Happiness

If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the past and hereafter
In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and of laughter,
And the blithest of singers were back with a song; if again from his tomb as from prison,
If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had arisen,
With the gold-feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon earth at his shoulders,
And the gold-flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips, for a joy to beholders,
He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate measure
The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of their sense and the pleasure.
For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here, and the season
When desire was a longing, and absence a thorn, ...

I

Right upward on the road of fame
With sounding steps the poet came;
Born and nourished in miracles,
His feet were shod with golden bells,
Or where he stepped the soil did peal
As if the dust were glass and steel.
The gallant child where'er he came
Threw to each fact a tuneful name.
The things whereon he cast his eyes
Could not the nations rebaptize,
Nor Time's snows hide the names he set,
Nor last posterity forget.
Yet every scroll whereon he wrote
In latent fire his secret thought,
Fell unregarded to the ground,
Unseen by such as stood around.
The pious wind took it away,
The reverent darkness hid the lay.
Methought like water-haunting birds
Divers or dippers were his words,
And idle clowns beside the mere
At the new visi...

I am happier for the Spring;
For my heart is like a bird
That has many songs to sing,
But whose voice is never heard
Till the happy year is caroling
To the daisies on the sward.

I'd be happier for the Spring,
Though my heart had grown so old
Like a crone 'twould sit and sing
Its shrill runes of wintry cold;
For I'd know the year was caroling
To the daisies on the wold.

To-night the west o'er-brims with warmest dyes;
Its chalice overflows
With pools of purple colouring the skies,
Aflood with gold and rose;
And some hot soul seems throbbing close to mine,
As sinks the sun within that world of wine.

I seem to hear a bar of music float
And swoon into the west;
My ear can scarcely catch the whispered note,
But something in my breast
Blends with that strain, till both accord in one,
As cloud and colour blend at set of sun.

And twilight comes with grey and restful eyes,
As ashes follow flame.
But O! I heard a voice from those rich skies
Call tenderly my name;
It was as if some priestly fingers stole
In benedictions o'er my lonely soul.

I know not why, but all my being longed
And leapt at that sweet ...

Ye scenes beloved! O welcome once again!
Forbidden long to my desiring sight,
Now, now! triumphant o'er disease and pain,
I visit ye with fresh, increased delight.

Vine-mantled Hills, whose heights I joy'd to climb,
The Morn's sweet infant breathings to inhale;
River! whose banks I roved in trance sublime,
While fancy-whispering Eve spread soft her veil;

And thou, O Wood, in whose moon-checkered shade
The nightly songstress oft has charm'd my ear
Till Morning told me I so long had stay'd:
Hail all ye objects to my memory dear!
Once more, to feel the transports ye impart,
Health wakes my every sense and tunes my heart.

    Do not be distant with me, do not be
        Angry because I drank deep of your wine,
    But treat that laughing matter laughingly
        Because I am a poet, and incline
    By nature and by art to jollity.

    Always I loved to see, I will aver,
        The good red tide lip at the flagon's brim,
    Sitting half fool and half philosopher,
        Chatting with every kind of her and him,
    And shrugged at sneer of money-gatherer.

    Often enough I trudge by hedge and wall,
        Too often there's no money in my purse,
    Nor malice in my mind ever at all,
        And for my songs no person is the worse
    But I who give all of my store to all.

    If busybody spoke to you of it,
        Say, kindly man, if kindly man do live:

When Love was born of heavenly line,
What dire intrigues disturbed Cythera's joy!
Till Venus cried, "A mother's heart is mine;
None but myself shall nurse my boy,"

But, infant as he was, the child
In that divine embrace enchanted lay;
And, by the beauty of the vase beguiled,
Forgot the beverage--and pined away.

"And must my offspring languish in my sight?"
(Alive to all a mother's pain,
The Queen of Beauty thus her court addressed)
"No: Let the most discreet of all my train
Receive him to her breast:
Think all, he is the God of young delight."

Then TENDERNESS with CANDOUR joined,
And GAIETY the charming office sought;
Nor even DELICACY stayed behind:
But none of those fair Graces brought

Wherewith to nurse the child--and still...

Grief was my master yesternight;
To-morrow I may grieve again;
But now along the windy plain
The clouds have taken flight.

The sowers in the furrows go;
The lusty river brimmeth on;
The curtains from the hills are gone;
The leaves are out; and lo,

The silvery distance of the day,
The light horizons, and between
The glory of the perfect green,
The tumult of the May.

The bobolinks at noonday sing
More softly than the softest flute,
And lightlier than the lightest lute
Their fairy tambours ring.

The roads far off are towered with dust;
The cherry-blooms are swept and thinned;
In yonder swaying elms the wind
Is charging gust on gust.

But here there is no stir at all;
The ministers of sun and shadow
Horde ...

    I.

    Fair spirit of the plaining sea,
        Thou heard'st Apollo's lyre! -
    Now folded are thy silver wings
                Thee sunward bore,
        A dream and a desire.

    Ranging the upper azure deeps,
        The sunlight on thy wings,
    How blanched thy purpose as there fell
                The lightning's stroke,
        And darkness on all things!


    In agony of rain and hail,
        And phantom dance of snow,
    The chastening angels of the air
                To mountain bleak
        Consigned thee far below.

    There in the arms of heartless frost,
        And burdened with thy train,
    The keen stars watched thy ageful way,
                Till breast of earth
        Warmed th...

The world is full of gems to-day,
    The world is full of love;
The earth is strewn with star-gemmed flowers
    That fall from skies above.

The sunshine is a stream of gold
    That flows from flower to flower;
The shadows are but passing thoughts
    That mark each shining hour.

The pansy nods her purple head,
    And sings a silent song;
Her life is full of sunny hours--
    The days are never long.

The rose uplifts her sun-crowned head;
    She is the queen of love;
Her eyes behold the hidden stars
    That glow in skies above.

There is a fragrance in the air,
    A glory in the sky;
Oh, who would sigh for other days,
    Or grieve for things gone by?

O to make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

O the engineer's joys!
To go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam the merry shriek the steam-whistle the laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over...

A Shepherd's Boy (he seeks no better name)
Led forth his flocks along the silver Thame,
Where dancing sun-beams n the waters play'd,
And verdant alders form'd a quiv'ring shade.
Soft as he mourn'd, the streams forgot to flow,
The flocks around a dumb compassion show,
The Naiads wept in ev'ry wat'ry bow'r,
And Jove consented in a silent show'r.
Accept, O Garth, the Muse's early lays,
That adds this wreath of Ivy to thy Bays;
Hear what from Love unpractis'd hearts endure,
From Love, the sole disease thou canst not cure.
Ye shady beeches, and ye cooling streams,
Defence from Phoebus, not from Cupid's beams,
To you I mourn, nor to the deaf I sing,
The woods shall answer, and their echo ring.
The gills and rocks attend my doleful lay,
Why art thou prouder and ...

Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
    Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart:
I a slave in thy dominions;
    Nature must give way to art.

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming
    Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming
    All beneath yon flowery rocks.

Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping
    Mourn'd Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
    Gored with unrelenting tooth.

Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
    Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking slumbers:
    Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.

Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
    Arm'd in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
    Watering soft Elysian plains.

Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
    Gilding my...

I.

Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plow’d hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.



II.

Opens a door in heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob’s ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.



III.

Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung thro’ the woods,



IV.

The woods with living airs
How softly fann’d,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
Heard by the land.



V.

O,...

An hour before the dawn,
My friend,
You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,
Your breakfast-fire anon,
And outing into the dark and damp
You saddled, and set on.

Thuswise, before the day,
My friend,
You sought her on her surfy shore,
To fetch her thence away
Unto your own new-builded door
For a staunch lifelong stay.

You said: "It seems to be,
My friend,
That I were bringing to my place
The pure brine breeze, the sea,
The mews all her old sky and space,
In bringing her with me!"

But time is prompt to expugn,
My friend,
Such magic-minted conjurings:
The brought breeze fainted soon,
And then the sense of seamews' wings,
And the shore's sibilant tune.

So, it had been more due,
My friend,
Perhaps,...

The pine-apples, in triple row,
Were basking hot, and all in blow;
A bee of most discerning taste
Perceived the fragrance as he pass’d,
On eager wing the spoiler came,
And search’d for crannies in the frame,
Urged his attempt on every side,
To every pane his trunk applied;
But still in vain, the frame was tight,
And only pervious to the light;
Thus having wasted half the day,
He trimm’d his flight another way.
Methinks, I said, in thee I find
The sin and madness of mankind.
To joys forbidden man aspires,
Consumes his soul with vain desires;
Folly the spring of his pursuit,
And disappointment all the fruit.
While Cynthio ogles as he passes,
The nymph between two chariot glasses,
She is the pine-apple, and he
The silly unsuccessful bee.<...

    Journeying through a desert, waste and drear,
        Exhausted and disheartened by his way,
        So hard and parched, unchanged from day to day,
    Saw the lone traveller an oasis near,
    In which a tender flower did appear,
        Endued with beauty and with fragrance sweet,
        Known not to scorching winds nor blighting heat;
    And gazing on it, it imparted cheer.
    The traveller trod the weary sands of Time,
        Entering thy home delightful peace he found;
    Radiant with youthful beauty half divine,
        On him thine angel face with sunbeams crowned
    Smiled, and that artless, beaming smile of thine
        Sped to his soul that with new life did bound.

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these grey rocks; that household lawn;
Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn;
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake;
This little bay; a quiet road
That holds in shelter thy Abode
In truth together do ye seem
Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such Forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep!
But, O fair Creature! in the light
Of common day, so heavenly bright,
I bless Thee, Vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart;
God shield thee to thy latest years!
Thee, neither know I, nor thy peers;
And yet my eyes are filled with tears.

...