
It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,
And opens you a welcome in them all.
You must be like them if you desire them,
Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim
Than wine or sleep or praise;
Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,
And ever in the strife of your own thoughts
Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome:
That shall command a senate to your side;
For there is no might in the universe
That can contend with love. It reigns forever.
Wait...

Quick through the gates of Fairyland
The South Wind forced his way.
'Twas his to make the Earth forget
Her grief of yesterday.
"'Tis mine," cried he, "to bring her joy!"
And on his lightsome feet
In haste he slung the snowdrop bells,
Pushed past the Fairy sentinels,
And out with laughter sweet.

Clear flames of Crocus glimmered on
The shining way he went.
He whispered to the trees strange tales
Of wondrous sweet intent,
When, suddenly, his witching voice
With timbre rich and rare,
Rang through the woodlands till it cleft
Earth's silent solitudes, and left
A Dream of Roses there!

All day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane;

But now my torpid fancy wakes,
And, on thy Eagle’s plume,
Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird,
Or witch upon her broom!

Below me roar the rocking pines,
Before me spreads the lake
Whose long and solemn-sounding waves
Against the sunset break.

I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh
The grain he has not sown;
I see, with flashing scythe of fire,
The prairie harvest mown!

I hear the far-off voyager’s horn;
I see the Yankee’s trail,
His foot on every mountain-pass,
On every stream his sail.

By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see his pedler show;
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty...

Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse
Who, to thy one, all other brains refuse;
Whose every work of thy most early wit
Came forth example, and remains so yet;
Longer a-knowing than most wits do live;
And which no affection praise enough can give!
To it, thy language, letters, arts, best life,
Which might with half mankind maintain a strife.
All which I meant to praise, and yet I would;
But leave, because I cannot as I should!

(In a Style Skeltonical)

Listen now this time
Shortly to my rhyme
That herewith starts
About certain kind hearts
In those stricken parts
That lie behind Calais,
Old crones and aged men
And young children.
About the Picardais,
Who earned my thousand thanks,
Dwellers by the banks
Of mournful Somme
(God keep me therefrom
Until War ends),
These, then, are my friends:
Madame Averlant Lune,
From the town of Bethune;
Good Professeur la Brune
From that town also.
He played the piccolo,
And left his locks to grow.
Dear Madame Hojdes,
Sempstress of Saint Fe.
With Jules and Susette
And Antoinette.
Her children, my sweethearts,
For whom I made darts
Of paper to throw
In their mimic show,
"La guerr...

Two small sweet lives together
    From dawn till the dew falls down,
They danced over rock and heather
    Away from the dusty town.

Dark eyes like stars set in pansies,
    Blue eyes like a hero's bold--
Their thoughts were all pearl-light fancies,
    Their hearts in the age of gold.

They crooned o'er many a fable
    And longed for the bright-capped elves,
The faery folk who are able
    To make us faery ourselves.

A hush on the children stealing
    They stood there hand in hand,
For the elfin chimes were pealing
    Aloud in the underland.

And over the grey rock sliding,
    A fiery colour ran,
And out of its thickness gliding
    The twinkling mist of a man--

To-day for the children had fled to
    ...

A moony breadth of virgin face,
By thought unviolated;
A patient mouth, to take from scorn
The hook with bank-notes baited!
Its self-complacent sleekness shows
How thrift goes with the fawner;
An unctuous unconcern of all
Which nice folks call dishonor!
A pleasant print to peddle out
In lands of rice and cotton;
The model of that face in dough
Would make the artist's fortune.
For Fame to thee has come unsought,
While others vainly woo her,
In proof how mean a thing can make
A great man of its doer.
To whom shall men thyself compare,
Since common models fail 'em,
Save classic goose of ancient Rome,
Or sacred ass of Balaam?
The gabble of that wakeful goose
Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;
The braying of the prophet's ass
Betray...

The days have slain the days,
and the seasons have gone by
And brought me the summer again;
and here on the grass I lie
As erst I lay and was glad
ere I meddled with right and with wrong.
Wide lies the mead as of old,
and the river is creeping along
By the side of the elm-clad bank
that turns its weedy stream;
And grey o'er its hither lip
the quivering rushes gleam.
There is work in the mead as of old;
they are eager at winning the hay,
While every sun sets bright
and begets a fairer day.
The forks shine white in the sun
round the yellow red-wheeled wain,
Where the mountain of hay grows fast;
and now from out of the lane
Comes the ox-team drawing another,
comes the bailiff and the beer,
And thump, thump, goes the farmer's nag

The Desert is parched in the burning sun
And the grass is scorched and white.
But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
We are camping here to-night.
    I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
    While the cadenced water evenly falls,
    And a peacock out of the Jungle calls
    To another, on yonder tomb.
    Above, half seen, in the lofty gloom,
    Strange works of a long dead people loom,
Obscene and savage and half effaced -
An elephant hunt, a musicians' feast -
And curious matings of man and beast;
What did they mean to the men who are long since dust?
    Whose fingers traced,
    In this arid waste,
These rioting, twisted, figures of love and lust.

Strange, weird things that no man may say,
Things Humanity hides away; -
  ...

Here among the beeches
Winds and wild perfume,
That the twilight pleaches
Into gleam and gloom,
Build for her a room.

Her whose Beauty cometh,
Misty as the morn,
When the wild-bee hummeth,
At its honey-horn,
In the wayside thorn.

As the wood grows dimmer,
With the drowsy night,
Like a moonbeam glimmer
Here she walks in white,
With a firefly light.

Moths around her flitting,
Like a moth she goes,
Here a moment sitting
By this wilding rose,
With my heart's repose.

Every bud and flower
From her look has caught
Something of that hour
While she stood in thought
Gazing into naught.

Every bough that dances
Has assumed the grace
Of her form; and fancies,
Flashed from eye and face...

With an angel flower-laden, every day a dimpled maiden
    Sails away from off my bosom on a radiant sea of bliss;
I can see her drifting, drifting, hear the snowy wings uplifting
    As he woos her into Dreamland with a kiss.

Blissful hour, my pretty sleeper, guarded by an angel keeper,
    List'ning to the words he brings thee from a fairer world than this;
Sweet! thy heart he is beguiling, I can tell it by thy smiling,
    As he woos thee into Dreamland with a kiss.

Could there come to weary mortals such a glimpse through golden portals,
Would we not drift on forever toward the longed-for land of peace, jean    Would we not leave joys and sorrows,
    Glad to-days and sad to-morrows,
For the sound of white wings lifting, and the kiss?

Under green apple-boughs
That never a storm will rouse,
My lady hath her house
Between two bowers;
In either of the twain
Red roses full of rain;
She hath for bondwomen
All kind of flowers.

She hath no handmaid fair
To draw her curled gold hair
Through rings of gold that bear
Her whole hair’s weight;
She hath no maids to stand
Gold-clothed on either hand;
In all the great green land
None is so great.

She hath no more to wear
But one white hood of vair
Drawn over eyes and hair,
Wrought with strange gold,
Made for some great queen’s head,
Some fair great queen since dead;
And one strait gown of red
Against the cold.

Beneath her eyelids deep
Love lying seems asleep,
Love, swift to wake, to weep,<...