Hope

For ages on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom,
And willowy studs of downy silver,
Have prophesied of Spring to come.

For ages have the unbound waters
Smiled on them from their pebbly hem,
And the clear carol of the robin
And song of bluebird welcomed them.

But never yet from smiling river,
Or song of early bird, have they
Been greeted with a gladder welcome
Than whispers from my heart to-day.

They break the spell of cold and darkness,
The weary watch of sleepless pain;
And from my heart, as from the river,
The ice of winter melts again.

Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token
Of Freya’s footsteps drawing near;
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
The growing of the grass I hear.

It is as if the ...

We will be what we could be.    Do not say,
    "It might have been, had not or that, or this."
No fate can keep us from the chosen way;
    He only might, who IS.

We will do what we could do.    Do not dream
    Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve.
I hold, all men are greatly what they seem;
    He does, who could achieve.

We will climb where we could climb.    Tell me not
    Of adverse storms that kept thee from the height.
What eagle ever missed the peak he sought?
    He always climbs who might.

I do not like the phrase, "It might have been!"
    It lacks all force, and life's best truths perverts
For I believe we have, and reach, and win,
    Whatever our deserts.

Time's finger on the dial of my life
Points to high noon! and yet the half-spent day
Leaves less than half remaining, for the dark,
Bleak shadows of the grave engulf the end.
To those who burn the candle to the stick,
The sputtering socket yields but little light.
Long life is sadder than an early death.
We cannot count on ravelled threads of age
Whereof to weave a fabric.    We must use
The warp and woof the ready present yields
And toil while daylight lasts.    When I bethink
How brief the past, the future, still more brief
Calls on to action, action!    Not for me
Is time for retrospection or for dreams,
Not time for self-laudation or remorse.
Have I done nobly?    Then I must not let
Dead yesterday unborn to-morrow shame.
Have I done wrong?    Well, l...

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
        And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
        And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
        Some days must be dark and dreary.

I heard men saying, Leave hope and praying,
    All days shall be as all have been;
To-day and to-morrow bring fear and sorrow,
    The never-ending toil between.

When Earth was younger mid toil and hunger,
    In hope we strove, and our hands were strong;
Then great men led us, with words they fed us,
    And bade us right the earthly wrong.

Go read in story their deeds and glory,
    Their names amidst the nameless dead;
Turn then from lying to us slow-dying
    In that good world to which they led;

Where fast and faster our iron master,
    The thing we made, for ever drives,
Bids us grind treasure and fashion pleasure
    For other hopes and other lives.

Where home is a hovel and dull we grovel,
    Forgetting that the world is...

Dawn-cool, dew-cool
Gleams the surface of my pool
Bird haunted, fern enchanted,
Where but tempered spirits rule;
Stars do not trace their mystic lines
In my confines;
I take a double night within my breast
A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves,
And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl
Puff at his velvet horn
And the wolves howl.
Even daylight comes with a touch of gold
Not overbold,
And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers,
Below the balsam bowers,
Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield.
Too small even for a thirsty fawn
To quench upon,
I hold my crystal at one level
There where you see the liquid bevel
Break in silver and go free
Singing to its destiny.

Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
...

(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.)

This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the well-known tune: -

            "Last night I lay a-sleeping,
            There came a dream so fair,
            I stood in Old Jerusalem
            Beside the temple there, - " etc.

Yet this tune is not to be fitted on, arbitrarily.    It is here given to suggest the manner of handling rather than determine it.


                    # To be sung. #
    I heard Immanuel singing
    Within his own good lands,
    I saw him bend above his harp.
    I watched his wandering hands
    Lost amid the harp-strings;
    Sweet, sweet I heard him play.
    His wounds were altogether healed.
   ...

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?


II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis' image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief


III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon t...

The Saviour hides his face!
My spirit thirsts to prove
Renew’d supplies of pardoning grace,
And never-fading love.


The favour’d souls who know
What glories shine in him,
Pant for his presence as the roe
Pants for the living stream!


What trifles tease me now!
They swarm like summer flies,
They cleave to everything I do,
And swim before my eyes.


How dull the Sabbath-day,
Without the Sabbath’s Lord!
How toilsome then to sing and pray,
And wait upon the word!


Of all the truths I hear,
How few delight my taste!
I glean a berry here and there,
But mourn the vintage past.


Yet let me (as I ought)
Still hope to be supplied;
No pleasure else is worth a thought,
Nor shall I be ...

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
‘The Legend of Good Women,’ long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho’ my heart,
Brimful of those wild tales,

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song
Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars,
And I heard sounds of ins...

Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple,
Two lovers blow together like music blowing:
And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea.
Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them,
They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree.
‘Well, am I late?’ Upward they look and laugh,
They look at the great clock’s golden hands,
They laugh and talk, not knowing what they say:
Only, their words like music seem to play;
And seeming to walk, they tread strange sarabands.

‘I brought you this . . . ‘ the soft words float like stars
Down the smooth heaven of her memory.
She stands again by a garden wall,
The peach tree is in bloom, pink blossoms fall,
Water sings from an opened tap, the bees
Glisten and murmur among the trees.
Someone calls from the house. Sh...

(For Robert Cortez Holliday)



If I should live in a forest
    And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
    Would make a home for me.

I'd go where the old oaks gather,
    Serene and good and strong,
And they would not sigh and tremble
    And vex me with a song.

The pleasantest sort of poet
    Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an old white beard and wrinkles
    About his kind old eyes.

For these young flippertigibbets
    A-rhyming their hours away
They won't be still like honest men
    And listen to what you say.

The young poet screams forever
    About his sex and his soul;
But the old man listens, and smokes his pipe,
    And polishes its bowl.

There should be a...

Thou scarest me with dreams.
    -JOB.

When Night's last hours, like haunting spirits, creep
With listening terrors round the couch of sleep,
And Midnight, brooding in its deepest dye,
Seizes on Fear with dismal sympathy,
"I dreamed a dream" something akin to fate,
Which Superstition's blackest thoughts create--
Something half natural to the grave that seems,
Which Death's long trance of slumber haply dreams;
A dream of staggering horrors and of dread,
Whose shadows fled not when the vision fled,
But clung to Memory with their gloomy view,
Till Doubt and Fancy half believed it true.

That time was come, or seem'd as it was come,
When Death no longer makes the grave his home;
When waking spirits leave their earthly rest
To mix for ever with the ...

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
    Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
    And things are not what they seem.

Life is real!    Life is earnest!
    And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
    Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
    Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
    And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
    Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
    In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
    Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!

Night bent o'er the mountains
With aspect serene;
The deep waters slept
'Neath the moon's pallid sheen,
And the stars in their courses
Moved noiseless on high,
As a soul, when it cleaveth
In thought the blue sky.

The low winds were spent
With the fever of day,
And stirred scarce a leaf
Of the green wood's array;
And the white, fleecy clouds
Hovered light on the air,
Like an angel's wing, bent
For a penitent prayer.

Sleep hushed in the city
The tumult and strife,
And calmed in the spirit
The unrest of life:
But one, where Mount Lebanon
Lifted its snow,
Slumbered not till the morn
Wakened earth with its glow.

Beneath the dark cedars,
Majestic, sublime,
That for ages had mocked
Both at tempe...

The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume,
The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom
The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red,
The maples like torches aflame overhead.

But what if the joy of the summer is past,
And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast?
For me dull November is sweeter than May,
For my love is its sunshine, - she meets me to-day!

Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest?
Will the needle swing back from the east or the west?
At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate;
A friend may prove laggard, - love never comes late.

Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet.
Too early! Too early! She could not forget!
When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed,
She will flash full in sight at t...

"You damn me with faint praise."

I.

Yes, faint was my applause and cold my praise,
Though soul was glowing in each polished line;
But nobler subjects claim the poet's lays,
A brighter glory waits a muse like thine.
Let amorous fools in love-sick measure pine;
Let Strangford whimper on, in fancied pain,
And leave to Moore his rose leaves and his vine;
Be thine the task a higher crown to gain,
The envied wreath that decks the patriot's holy strain.

II.

Yet not in proud triumphal song alone,
Or martial ode, or sad sepulchral dirge,
There needs no voice to make our glories known;
There needs no voice the warrior's soul to urge
To tread the bounds of nature's stormy verge;
Columbia still shall win the battle's prize;
But be it thin...

I.

    As wand'ring late on Albion's shore
        That chains the rude tempestuous deep,
    I heard the hollow surges roar
        And vainly beat her guardian steep;
I heard the rising sounds of woe
    Loud on the storm's wild pinion flow;
And still they vibrate on the mournful lyre,
That tunes to grief its sympathetic wire.


II.

    From shores the wide Atlantic laves,
        The spirit of the ocean bears
    In moans, along his western waves,
        Afflicted nature's hopeless cares:
    Enchanting scenes of young delight,
    How chang'd since first ye rose to sight;
Since first ye rose in infant glories drest
Fresh from the wave, and rear'd your ample breast.


III.

    Her crested serpents, disco...