Happiness

"My eyes make pictures, when they are shut."
        COLERIDGE.


Fair morn, I bring my greeting
    To lofty skies, and pale,
Save where cloud-shreds are fleeting
    Before the driving gale,
The weary branches tossing,
    Careless of autumn's grief,
Shadow and sunlight crossing
    On each earth-spotted leaf.

I will escape their grieving;
    And so I close my eyes,
And see the light boat heaving
    Where the billows fall and rise;
I see the sunlight glancing
    Upon its silvery sail,
Where a youth's wild heart is dancing,
    And a maiden growing pale.

And I am quietly pacing
    The smooth stones o'er and o'er,
Where the merry waves are chasing
    Each other to the shore.
Words come to me while listen...

After thy labour take thine ease,
Here with the sweet Pierides.
But if so be that men will not
Give thee the laurel crown for lot;
Be yet assur'd, thou shall have one
Not subject to corruption.

Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met
Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,
And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,
Shows not her sleeve of grey to know her bye.
Woke early, I arose and thought that first
In winter time of all the world was I.
The old owls might have hallooed if they durst,
But joy just then was up and whistled bye
A merry tune which I had known full long,
But could not to my memory wake it back,
Until the ploughman changed it to the song.
O happiness, how simple is thy track.
--Tinged like the willow shoots, the east's young brow
Glows red and finds thee singing at the plough.

With soul self-blind
Do n't struggle on merely at last to find
The best of life, the dream, is left behind.

Why desperately!
Struggle and strive? after long years to see
Substance alone has no reality.

To find, alas!
The starry glitter in the mountain pass,
The light you climbed for is no star, but glass.

Help, one and all!
Dreamers we need, not workmen, for the wall
The Tower of Beauty that shall never fall.

(See Note 70)

Spring's herald, hail! You've rent the forest's quiet?
Your hair is wet, and you are leaf-strewn, dusty ...
With your powers lusty
Have you raised a riot?
What noise about you of the flood set free,
That follows at your heels, - turn back and see:
It spurts upon you! - Was it that you fought for?
You were in there where stumps and trunks are rotting
Where long the winter-graybeards have been plotting
To prison safe that which a lock they wrought for.
But power gave you Pan, the ancient god!
They cried aloud and cursed your future lot?
Your gallant feat they held a robber's fraud?
- Each spring it happens; but is soon forgot.

You cast you down beside the salt sea's wave.
It too is free; dances with joy to find you.
You know the mu...

It rained last night,
But fair weather has come back
This morning.

The green clusters of the palm-trees
Open and begin to throw shadows.

But sorrow drifts slowly down about me.

I come and go in my room,
Heart-heavy with memories.

The neighbour green casts shadows of green
On my blind;
The moss, soaked in dew,
Takes the least print
Like delicate velvet.

I see again a gauze tunic of oranged rose
With shadowy underclothes of grenade red.

How things still live again.

I go and sit by the day balustrade

And do nothing

Except count the plains
And the mountains
And the valleys
And the rivers
That separate from my Spring.

From the Chinese (early nineteenth century).

While I, from that reed-throated whisperer
Who comes at need, although not now as once
A clear articulation in the air
But inwardly, surmise companions
Beyond the fling of the dull ass’s hoof,
Ben Jonson’s phrase, and find when June is come
At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof
A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,
I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
Those undreamt accidents that have made me
Seeing that Fame has perished this long while
Being but a part of ancient ceremony,
Notorious, till all my priceless things
Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

Dormered and verandaed, cool,
Locust-girdled, on the hill;
Stained with weather-wear, and dull-
Streak'd with lichens; every sill
Thresholding the beautiful;

I can see it standing there,
Brown above the woodland deep,
Wrapped in lights of lavender,
By the warm wind rocked asleep,
Violet shadows everywhere.

I remember how the Spring,
Liberal-lapped, bewildered its
Acred orchards, murmuring,
Kissed to blossom; budded bits
Where the wood-thrush came to sing.

Barefoot Spring, at first who trod,
Like a beggermaid, adown
The wet woodland; where the god,
With the bright sun for a crown
And the firmament for rod,

Met her; clothed her; wedded her;
Her Cophetua: when, lo!
All the hill, one breathing blur,
Burst ...

In the heart of night,
When farers were not near,
The left house said to the house on the right,
"I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here."

Said the right, cold-eyed:
"Newcomer here I am,
Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,
Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

"Modern my wood,
My hangings fair of hue;
While my windows open as they should,
And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

"Your gear is gray,
Your face wears furrows untold."
" Yours might," mourned the other, "if you held, brother,
The Presences from aforetime that I hold.

"You have not known
Men's lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

"Vo...

    There is a wood where the fairies dance
    All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily,
    By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole,
    And the moon through the branches darts.

    Light on the grass their slim limbs glance,
    Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison,
    And the moon discovers that they all have lovers,
    But they never break their hearts.

    They never grieve at all for sands that run,
    They never know regret for a deed that's done,
    And they never think of going to a shed with a gun
    At the rising of the sun.

Who has gone farthest? For lo! have not I gone farther?
And who has been just? For I would be the most just person of the earth;
And who most cautious? For I would be more cautious;
And who has been happiest? O I think it is I! I think no one was ever happier than I;
And who has lavish'd all? For I lavish constantly the best I have;
And who has been firmest? For I would be firmer;
And who proudest? For I think I have reason to be the proudest son alive--for I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city;
And who has been bold and true? For I would be the boldest and truest being of the universe;
And who benevolent? For I would show more benevolence than all the rest;
And who has projected beautiful words through the longest time? Have I not outvied him? have I not said the words that shall stret...

[1]

Two friends, in Monomotapa,
Had all their interests combined.
Their friendship, faithful and refined,
Our country can't exceed, do what it may.
One night, when potent Sleep had laid
All still within our planet's shade,
One of the two gets up alarm'd,
Runs over to the other's palace,
And hastily the servants rallies.
His startled friend, quick arm'd,
With purse and sword his comrade meets,
And thus right kindly greets: -
'Thou seldom com'st at such an hour;
I take thee for a man of sounder mind
Than to abuse the time for sleep design'd.
Hast lost thy purse, by Fortune's power?
Here's mine. Hast suffer'd insult, or a blow,
I've here my sword - to avenge it let us go.'
'No,' said his friend, 'no need I feel
Of either silve...

Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.



Precept divine! to earth in mercy given,
O sacred rule of action, worthy heaven!
Whose pitying love ordain'd the bless'd command
To bind our nature in a firmer band;
Enforce each human suff'rer's strong appeal,
And teach the selfish breast what others feel;
Wert thou the guide of life, mankind might know
A soft exemption from the worst of woe;
No more the powerful would the weak oppress,
But tyrants learn the luxury to bless;
No more would slav'ry bind a hopeless train,
Of human victims, in her galling chain;
Mercy the hard, the cruel heart would move
To soften mis'ry by the deeds of Jove;
And av'rice from his hoarded treasures give
Unask'd, the liberal boon, that wa...

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply,
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.

From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily"


O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung silvering long windows of your room,
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for I know not what!
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's
Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:
The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:
Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:
And underneath her window b...

"I know where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,
Where the leaves are broad and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.

"I know where the young May violet grows,
In its lone and lowly nook,
On the mossy bank, where the larch-tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,
Far over the silent brook.

"And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower;
And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,
To look on the lovely flower."

Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks
To the hunting-ground on the hills;
'Tis a song of his maid of the woods and rocks,
With her bright black eyes and long black locks,

Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
Never think that hours of play
Are your only holiday,
And that in a house of joy
Lessons serve but to annoy:
If in any house you find
Children of a gentle mind,
Each the others pleasing ever,
Each the others vexing never,
Daily work and pastime daily
In their order taking gaily,
Then be very sure that they
Have a life of holiday.

Love-sick I am, and must endure
A desperate grief, that finds no cure.
Ah me! I try; and trying, prove
No herbs have power to cure love.
Only one sovereign salve I know,
And that is death, the end of woe.