Happiness

In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a school-boy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a Poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.

My pansy pets are sleeping well
Beneath their quilt of snow;
How they can breathe I cannot tell,
Nor how their rootlets grow;
But soon the snow will melt away
And April showers descend;
Then shall appear in colors gay
Each little pansy friend.

Of pride it may not show a trace;
Of lowly mind, alway;
But will not blush to show its face
All through the lifelong day:
Its fragrance other flowers surpass,
In form more stately, too.
But when you see my pets in mass,
Thank God they ever grew.

For though the human face may frown,
Or show a heart of guile,
My pansy pets as you look down
Will look at you and smile;
Nor will they murmur if you should
Pluck off their brightest bloom;
Their mission is to do us good,
And smile a...

O sweet sincerity! -
Where modern methods be
What scope for thine and thee?

Life may be sad past saying,
Its greens for ever graying,
Its faiths to dust decaying;

And youth may have foreknown it,
And riper seasons shown it,
But custom cries: "Disown it:

"Say ye rejoice, though grieving,
Believe, while unbelieving,
Behold, without perceiving!"

- Yet, would men look at true things,
And unilluded view things,
And count to bear undue things,

The real might mend the seeming,
Facts better their foredeeming,
And Life its disesteeming.

February 1899.

As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

'Tis a fragrant retrospection - for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine -
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweetheart of mine.

Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
The voices o...

I should have been too glad, I see,
Too lifted for the scant degree
Of life's penurious round;
My little circuit would have shamed
This new circumference, have blamed
The homelier time behind.

I should have been too saved, I see,
Too rescued; fear too dim to me
That I could spell the prayer
I knew so perfect yesterday, --
That scalding one, "Sabachthani,"
Recited fluent here.

Earth would have been too much, I see,
And heaven not enough for me;
I should have had the joy
Without the fear to justify, --
The palm without the Calvary;
So, Saviour, crucify.

Defeat whets victory, they say;
The reefs in old Gethsemane
Endear the shore beyond.
'T is beggars banquets best define;
'T is thirsting vitalizes wine, --
Fai...

    Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
        Purple, pink, and every hue,
    From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
        In dusky drops of dew,
    I praise you all, wherever found,
        And love you through and through; -
            But, Blossoms On The Trees,
            With your breath upon the breeze,
    There's nothing all the world around
        As half as sweet as you!

    Could the rhymer only wring
        All the sweetness to the lees
    Of all the kisses clustering
        In juicy Used-to-bes,
    To dip his rhymes therein and sing
        The blossoms on the trees, -
    "O Blossoms on the Trees,"
        He would twitter, trill and coo,
    "However sweet, such songs as these
        Are not as sweet as you...

This is my comfort when she's most unkind:
She can but spoil me of my means, not mind.

Well may you sit within, and, fond of grief,
Look in each other's face, and melt in tears.
Well may you shun all counsel, all relief.
Oh she was great in mind, tho' young in years!

Chang'd is that lovely countenance, which shed
Light when she spoke; and kindled sweet surprise,
As o'er her frame each warm emotion spread,
Play'd round her lips, and sparkled in her eyes.

Those lips so pure, that mov'd but to persuade,
Still to the last enliven'd and endear'd.
Those eyes at once her secret soul convey'd,
And ever beam'd delight when you appear'd.

Yet has she fled the life of bliss below,
That youthful Hope in bright perspective drew?
False were the tints! false as the feverish glow
That o'er her burning cheek Distemper threw!

And now in joy...

    When the fields are rolled into naked gold,
        And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent
    With the emerald surges of wood and wold
        Like a flower-foam bursting violent;
    When the dingles and deeps of the woodlands old
        Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,
    Too rare to be told are the manifold
        Sweet fancies that quicken redolent
    In the heart that no longer is cold.

    How it knows of the wings of the hawk that swings
        From the drippled dew scintillant seen;
    Why the red-bird hides where it sings and sings
        In melodious quiverings of green;
    How the wind to the red-bud and dogwood brings
        Big pearls of worth and corals of sheen,
    Whiles he lisps to the strings of a lute that rings
...

We praise not now the poet's art,
The rounded beauty of his song;
Who weighs him from his life apart
Must do his nobler nature wrong.

Not for the eye, familiar grown
With charms to common sight denied,
The marvellous gift he shares alone
With him who walked on Rydal-side;

Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay,
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears;
We speak his praise who wears to-day
The glory of his seventy years.

When Peace brings Freedom in her train,
Let happy lips his songs rehearse;
His life is now his noblest strain,
His manhood better than his verse!

Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys
Its cunning keeps at life's full span;
But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these,
The poet seems beside the man!

...

The stones in the streamlet I make my bright pillow,
And open my arms to the swift-rolling billow,

That lovingly hastens to fall on my breast.
Then fickleness soon bids it onwards be flowing;
A second draws nigh, its caresses bestowing,

And so by a twofold enjoyment I'm blest.

And yet thou art trailing in sorrow and sadness
The moments that life, as it flies, gave for gladness,

Because by thy love thou'rt remember'd no more!
Oh, call back to mind former days and their blisses!
The lips of the second will give as sweet kisses

As any the lips of the first gave before!

Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno.

TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE.


    O my own Italy! though words are vain
The mortal wounds to close,
Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,
Yet may it soothe my pain
To sigh forth Tyber's woes,
And Arno's wrongs, as on Po's sadden'd shore
Sorrowing I wander, and my numbers pour.
Ruler of heaven! By the all-pitying love
That could thy Godhead move
To dwell a lowly sojourner on earth,
Turn, Lord! on this thy chosen land thine eye:
See, God of Charity!
From what light cause this cruel war has birth;
And the hard hearts by savage discord steel'd,
Thou, Father! from on high,
Touch by my humble voice, that stubborn wrath may yield!

Ye, to whose sovereign...

Nourished by peaceful suns and gracious dew,
Your sweet youth budded and your sweet lives grew,
And all the world seemed rose-beset for you.

The rose of beauty was your mutual dower,
The stainless rose of love, an early flower,
The stately blooms of ease and wealth and power.

And treading thus on pathways flower-bestrewn,
It well might be, that, cold and careless grown,
You both had lived for your own joys alone.

But, holding all these fair things as in trust.
Gently you walked, still scattering on the dust
Of harder roads, which others tread, and must,--

Your heritage of brightness, not a ray
Of noontide sought you out, but straight away
You caught and halved it with some darker day:

And as the sweet saint's loaves were turned, it is ...

The tide of love swells in me with such force,
    It sweeps away all hate and all distrust.
As eddying straws and particles of dust
    Are lost by some swift river in its course.

So much I love my friends, my life, my art,
    Each shadow flies; the light dispels the gloom.
Love is so fair, I find I have no room
    For anything less worthy in my heart.

Love is a germ which we can cultivate -
    To grace and perfume sweeter than the rose,
Or leave neglected while our heart soil grows
    Rank with that vile and poison thistle, hate.

Love is a joyous thrush, that one can teach
    To sing sweet lute-like songs which all may hear.
Or we can silence him and tune the ear
    To caw of crows, or to the vulture's screech.

Love is a feast; ...

Like music heard in mellow chime,
The charm of her transforming time
    Upon my senses steals
As softly as from sunny walls,
In day's decline, their shadow falls
    Across the sleeping fields.

A fair, illumined book
Is nature's page whereon I look
    While "autumn turns the leaves;"
And many a thought of her designs
Between those rare, resplendent lines
    My fancy interweaves.

I dream of aborigines,
Who must have copied from the trees
    The fashions of the day:
Those gorgeous topknots for the head,
Of yellow tufts and feathers red,
    With beads and sinews gay.

I wonder if the saints behold
Such pageantry of colors bold
    Beyond the radiant sky;
And if the tints of Paradise
Are heightened by the strange...

Secluded from domestic strife,
Jack Book-worm led a college life;
A fellowship at twenty-five
Made him the happiest man alive;
He drank his glass and crack'd his joke,
And freshmen wonder'd as he spoke.

Such pleasures, unalloy'd with care,
Could any accident impair?
Could Cupid's shaft at length transfix
Our swain, arriv'd at thirty-six?
O had the archer ne'er come down
To ravage in a country town!
Or Flavia been content to stop
At triumphs in a Fleet-street shop.
O had her eyes forgot to blaze!
Or Jack had wanted eyes to gaze.
O!    But let exclamation cease,
Her presence banish'd all his peace.
So with decorum all things carried;
Miss frown'd, and blush'd, and then was    married.

Need we expose to vulgar sight
The raptur...

I would never waste the hours
Of the time that is mine own,
Writing verses about flowers
For their own sweet sakes alone;
Gushing as a schoolgirl gushes
Over babies at their best,
Or as poets trill of thrushes,
Larks, and starlings and the rest.

I am not a man who praises
Beauty that he cannot see,
But the buttercups and daisies
Bring my childhood back to me;
And before life’s bitter battle,
That breaks lion hearts and kills,
Oh the waratah and wattle
Saw my boyhood on the hills.

It was “Cissy” or Cecilia,
And I loved her very much,
When I wore the white camelia
That will wither at a touch.
Ah, the fairest chapter closes
With lilies white and blue,
When the wild days with the roses
Cast their glamour over you!

Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn,
Blushing into life new-born!
Lend me violets for my hair,
And thy russet robe to wear,
And thy ring of rosiest hue
Set in drops of diamond dew!

Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray,
From my Love so far away
Let thy splendor streaming down
Turn its pallid lilies brown,
Till its darkening shades reveal
Where his passion pressed its seal!

Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,
Kiss my lips a soft good-night!
Westward sinks thy golden car;
Leave me but the evening star,
And my solace that shall be,
Borrowing all its light from thee!