Happiness

I.

There is a scent of roses and spilt wine
Between the moonlight and the laurel coppice;
The marble idol glimmers on its shrine,
White as a star, among a heaven of poppies.
Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine.
There is a mouth of music like a lute,
A nightingale that sigheth to one flower;
Between the falling flower and the fruit,
Where love hath died, the music of an hour.

II.

To sit alone with memory and a rose;
To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;
To make one hour of a year of woes
And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,
With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose,
To shape from music and the scent of buds
Love's spirit and its presence of sweet fire,
Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's,
Is...

    The lily of Malud is born in secret mud.
    It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine
    Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen,
    And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen.

    It blooms once a year in summer moonlight,
    In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight:
    It blooms once a year, and dies in a night,
    And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light;
    And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids,
    With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shades
    To watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower.

    When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns alone
    And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown,
    When each hut is a mound, ha...

I.

The lake she haunts gleams dreamily
'Twixt sleepy boughs of melody,
Set 'mid the hills beside the sea,
In tangled bush and brier;
Where the ghostly sunsets write
Wondrous things in golden light;
And above the pine-crowned height,
Clouds of twilight, rosy white,
Build their towers of fire.

II.

'Mid the rushes there that swing,
Flowering flags where voices sing
When low winds are murmuring,
Murmuring to stars that glitter;
Blossom-white, with purple locks,
Underneath the stars' still flocks,
In the dusky waves she rocks,
Rocks, and all the landscape mocks
With a song most sweet and bitter.

III.

Soft it sounds, at first, as dreams
Filled with tears that fall in streams;
Then it soars, until it se...

How long, great Poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?
Can neither injuries of time, or age,
Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?
No so thy Ovid in his exile wrote,
Grief chill'd his breast,and check'd his rising thought:
Pensive and sad, his drooping Muse betrays
The Roman genius in its last decays.
Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,
And second youth is kindled in thy breast;
Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,
And England boasts of riches not her own;
Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty,
And Horace wonders at himself in thee.
Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers, and a clearer style;
And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,
Edges his satire, and improves his rage,

Due rose fresche, e colte in paradiso.

THE TWO ROSES.


    Two brilliant roses, fresh from Paradise,
Which there, on May-day morn, in beauty sprung
Fair gift, and by a lover old and wise
Equally offer'd to two lovers young:
At speech so tender and such winning guise,
As transports from a savage might have wrung,
A living lustre lit their mutual eyes,
And instant on their cheeks a soft blush hung.
The sun ne'er look'd upon a lovelier pair,
With a sweet smile and gentle sigh he said,
Pressing the hands of both and turn'd away.
Of words and roses each alike had share.
E'en now my worn heart thrill with joy and dread,
O happy eloquence! O blessed day!

MACGREGOR.

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,
Homer with all his wars and warriors, Hector, Achilles, Ajax,
Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Tennyson's fair ladies,
Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme, delight of singers;
These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter,
Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,
Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,
And leave its odor there.

Shall we wake one morn of spring,
Glad at heart of everything,
Yet pensive with the thought of eve?
Then the white house shall we leave,
Pass the wind-flowers and the bays,
Through the garth, and go our ways,
Wandering down among the meads
Till our very joyance needs
Rest at last; till we shall come
To that Sun-god's lonely home,
Lonely on the hill-side grey,
Whence the sheep have gone away;
Lonely till the feast-time is,
When with prayer and praise of bliss,
Thither comes the country side.
There awhile shall we abide,
Sitting low down in the porch
By that image with the torch:
Thy one white hand laid upon
The black pillar that was won
From the far-off Indian mine;
And my hand nigh touching thine,
But not touching; and thy gown

I

Looking forward to the spring
One puts up with anything.
On this February day,
Though the winds leap down the street,
Wintry scourgings seem but play,
And these later shafts of sleet
Sharper pointed than the first -
And these later snows the worst -
Are as a half-transparent blind
Riddled by rays from sun behind.

II

Shadows of the October pine
Reach into this room of mine:
On the pine there stands a bird;
He is shadowed with the tree.
Mutely perched he bills no word;
Blank as I am even is he.
For those happy suns are past,
Fore-discerned in winter last.
When went by their pleasure, then?
I, alas, perceived not when.

I.

Once when it had rained all night
And all day, the next day, why,
In our yard, a lot of white,
Dumpy toadstools grew close by
Our old peach tree: some were high,
Peak'd, like half-shut parasols;
Others round and low, like balls,
Little hollow balls; and I
Called my father to the tree:
And he said, "I tell you what:
Fairies have been here, you see.
This is just the kind of spot
Fairies love to live in. Those
Are their houses, I suppose.

II.

"Yes, those surely are their huts!
Built of moon and mist and rain,
Such dim stuff as Elfland puts
In her buildings. Come again,
And, like castles built in Spain,
They are nowhere. But to-night,
Sliding down the moon's slim light,
Or snail-straddled, in a train
You...

Define my weal, and tell the joys of heaven;
Express my woes and show the pains of hell;
Declare what fate unlucky stars have given,
And ask a world upon my life to dwell;
    Make known the faith that fortune could no move,
Compare my worth with others' base desert,
Let virtue be the touchstone of my love,
So may the heavens read wonders in my heart;
    Behold the clouds which have eclipsed my sun,
And view the crosses which my course do let;
Tell me, if ever since the world begun
So fair a rising had so foul a set?
    And see if time, if he would strive to prove,
    Can show a second to so pure a love.

Thus in altemate uproar and sad peace,
Amazed were those Titans utterly.
O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;
For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:
A solitary sorrow best befits
Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.
Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find
Many a fallen old Divinity
Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.
Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,
And not a wind of heaven but will breathe
In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute;
For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse.
Flush everything that hath a vermeil hue,
Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,
And let the clouds of even and of morn
Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills;
Let the red wine within the goblet boil,
Cold as a bubbling well; let fain...

    Bowing adorers of the gale,
    Ye cowslips delicately pale,
    Upraise your loaded stems;
    Unfold your cups in splendour; speak!
    Who decked you with that ruddy streak
    And gilt your golden gems?

    Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,
    In purple's richest pride arrayed,
    Your errand here fulfil;
    Go, bid the artist's simple stain
    Your lustre imitate--in vain--
    And match your Maker's skill.

    Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth,
    Embroiderers of the carpet earth,
    That stud the velvet sod,
    Open to Spring's refreshing air,
    In sweetest smiling bloom declare
    Your Maker and your God.

I.

Ah me! those old familiar bounds!
That classic house, those classic grounds
My pensive thought recalls!
What tender urchins now confine,
What little captives now repine,
Within yon irksome walls?


II.

Ay, that's the very house! I know
Its ugly windows, ten a-row!
Its chimneys in the rear!
And there's the iron rod so high,
That drew the thunder from the sky
And turn'd our table-beer!


III.

There I was birch'd! there I was bred!
There like a little Adam fed
From Learning's woeful tree!
The weary tasks I used to con! -
The hopeless leaves I wept upon! -
Most fruitless leaves to me! -


IV.

The summon'd class! - the awful bow! -
I wonder who is master now
And wholeso...

    Her soul is like a wolf that stands
    Where sunlight falls between the trees
    Of a sparse forest's leafless edge,
    When Spring's first magic moveth these.

    Her soul is like a little brook,
    Thin edged with ice against the leaves,
    Where the wolf drinks and is alone,
    And where the woodbine interweaves.

    A bank late covered by the snow,
    But lighted by the frozen North;
    Her soul is like a little plot
    That one white blossom bringeth forth.

    Her soul is slim, like silver slips,
    And straight, like flags beside a stream.
    Her soul is like a shape that moves
    And changes in a wonder dream.

    Who would pursue her clasps a cloud,
    And taketh sorrow for his zeal.
    Memory shall ...

I

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:
This creature like a girl, who smiles
Into my eyes and softly lays
Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
Long miles of haunted forest ways.

II

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
A fragrance that a flower exhaled
And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
A sunbeam making gold the gloom
Of vines that roof some woodland room
Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
Of streams her presence doth assume -
Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

III

Sometimes she seems the light that lies
On foam of w...

What shall we do for Love these days?
How shall we make an altar-blaze
To smite the horny eyes of men
With the renown of our Heaven,
And to the unbelievers prove
Our service to our dear god, Love?
What torches shall we lift above
The crowd that pushes through the mire,
To amaze the dark heads with strange fire?
I should think I were much to blame,
If never I held some fragrant flame
Above the noises of the world,
And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares,
Worshipt before the sacred fears
That are like flashing curtains furl'd
Across the presence of our lord Love.
Nay, would that I could fill the gaze
Of the whole earth with some great praise
Made in a marvel for men's eyes,
Some tower of glittering masonries,
Therein such a spirit flourishing

("Tandis que l'étoile inodore.")

[XXXII.]


While bright but scentless azure stars
Be-gem the golden corn,
And spangle with their skyey tint
The furrows not yet shorn;
While still the pure white tufts of May
Ape each a snowy ball, -
Away, ye merry maids, and haste
To gather ere they fall!

Nowhere the sun of Spain outshines
Upon a fairer town
Than Peñafiel, or endows
More richly farming clown;
Nowhere a broader square reflects
Such brilliant mansions, tall, -
Away, ye merry maids, etc.

Nowhere a statelier abbey rears
Dome huger o'er a shrine,
Though seek ye from old Rome itself
To even Seville fine.
Here countless pilgrims come to pray
And promenade the Mall, -
Away, ye merry maids, etc.

I

There are faeries, bright of eye,
Who the wildflowers' warders are:
Ouphes, that chase the firefly;
Elves, that ride the shooting-star:
Fays, who in a cobweb lie,
Swinging on a moonbeam bar;
Or who harness bumblebees,
Grumbling on the clover leas,
To a blossom or a breeze -
That's their faery car.
If you care, you too may see
There are faeries. - Verily,
There are faeries.

II

There are faeries. I could swear
I have seen them busy, where
Roses loose their scented hair,
In the moonlight weaving, weaving,

Out of starlight and the dew,
Glinting gown and shimmering shoe;
Or, within a glowworm lair,
From the dark earth slowly heaving
Mushrooms whiter than the moon,
On whose tops they sit and croon,