Happiness

Love wine and beauty and the spring,
While wine is red and spring is here,
And through the almond blossoms ring
The dove-like voices of thy Dear.

Love wine and spring and beauty while
The wine hath flavour and spring masks
Her treachery in so soft a smile
That none may think of toil and tasks.

But when spring goes on hurrying feet,
Look not thy sorrow in the eyes,
And bless thy freedom from thy sweet:
This is the wisdom of the wise.

Come take our boy, and we will go
Before our cabin door;
The winds shall bring us, as they blow,
The murmurs of the shore;
And we will kiss his young blue eyes,
And I will sing him, as he lies,
Songs that were made of yore:
I'll sing, in his delighted ear,
The island lays thou lov'st to hear.

And thou, while stammering I repeat,
Thy country's tongue shalt teach;
'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet
Than my own native speech:
For thou no other tongue didst know,
When, scarcely twenty moons ago,
Upon Tahete's beach,
Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine,
With many a speaking look and sign.

I knew thy meaning, thou didst praise
My eyes, my locks of jet;
Ah! well for me they won thy gaze,
But thine were fairer yet!
I'm glad to...

You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another’s said or sung,
’Twere politic to do the like by these;
But have you known a dog to praise his fleas?

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree
Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes
Somewhere an 'eukaleli' thrills and cries
And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.
And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;
And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,
An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
Of two that loved, or did not love, and one
Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,
A long while since, and by some other sea.

Come, walk with me and Memory;
And let us see what we shall see:
A wild green lane of stones and weeds
That to a wilder woodland leads.
An old board gate, the lichens crust,
Whose ancient hinges croak with rust.
A vale; a creek; and a bridge of planks,
And the wild sunflowers that wall its banks:
A path that winds through shine and shade
To a ferned and wildflowered forest glade;
Where, out of a grotto, a voice replies
With a faint hollo to your voice that cries:
And every wind that passes seems
A foot that follows from Lands o' Dreams.
A voice, a foot, and a shadow, too,
That whispers of things your childhood knew:
A girl that waited, a boy that came,
And an old beech tree where he carved her name;
Where still he sees her, whom still he hears
B...

When the burning sun of Summer shines from out a brassy sky,
And has parched and browned the meadows, and the creek's run dry,
O sweet it is to wander there and hear the water sing
It's rippling song of gladness from the
                                            Old
                                                "Bull
                                                    Spring!"

Since Logan and the pioneers first stood upon its bank,
And heard it gurgle from the rock, and of its waters drank,
With ceaseless music in its flow, like silvery chimes that ring,
Has been the song of gladness from the
                                            Old
                                                "Bull
                                                    Spring!"

A...

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: "'T will keep."

I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.

By Sylvia if thy charming self be meant;
If friendship be thy virgin vows' extent,
O! let me in Aminta's praises join,
Hers my esteem shall be, my passion thine.
When for thy head the garland I prepare,
A second wreath shall bind Aminta's hair;
And when my choicest songs thy worth proclaim,
Alternate verse shall bless Aminta's name;
My heart shall own the justice of her cause,
And Love himself submit to Friendship's laws.

But if beneath thy numbers' soft disguise
Some favour'd swain, some true Alexis, lies;
If Amaryllis breathes thy secret pains,
And thy fond heart beats measure to thy strains,
May'st thou, howe'er I grieve, for ever find
The flame propitious and the lover kind;
May Venus long exert her happy power,
And make thy beauty like thy vers...

I remember, when a child,
How within the April wild
Once I walked with Mystery
In the groves of Arcady....
Through the boughs, before, behind,
Swept the mantle of the wind,
Thunderous and unconfined.

Overhead the curving moon
Pierced the twilight: a cocoon,
Golden, big with unborn wings
Beauty, shaping spiritual things,
Vague, impatient of the night,
Eager for its heavenward flight
Out of darkness into light.

Here and there the oaks assumed
Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed,
Hiding, of a dryad look;
And the naiad-frantic brook,
Crying, fled the solitude,
Filled with terror of the wood,
Or some faun-thing that pursued.

In the dead leaves on the ground
Crept a movement; rose a sound:
Everywhere the silence ticked...

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

Twelve weeks had passed - how slowly! - day by day,
Since formal, dull Sir Calendar had bowed
Old Winter from the scene, and cried, "Make way!
The Spring, the Spring!" and still a sullen cloud
Obscured the sky, and the north wind blew chill;
When lo, one morn the miracle began;
A Presence brooded over vale and hill,
And through all life a quickening impulse ran.

Long-hushed, forgotten melodies awoke
Within my soul; the rapture of the boy
Refilled me; o'er my arid being broke
A brimming tide of elemental joy
From primal deeps; and all my happy springs
Came back to me - I was the peer of kings!

Farther and farther away, alas! at each moment the vessel

Hastens, as onward it glides, cleaving the foam-cover'd flood!
Long is the track plough'd up by the keel where dolphins are sporting,

Following fast in its rear, while it seems flying pursuit.
All forebodes a prosperous voyage; the sailor with calmness

Leans 'gainst the sail, which alone all that is needed performs.
Forward presses the heart of each seamen, like colours and streamers;

Backward one only is seen, mournfully fix'd near the mast,
While on the blue tinged mountains, which fast are receding, he gazeth,

And as they sink in the sea, joy from his bosom departs.
Vanish'd from thee, too, oh Dora, is now the vessel that robs thee

Of thine Alexis, thy friend, ah, thy betrothed as well!

At My Fireside

Alone, beneath the darkened sky,
With saddened heart and unstrung lyre,
I heap the spoils of years gone by,
And leave them with a long-drawn sigh,
Like drift-wood brands that glimmering lie,
Before the ashes hide the fire.

Let not these slow declining days
The rosy light of dawn outlast;
Still round my lonely hearth it plays,
And gilds the east with borrowed rays,
While memory's mirrored sunset blaze
Flames on the windows of the past.

March 1, 1888.

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
- Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

1866.

Here, in mine old-time harbourage installed,
Lulled by the murmurous hum of London's traffic
To that full calm which may be justly called
Seraphic,

I praise the gods; and vow, for my escape
From the hard grip of premature Jehannun,
One golden-tissued bottle of the grape
Per annum.

For on this day, from Orient toils enlarged,
Kneeling, I kissed the parent soil at Dover,
Where a huge porter in his orbit charged
Me over;

Flashed in the train by Shorncliffe's draughty camp;
Gazed on the hurrying landscape's pastoral graces,
Old farms, and happy fields (a trifle damp
In places);

Passed the grim suburbs, indigent and bare
Of natural foliage, but bravely flying
Frank garlandry of last week's underwear
Out drying;

And ...

A shallow stream, from fountains
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lake ward Bearcamp River;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.

Alone the dead trees yielding
To the dull axe Time is wielding,
The shy mink and the otter,
And golden leaves and red,
By countless autumns shed,
Had floated down its water.

From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
Came a skilled seafaring man,
With his dory, to the right place;
Over hill and plain he brought her,
Where the boatless Beareamp water
Comes winding down from White-Face.

Quoth the skipper: “Ere she floats forth;
I’m sure my pretty boat’s worth,
At least, a name as pretty.”
On her painted side he wrote it,
And the flag that o...

Il mio avversario, in cui veder solete.

LAURA AT HER LOOKING-GLASS.


    My foe, in whom you see your own bright eyes,
Adored by Love and Heaven with honour due,
With beauties not its own enamours you,
Sweeter and happier than in mortal guise.
Me, by its counsel, lady, from your breast,
My chosen cherish'd home, your scorn expell'd
In wretched banishment, perchance not held
Worthy to dwell where you alone should rest.
But were I fasten'd there with strongest keys,
That mirror should not make you, at my cost,
Severe and proud yourself alone to please.
Remember how Narcissus erst was lost!
His course and thine to one conclusion lead,
Of flower so fair though worthless here the mead.

MACGREGOR.


    My mirror'd foe re...

When wintry weather's all a-done,
An' brooks do sparkle in the zun,
An' naisy-builden rooks do vlee
Wi' sticks toward their elem tree;
When birds do zing, an' we can zee
Upon the boughs the buds o' spring,
Then I'm as happy as a king,
A-vield wi' health an' zunsheen.

Vor then the cowlsip's hangen flower
A-wetted in the zunny shower,
Do grow wi' vi'lets, sweet o' smell,
Bezide the wood-screened graegle's bell;
Where drushes' aggs, wi' sky-blue shell,
Do lie in mossy nest among
The thorns, while they do zing their zong
At evenen in the zunsheen.

An' God do meake his win' to blow
An' rain to vall vor high an' low,
An' bid his mornen zun to rise
Vor all alike, an' groun' an' skies
Ha' colors vor the poor man's eyes:
An' in our ...