Happiness

The cockchafer hums down the rut-rifted lane
Where the wild roses hang and the woodbines entwine,
And the shrill squeaking bat makes his circles again
Round the side of the tavern close by the sign.
The sun is gone down like a wearisome queen,
In curtains the richest that ever were seen.

The dew falls on flowers in a mist of small rain,
And, beating the hedges, low fly the barn owls;
The moon with her horns is just peeping again,
And deep in the forest the dog-badger howls;
In best bib and tucker then wanders my Jane
By the side of the woodbines which grow in the lane.

On a sweet eventide I walk by her side;
In green hoods the daisies have shut up their eyes.
Young Jenny is handsome without any pride;
Her eyes (O how bright!) have the hue of the skies.<...

How sweet the music sounded
That summer long ago,
When you were by my side, love,
To list its gentle flow.

I saw your eyes a-shining,
I felt your rippling hair,
I kissed your pearly cheek, love,
And had no thought of care.

And gay or sad the music,
With subtle charm replete;
I found in after years, love
'Twas you that made it sweet.

For standing where we heard it,
I hear again the strain;
It wakes my heart, but thrills it
With sad, mysterious pain.

It pulses not so joyous
As when you stood with me,
And hand in hand we listened
To that low melody.

Oh, could the years turn back, love!
Oh, could events be changed
To what they were that time, love,
Before we were estranged;

Wert thou once ...

Tune - "The Posie."


I.

    O luve will venture in
        Where it daurna weel be seen;
    O luve will venture in
        Where wisdom ance has been.
    But I will down yon river rove,
        Among the wood sae green
    And a' to pu' a posie
        To my ain dear May.

II.

    The primrose I will pu',
        The firstling o' the year,
    And I will pu' the pink,
        The emblem o' my dear,
    For she's the pink o' womankind,
        And blooms without a peer
    And a' to be a posie
        To my ain dear May.

III.

    I'll pu' the budding rose,
        When Phoebus peeps in view,
    For it's like a baumy kiss
        O' her sweet bonnie mou';
    The hyacinth's...

Hush, mourning mother, wan and pale!
    No sobs - no grieving now:
No burning tears must thou let fall
    Upon that cold still brow;
No look of anguish cast above,
    Nor smite thine aching breast,
But clasp thy hands and thank thy God -
    Thy darling is at rest.

Close down those dark-fringed, snowy lids
    Over the violet eyes,
Whose liquid light was once as clear
    As that of summer skies.
Is it not bliss to know what e'er
    Thy future griefs and fears,
They will be never dimmed like thine
    By sorrow's scalding tears?

Enfold the tiny fingers fair,
    From which life's warmth has fled,
For ever freed from wearing toil -
    The toil for daily bread:
Compose the softly moulded limbs,
    The little waxen feet,...

One room is full of luxury, and dim
    With that soft moonlit radiance of light
That she best loves, who sits and dreams of him
    Her heart has crowned as knight.

And one is bare, and comfortless, and dim
    With that strange, fitful glimmer that is shed
By candles casting shadows weird and grim,
    Above the sheeted dead.

In one, a round and beautiful young face
    Is full of wordless rapture; and so fair
You know her breast is joy's best dwelling-place;
    You know sweet love is there.

In one, there lies a white and wasted face
    Whereon is frozen such supreme despair,
You need but look to know what left the trace;
    You know love has been there.

To one he comes!    She leans her head of gold
    Upon his breast...

Barry! your spirit long ago
Has haunted me; at last I know
The heart it sprung from: one more sound
Ne'er rested on poetic ground.
But, Barry Cornwall! by what right
Wring you my breast and dim my sight,
And make me wish at every touch
My poor old hand could do as much?
No other in these later times
Has bound me in so potent rhymes.
I have observed the curious dress
And jewelry of brave Queen Bess,
But always found some o'ercharged thing,
Some flaw in even the brightest ring,
Admiring in her men of war,
A rich but too argute guitar.
Our foremost now are more prolix,
And scrape with three-fell fiddlesticks,
And, whether bound for griefs or smiles,
Are slow to turn as crocodiles.
Once, every court and country bevy
Chose the gallant of lo...

All the morn a spirit gay
Breathes within my heart a rhyme,
'Tis but hide and seek we play
In and out the courts of Time.

Fairy lover, when my feet
Through the tangled woodland go,
'Tis thy sunny fingers fleet
Fleck the fire dews to and fro.

In the moonlight grows a smile
Mid its rays of dusty pearl--
'Tis but hide and seek the while,
As some frolic boy and girl.

When I fade into the deep
Some mysterious radiance showers
From the jewel-heart of sleep
Through the veil of darkened hours.

Where the ring of twilight gleams
Round the sanctuary wrought,
Whispers haunt me--in my dreams
We are one yet know it not.

Some for beauty follow long
Flying traces; some there be
Seek thee only for a song:
I to lo...

I will ask primrose and violet to spend for you
Their smell and hue,
And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare
Her flowers starry fair;
Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn
Their sweetness to keep
Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born
Between midnight and midnight deep.

And I will take celandine, nettle and parsley, white
In its own green light,
Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadowsweet
Lifting at your feet,
And ivy blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take
The loveliest--
The seeding grasses that bend with the winds, and shake
Though the winds are at rest.

"For me?" you will ask. "Yes! surely they wave for you
Their smell and hue,
And you away all that is rare were so much less
By your missed happin...

Behold! a new white world!
        The falling snow
Has cloaked the last old year
        And bid him go.

To-morrow! cries the oak-tree
        To his heart,
My sealèd buds shall fling
        Their leaves apart.

To-morrow! pipes the robin,
        And again
How sweet the nest that long
        Was full of rain.

To-morrow! bleats the sheep,
        And one by one
My little lambs shall frolic
        ’Neath the sun.

For us, too, let some fair
        To-morrow be,
O Thou who weavest threads
        Of Destiny!

Thou wast a babe on that
        Far Christmas Day,
Let us as children follow
        In Thy way.

So that our hearts grown cold
        ’Neath time and pain,
With young ...

First Song:

So many years I sought you, Mary -
In gardens, rooms, cities and mountains,
In dumps, whores, in acting schools,
In sick beds and in the rooms of mad people,
In kitchen maids, screaming, celebrations of spring,
In every kind of weather and every kind of day,
In coffee houses, mothers, dancers -
I did not find you in bars, motion pictures,
Music-cafes, excursions into the summer mist...
Who knows the agony, when I, in the night on the streets,
Cried out for you to the dead sky -


Next Song:

He who looks for you in this way, Mary, becomes quite gray.
He who looks for you in this way, Mary, loses his face and legs.
The heart crumbles.    Blood and dream escape.
If I could rest... if I were in your hands...
Oh, if you would ...

We look up to the stars tonight,
    Idolatrous of them,
And dream that Heaven is in sight,
And each a ray of purest light
    From some celestial gem
    In her bright diadem.

Before that lonely home we wait,
    Ah! nevermore to see
Her lovely form within the gate
Where heart and hearthstone desolate
    And vine and shrub and tree
    Seem asking: "Where is she?"

There is the cottage Love had planned -
    Where hope in ashes lies -
A tower beautiful to stand,
Her monument whose gentle hand
    And presence in the skies
    Make home of Paradise.

In wintry bleakness nature glows
    Beneath the stellar ray;
We see the mold, but not the rose,
And meditate if knowledge goes
    Into yon mound of clay,
    W...

I.

Now will we plunge into the frigid dark,
The living light of summer gone too soon!
A1ready I can hear a dismal sound,
The thump of logs on courtyard paving stones.

All winter comes into my being: wrath,
Hate, chills and horror, forced and plodding work,
And like the sun in polar underground
My heart will be a red and frozen block.

I Shudder as I hear each log that drops;
A gallows being built makes no worse sound.
My mind is like the tower that succumbs,
Under a heavy engine battered down.

It seems to me, dull with this constant thud,
That someone nails a coffin, but for whom?
Yesterday summer, now the fall! something
With all this eerie pounding will be gone.


II.

I love the greenish light in your long eye...

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May these loved and loving faces
Please other men!
May the rustling harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days.

Said the red-cloaked crone
In a whispered moan:

"The dead man was limp
When laid in his chest;
Yea, limp; and why
But to signify
That the grave will crimp
Ere next year's sun
Yet another one
Of those in that house -
It may be the best -
For its endless drowse!"

Said the brown-shawled dame
To confirm the same:

"And the slothful flies
On the rotting fruit
Have been seen to wear
While crawling there
Crape scarves, by eyes
That were quick and acute;
As did those that had pitched
On the cows by the pails,
And with flaps of their tails
Were far away switched."

Said the third in plaid,
Each word being weighed:

"And trotting does
In the park, in the lane,
And just outside
Th...

All fly - yet who is misanthrope? -
The actual men and things that pass
Jostling, to wither as the grass
So soon: and (be it heaven's hope,
Or poetry's kaleidoscope,
Or love or wine, at feast, at mass)
Each owns a paradise of glass
Where never a yearning heliotrope
Pursues the sun's ascent or slope;
For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was.

Like fauns embossed in our domain,
We look abroad, and our calm eyes
Mark how the goatish gods of pain
Revel; and if by grim surprise
They break into our paradise,
Patient we build its beauty up again.

HALF vex'd, half pleased, thy love will feel,
Shouldst thou her knot or ribbon steal;
To thee they're much I won't conceal;

Such self-deceit may pardon'd be;
A veil, a kerchief, garter, rings,
In truth are no mean trifling things,

But still they're not enough for me.

She who is dearest to my heart,
Gave me, with well dissembled smart,
Of her own life, a living part,

No charm in aught beside I trace;
How do I scorn thy paltry ware!
A lock she gave me of the hair

That wantons o'er her beauteous face.

If, loved one, we must sever'd be,
Wouldst thou not wholly fly from me,
I still possess this legacy,

To look at, and to kiss in play.
My fate is to the hair's allied,
We used to woo her with like pride,
<...

    Throb, throb, throb,
Far away in the blue transparent Night,
On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
She hears the sound of her lover's nearing boat
    Afar, afloat
On the river's loneliness, where the Stars are the only light;
    Hear the sound of the straining wood
    Like a broken sob
    Of a heart's distress,
    Loving misunderstood.

She lies, with her loose hair spent in soft disorder,
On a silken sheet with a purple woven border,
Every cell of her brain is latent fire,
Every fibre tense with restrained desire.
    And the straining oars sound clearer, clearer,
    The boat is approaching nearer, nearer;
    "How to wait through the moments' space
    Till I see the light of my lover's face?"

    Throb, throb, thro...

My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach,
And the koil sings above it, in the siris by the well,
From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel's chattering speech,
And the blue jay screams and flutters where the cheery sat-bhai dwell.
But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the koil's note is strange;
I am sick of endless sunshine, sick of blossom-burdened bough.
Give me back the leafless woodlands where the winds of Springtime range,
Give me back one day in England, for it's Spring in England now!

Through the pines the gusts are booming, o'er the brown fields blowing chill,
From the furrow of the plough share streams the fragrance of the loam,
And the hawk nests on the cliff side and the jackdaw in the hill,
And my heart is back in England 'mid the sigh...