Happiness

[1]

Once in his bed deep mused the hare,
(What else but muse could he do there?)
And soon by gloom was much afflicted; -
To gloom the creature's much addicted.
'Alas! these constitutions nervous,'
He cried, 'how wretchedly they serve us!
We timid people, by their action,
Can't eat nor sleep with satisfaction;
We can't enjoy a pleasure single,
But with some misery it must mingle.
Myself, for one, am forced by cursed fear
To sleep with open eye as well as ear.
"Correct yourself," says some adviser.
Grows fear, by such advice, the wiser?
Indeed, I well enough descry
That men have fear, as well as I.'
With such revolving thoughts our hare
Kept watch in soul-consuming care.
A passing shade, or leaflet's quiver
Would give his blo...

How many buds in this warm light
    Have burst out laughing into leaves!
And shall a day like this be gone
    Before I seek the wood that holds
The richest music known?

Too many times have nightingales
    Wasted their passion on my sleep,
And brought repentance soon:
    But this one night I'll seek the woods,
The nightingale, and moon.

Strike the bells wantonly,
    Tinkle tinkle well;
Bring me wine, bring me flowers,
    Ring the silver bell.
All my lamps burn scented oil,
    Hung on laden orange-trees,
Whose shadowed foliage is the foil
    To golden lamps and oranges.
Heap my golden plates with fruit,
    Golden fruit, fresh-plucked and ripe;
    Strike the bells and breathe the pipe;
Shut out showers from summer hours--
Silence that complaining lute--
    Shut out thinking, shut out pain,
    From hours that cannot come again.

Strike the bells solemnly,
    Ding dong deep:
My friend is passing to his bed,
    Fast asleep;
There's plaited linen round his head,
    While foremost go his feet--
His feet that cannot carry him.
My feast's a show, my lights...

Thank God for life: life is not sweet always.
Hands may he heavy-laden, hearts care full,
Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days,
And dreams divine end in awakenings dull.
Still it is life, anil life is cause for praise.
This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting,
Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing,
Prove me of Him who is of life the Spring.
I am alive!--and that is beautiful.

Thank God for Love: though Love may hurt and wound
Though set with sharpest thorns its rose may be,
Roses are not of winter, all attuned
Must be the earth, full of soft stir, and free
And warm ere dawns the rose upon its tree.
Fresh currents through my frozen pulses run;
My heart has tasted summer, tasted sun,
And I can thank Thee, Lord, although not one
Of all th...

This was her home; one mossy gable thrust
Above the cedars and the locust trees:
This was her home, whose beauty now is dust,
A lonely memory for melodies
The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.

Here every evening is a prayer: no boast
Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth;
Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost,
A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth;
And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.

In vagabond velvet, on the placid day,
A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly;
The south wind sows with ripple and with ray
The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky
Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye.

Their melancholy quaver, lone and low,
When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat:
The whippoorwills, far i...

Of Chloe all the town has rung,
By ev'ry size of poets sung:
So beautiful a nymph appears
But once in twenty thousand years;
By Nature form'd with nicest care,
And faultless to a single hair.
Her graceful mien, her shape, and face,
Confess'd her of no mortal race:
And then so nice, and so genteel;
Such cleanliness from head to heel;
No humours gross, or frouzy steams,
No noisome whiffs, or sweaty streams,
Before, behind, above, below,
Could from her taintless body flow:
Would so discreetly things dispose,
None ever saw her pluck a rose.[1]
Her dearest comrades never caught her
Squat on her hams to make maid's water:
You'd swear that so divine a creature
Felt no necessities of nature.
In summer had she walk'd the town,
Her armpits would...

The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought. He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy what the Old Man hardly feels.

    "Summer days are over,
    Summer work is done;
    Harvests have been gathered
    Gayly one by one.
    Now the feast is eaten,
    Finished is the play;
    But one rite remains for
    Our Thanksgiving-day.

    "Best of all the harvest
    In the dear God's sight,
    Are the happy children
    In the home to-night;
    And we come to offer
    Thanks where thanks are due,
    With grateful hearts and voices,
    Father, mother, unto you."

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.

    There are ghosts in the room.
As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there
    They come out of the gloom,
And they stand at my side and they lean on my chair.

    There's the ghost of a Hope
That lighted my days with a fanciful glow.
    In her hand is the rope
That strangled her life out.    Hope was slain long ago.

    But her ghost comes to-night,
With its skeleton face and expressionless eyes,
    And it stands in the light,
And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.

    There's the ghost of a Joy,
A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,
    And the hands that destroy
Clasped it close, and it died at the withering touch.

    There's the ghost of a Love,
Born with joy, reared with hope, died in pain ...

All my weary days I pass'd

Sick at heart and poor in purse.

Poverty's the greatest curse,

Riches are the highest good!
And to end my woes at last,

Treasure-seeking forth I sped.

"Thou shalt have my soul instead!"

Thus I wrote, and with my blood.

Ring round ring I forthwith drew,

Wondrous flames collected there,

Herbs and bones in order fair,

Till the charm had work'd aright.
Then, to learned precepts true,

Dug to find some treasure old,

In the place my art foretold

Black and stormy was the night.

Coming o'er the distant plain,

With the glimmer of a star,

Soon I saw a light afar,

As the hour of midnight knell'd.
Preparation was in vain.

One leaned on velvet cushions like a queen -
    To see him pass, the hero of an hour,
Whom men called great. She bowed with languid mien,
    And smiled, and blushed, and knew her beauty's power.

One trailed her tinseled garments through the street,
    And thrust aside the crowd, and found a place
So near, the blooded courser's praning feet
    Cast sparks of fire upon her painted face.

One took the hot-house blossoms from her breast,
    And tossed them down, as he went riding by.
And blushed rose-red to see them fondly pressed
    To bearded lips, while eye spoke unto eye.

One, bold and hardened with her sinful life,
    Yet shrank and shivered painfully, because
His cruel glance cut keener than a knife,
    The glance of him who made her what...

Day after Day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.

But where are now the Glory and the Rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the Joy that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?

I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower - something's lost in me.

Return! Return! I cry, O Visions vanished,
O Voices banished, to my Soul again! -
The near Earth blossoms and the far Skies glisten,
I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.

From the first circle I descended thus
Down to the second, which, a lesser space
Embracing, so much more of grief contains
Provoking bitter moans.    There, Minos stands
Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all
Who enter, strict examining the crimes,

Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath,
According as he foldeth him around:
For when before him comes th' ill fated soul,
It all confesses; and that judge severe
Of sins, considering what place in hell
Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft
Himself encircles, as degrees beneath
He dooms it to descend.    Before him stand
Always a num'rous throng; and in his turn
Each one to judgment passing, speaks, and hears
His fate, thence downward to his dwelling hurl'd.

"O thou! who to this reside...

Jove may afford us thousands of reliefs,
Since man expos'd is to a world of griefs.

Golden Apollo, that thro' heaven wide
Scatter'st the rays of light, and truth's beams,
In lucent words my darkling verses dight,
And wash my earthy mind in thy clear streams,
That wisdom may descend in fairy dreams,
All while the jocund hours in thy train
Scatter their fancies at thy poet's feet;
And when thou yields to night thy wide domain,
Let rays of truth enlight his sleeping brain.
For brutish Pan in vain might thee assay
With tinkling sounds to dash thy nervous verse,
Sound without sense; yet in his rude affray,
(For ignorance is Folly's leasing nurse
And love of Folly needs none other's curse)
Midas the praise hath gain'd of lengthen'd ears,
For which himself might deem him ne'er the worse
To sit in council with his modern peers,
And judge of tink...

Psalm 137.


Captives by Babel's limpid streams,
We hung our harps on willows there;
Wept over Zion; and our dreams,
Waking or sleeping, she did share.

Our victors, with their battle arms,
Derided, jeered, and scorned our tears;
Required mirth, diversion's charms,
To thus allay their guilty fears.

"Sing us a song" is their demand,
"Yea, sing us one of Zion's songs!"
How can our voices thus expand
To what to us and God belongs?

How can we on this heathen shore,
Surrounded by idolatry,
Sing songs that unto us are more
Than all their glittering pageantry?

Jerusalem, should we forget,
We pray our hearts and tongues be still!
Jerusalem! Oh, may we yet
Worship upon thy holy hill.

Babylon, thou art to b...

Often, beneath a street lamp's reddish light,
Where wind torments the glass and flame by night,
Where mankind swarms in stormy turbulence
Within a suburb's muddy labyrinth,

One comes upon a shaking ragman, who
Staggers against the walls, as poets do,
And disregardful of policemen's spies,
Pours from his heart some glorious enterprise.

Swearing his oaths, he dictates laws he's made
To vanquish evil, bring the victims aid,
And there beneath the sky, a canopy,
Grows drunk upon his own sublimity.

Yes, and these men harassed by household strife,
Tortured by age, bruised by the blows of life,
Under their heaps of rubbish burdened down,
The dregs, the vomit of this teeming town,

Appear again, redolent of the jar,
With their companions, bl...