Happiness

My lady love lives far away,
And oh my heart is sad by day,
And ah my tears fall fast by night,
What may I do in such a plight.

Why, miles grow few when love is fleet,
And love, you know, hath flying feet;
Break off thy sighs and witness this,
How poor a thing mere distance is.

My love knows not I love her so,
And would she scorn me, did she know?
How may the tale I would impart
Attract her ear and storm her heart?

Calm thou the tempest in my breast,
Who loves in silence loves the best,
But bide thy time, she will awake,
No night so dark but morn will break.

But though my heart so strongly yearn,
My lady loves me not in turn,
How may I win the blest reply
That my void heart shall satisfy.

Love breedeth love, be...

Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud
Race through blue heaven on its joyful course
Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
I think I might have done a great deal worse;
For I have ever gone untied and free,
The stars and my high thoughts for company;
Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
And love in many places, silver-shoed,
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

There sat two glasses filled to the brim,
On a rich man's table, rim to rim.
One was ruddy and red as blood,
And one was clear as the crystal flood.

Said the glass of wine to his paler brother,
"Let us tell tales of the past to each other;
I can tell of a banquet, and revel, and mirth,
Where I was king, for I ruled in might;
For the proudest and grandest souls on earth
Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight.
From the heads of kings I have torn the crown;
From the heights of fame I have hurled men down.
I have blasted many an honored name;
I have taken virtue and given shame;
I have tempted the youth with a sip, a taste,
That has made his future a barren waste.
Far greater than any king am I,
Or than any army beneath the sky.
I have m...

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race, of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the...

When Love is kind,
    Cheerful and free,
Love's sure to find
    Welcome from me.

But when Love brings
    Heartache or pang,
Tears, and such things--
    Love may go hang!

If Love can sigh
    For one alone,
Well pleased am I
    To be that one,

But should I see
    Love given to rove
To two or three,
    Then--good by Love!

Love must, in short,
    Keep fond and true,
Thro' good report,
    And evil too.

Else, here I swear,
    Young Love may go.
For aught I care--
    To Jericho.

During a heavy storm it chanced
That from his room a cockney glanced
At the fierce tempest as it broke,
While to his neighbour thus he spoke:
"The thunder has our awe inspired,
Our barns by lightning have been fired,
Our sins to punish, I suppose;
But in return, to soothe our woes,
See how the rain in torrents fell,
Making the harvest promise well!
But is't a rainbow that I spy
Extending o'er the dark-grey sky?
With it I'm sure we may dispense,
The colour'd cheat! The vain pretence!"
Dame Iris straightway thus replied:
"Dost dare my beauty to deride?
In realms of space God station'd me
A type of better worlds to be
To eyes that from life's sorrows rove
In cheerful hope to Heav'n above,
And, through the mists that hover here
God and his...

    About the country they may talk who will,
        Who praise it ever to the town's despite.
    Let him extol the charms of wood and hill
        Who finds them peerless. None disputes his right.

    For me the town! Each well-worn footway old
        To me is dearer than your grass-grown lane.
    Not all who struggle here contend for gold;
        Green-growing things quit not the soul of pain.

    "God made the country." Ay, and God made man.
        Working through man His power He displays,
    And in the city's mazes His great plan
        Is writ as clear as in calm country ways.

Oh! that is a beautiful land I wis,
The land of the Gone-Away Souls.
Yes, a lovelier region by far than this
(Though this is a world most fair),
The goodliest goal of all good goals,
Else why do our friends stay there?
I walk in a world that is sweet with friends,
And earth I have ever held dear;
Yes, love with duty and beauty blends,
To render the earth plane bright.
But faster and faster, year on year
My comrades hurry from sight.

They hurry away to the Over-There,
And few of them say Farewell.
Yes, they go away with a secret air
As if on a secret quest.
And they come not back to the earth to tell
Why that land seems the best.

Messages come from the mystic sphere,
But few know the code of that land;
Yes, many the message, but ...

From these wild heights, where oft the mists descend
    In rains, that shroud the sun, and chill the gale,
    Each transient, gleaming interval we hail,
    And rove the naked vallies, and extend
Our gaze around, where yon vast mountains blend
    With billowy clouds, that o'er their summits sail;
    Pondering, how little Nature's charms befriend
    The barren scene, monotonous, and pale.
Yet solemn when the darkening shadows fleet
    Successive o'er the wide and silent hills,
    Gilded by watry sun-beams, then we meet
Peculiar pomp of vision. Fancy thrills,
    And owns there is no scene so rude and bare,
    But Nature sheds or grace or grandeur there.

[1]

(WRITTEN MAY, 1832.)


All, as he left it!--even the pen,
    So lately at that mind's command,
Carelessly lying, as if then
    Just fallen from his gifted hand.

Have we then lost him? scarce an hour,
    A little hour, seems to have past,
Since Life and Inspiration's power
    Around that relic breathed their last.

Ah, powerless now--like talisman
    Found in some vanished wizard's halls,
Whose mighty charm with him began,
    Whose charm with him extinguisht falls.

Yet, tho', alas! the gifts that shone
    Around that pen's exploring track,
Be now, with its great master, gone,
    Nor living hand can call them back;

Who does not feel, while thus his eyes
    Rest on the enchanter's broke...

If Nature do deny
Colours, let Art supply.

All roads that lead to God are good;
    What matters it, your faith, or mine;
    Both centre at the goal divine
Of love's eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street;
    The life of prayer, and mystic rite;
    The student's search for truth and light;
These paths at one great junction meet.

Before the oldest book was writ,
    Full many a prehistoric soul
    Arrived at this unchanging goal,
Through changeless love, that led to it.

What matters that one found his Christ
    In rising sun, or burning fire;
    If faith within him did not tire,
His longing for the truth sufficed.

Before our 'Christian' hell was brought
    To edify a modern world,
    Full many a hate-filled soul was hurled
In lakes of fire ...

The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies
When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes,
I looked out to the oak that, winter-long,
a winter wild with war and woe and wrong
Beyond my casement had been void of song.

And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set,
Live buds that warbled like a rivulet
Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew
Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew,
Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,

Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles,
Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measure miles
Innumerable over land and sea
With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee,
They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,

Foretelling in delicious roundelays
Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays,
How they should fashion nests...

We strolled down by the river side,
My sister Nell and I,
To watch the waters onward glide,
And vessels passing by.

On Nature's floor of lovely green,
Bedecked with flowers of gold,
The purple sassafras as sheen,
Which trumpet vines enfold.

We played our youthful games for hours,
And told our childish tales;
Adorned each brow with fragrant flowers,
And slept 'neath cooling gales.

For I was then but nine years old,
And she was only seven;
Yet joys like ours can ne'er be told--
They savored much of heaven.

Close by the bank, in shady nooks,
The waxen lilies grew;
We called them fish, and with our hooks
To shore full many drew.

With these I made a wreath for Nell.
She was so good and pure,
They seemed to...

i.

Glory to thee, my Queen! whom far away
    My thoughts aspire to,--as the birds of May
Aspire o' mornings,--as in lonely nooks
The gurgling murmurs of neglected brooks
Aspire to moonlight,--aye! as earth aspires
When through the East, alert with wild desires,
    The rapturous sun surveys the welkin's height,
And flecks the world with witcheries of his fires.


ii.

Oh, I should curb my grief. I should entone
    No plaint to thee; no loss should I bemoan!
I should be patient, I, though full of care,
And not attempt, by bias of a prayer,
To sway thy spirit, or to urge anew
A claim contested. For my days are few;
    My days, I think, are few upon the earth
Since I must shun the joys I would pursue.


iii.

...

From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken
With change everlasting of life and of death,
Where hardly by noon if the lulled ear hearken
It hears the sea’s as a tired child’s breath,
Where hardly by night if an eye dare scan it
The storm lets shipwreck be seen or heard,
As the reefs to the waves and the foam to the granite
Respond one merciless word,
Sheer seen and far, in the sea’s live heaven,
A seamew’s flight from the wild sweet land,
White-plumed with foam if the wind wake, seven
Black helms as of warriors that stir not stand.
From the depths that abide and the waves that environ
Seven rocks rear heads that the midnight masks,
And the strokes of the swords of the storm are as iron
On the steel of the wave-worn casques.
Be night’s dark word as th...

Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe, do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o’er brims
The body, the house, no eye can probe,
Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps:
So, the old wall throbbed, and its life’s excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps!

Wall upon wall are between us: life
And song should away from heart to heart!
I, prison bird, ...

I

Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

II

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
And laughters fail, and greetings die:
Hopes dwindle; yea,
Faiths waste away,
Affections and enthusiasms numb;
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombed souls
Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
And thou wert free
To cease, or be,
Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence
To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
Explain none can...