Hope

For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower and leaf
And shine and shade are very brief,
And that the heart they brighten, may,
Before them all, be sheathed in clay!
I do not know the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

A few there are, whose smile and praise
My minstrel hope, would kindly raise:
But, of those few, Death may impress
The lips of some with silentness;
While some may friendship's fai...

The sun o’er the waters was throwing
In the freshness of morning its beams;
And the breast of the ocean seemed glowing
With glittering silvery streams:
A bark in the distance was bounding
Away for the land on her lee;
And the boatswain’s shrill whistle resounding
Came over and over the sea.
The breezes blew fair and were guiding
Her swiftly along on her track,
And the billows successively passing,
Were lost in the distance aback.
The sailors seemed busy preparing
For anchor to drop ere the night;
The red rusted cables in fathoms
Were haul’d from their prisons to light.
Each rope and each brace was attended
By stout-hearted sons of the main,
Whose voices, in unison blended,
Sang many a merry-toned strain.

Forgotten their care and their...

I.

I stood in an ancient garden
With high red walls around;
Over them grey and green lichens
In shadowy arabesque wound.

The topmost climbing blossoms
On fields kine-haunted looked out;
But within were shelter and shadow,
With daintiest odours about.

There were alleys and lurking arbours,
Deep glooms into which to dive.
The lawns were as soft as fleeces,
Of daisies I counted but five.

The sun-dial was so aged
It had gathered a thoughtful grace;
'Twas the round-about of the shadow
That so had furrowed its face.

The flowers were all of the oldest
That ever in garden sprung;
Red, and blood-red, and dark purple
The rose-lamps flaming hung.

Along the borders fringed
With broad thick edges of box

[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]

FEBRUARY 5, 18 - .

        Want - want - want - want! O God! forgive the crime,
        If I, asleep, awake, at any time,
        Upon my bended knees, my back, my feet,
        In church, on bed, on treasure-lighted street,
        Have ever hinted, or, much less, have pleaded
        That I hadn't ten times over all I needed!
        Lord save my soul! I never knew the way
        That people starve along from day to day;
        May gracious Heaven forgive me, o'er and o'er,
        That I have never found these folks before!

        Of course some news of it has come my way,
        Like a faint echo on a drowsy day;
        At home I "gave," whene'er by suffering grieved,
        And called i...

    Crowds! Crowds! Crowds!
        Suddenly here as if come from the clouds
    That faded away as they came;
        Mad acres of people aflame
    With thirst for a morsel of land;
        Wild hunters of fortune, whose game
    Is ever escaping the hand;
        Vast, countless, uncountable throngs
    With restless, unrestable feet,
        That hurry the ways, full of agonized wrongs,
    For the conquest of happiness sweet;
        Wild seas of ambition whose waves of desire
    On their obstacles mighty continually beat,
        Where neither the shore nor the ocean is fixed;
        Like thunderous songs of a choir,
    Whose murmurs in music repeat;
        And confusion and chaos are terribly mingled and mixed.

        Dust! Dust! Dust!

Painted Upon a Porte Livre.


How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!

How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!

It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season’s frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.

Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy’s age renews its youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of, present truth.

A wizard of the Merrimac,
So old ancestral legends say,
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.

The d...

    See how the storm of life ascends
Up through the shadow of the world!
Beyond our gaze the line extends,
Like wreaths of vapour tempest-hurled!
Grasp tighter, brother, lest the storm
Should sweep us down from where we stand,
And we may catch some human form
We know, amongst the straining band.

    See! see in yonder misty cloud
One whirlwind sweep, and we shall hear
The voice that waxes yet more loud
And louder still approaching near!

    Tremble not, brother, fear not thou,
For yonder wild and mystic strain
Will bring before us strangely now
The visions of our youth again!

    Listen! oh listen!
See how its eyeballs roll and glisten
With a wild and fearful stare
Upwards through the shining air,
Or backwards with averte...

In silence and in darkness memory wakes
Her million sheathèd buds, and breaks
That day-long winter when the light and noise
And hard bleak breath of the outward-looking will
Made barren her tender soil, when every voice
Of her million airy birds was muffled or still.

One bud-sheath breaks:
One sudden voice awakes.

What change grew in our hearts, seeing one night
That moth-winged ship drifting across the bay,
    Her broad sail dimly white
On cloudy waters and hills as vague as they?
Some new thing touched our spirits with distant delight,
Half-seen, half-noticed, as we loitered down,
Talking in whispers, to the little town,
    Down from the narrow hill
    Talking in whispers, for the air so still
Imposed its stillness on our lips, and made

It is full summer now, the heart of June;
Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
Rich autumn time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June's messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of their own loveliness some violets lie
That will not look the gold sun in the face
...

Fill for me a brimming bowl
And in it let me drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To Banish Women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with—fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd;
From my despairing heart to charm
The Image of the fairest form
That e'er my reveling eyes beheld,
That e'er my wandering fancy spell'd.
In vain! away I cannot chace
The melting softness of that face,
The beaminess of those bright eyes,
That breast—earth's only Paradise.
My sight will never more be blest;
For all I see has lost its zest:
Nor with delight can I explore,
The Classic page, or Muse's lore.
Had she but known how beat my heart,
And with one smile reliev'd its ...

'Tis done! - I saw it in my dreams:
No more with Hope the future beams;
My days of happiness are few:
Chill'd by Misfortune's wintry blast,
My dawn of Life is overcast;
Love, Hope, and Joy, alike adieu!
Would I could add Remembrance too!

Sleep, gentle, mysterious healer,
    Come down with thy balm-cup to me!
Come down, O thou mystic revealer
    Of glories the day may not see!
For dark is the cloud that is o'er me,
    And heavy the shadows that fall,
And lone is the pathway before me,
    And far-off the voice that doth call -
        Faintly, yet tenderly ever,
            From over the dark river, call.

Let me bask for an hour in the sun-ray
    That wraps him forever in light;
Awhile tread his flowery pathway
    Through bowers of unfailing delight; -
Again clasp the hands I lost sight of
    In the chill mist that hung o'er the tide,
What time, with the pale, silent boatman,
    I saw him away from me glide -
        Out into the fathomless myst'ry,
            All s...

Illustration Of A Picture

They bid me strike the idle strings,
As if my summer days
Had shaken sunbeams from their wings
To warm my autumn lays;
They bring to me their painted urn,
As if it were not time
To lift my gauntlet and to spurn
The lists of boyish rhyme;
And were it not that I have still
Some weakness in my heart
That clings around my stronger will
And pleads for gentler art,
Perchance I had not turned away
The thoughts grown tame with toil,
To cheat this lone and pallid ray,
That wastes the midnight oil.

Alas! with every year I feel
Some roses leave my brow;
Too young for wisdom's tardy seal,
Too old for garlands now.
Yet, while the dewy breath of spring
Steals o'er the tingling air,
And spreads and fans...

When the hours of Day are numbered,
    And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
    To a holy, calm delight;

Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
    And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
    Dance upon the parlor wall;

Then the forms of the departed
    Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
    Come to visit me once more;

He, the young and strong, who cherished
    Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
    Weary with the march of life!

They, the holy ones and weakly,
    Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
    Spake with us on earth no more!

And with them the Being Beauteous,
...

An old sweetheart of mine! - Is this her presence here with me,
Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air
Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true -
The semblance of the OLD love and the substance of the NEW, -
The THEN of changeless sunny days - the NOW of shower and shine -
But Love forever smiling - as that old sweetheart of mine.

This ever-restful sense of HOME, though shouts ring in the hall. -
The easy chair - the old book-shelves and prints along the wall;
The rare HABANAS in their box, or gaunt church-warden-stem
That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.

As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone,
And...

Love bade me hope, and I obeyed;
Phyllis continued still unkind:
Then you may e’en despair, he said,
In vain I strive to change her mind.

Honor’s got in, and keeps her heart,
Durst he but venture once abroad,
In my own right I’d take your part,
And show myself the mightier God.

This huffing Honor domineers
In breasts alone where he has place:
But if true generous Love apppears,
The hector dares not show his face.

Let me still languish and complain,
Be most unhumanly denied:
I have some pleasure in my pain,
She can have none with all her pride.

I fall a sacrifice to Love,
She lives a wretch for Honor’s sake;
Whose tyrant does most cruel prove,
The difference is not hard to make.

Consider real Honor then,
Yo...

To the Author of the "Songs of the Army of the Night."

We - who, encircled in sleepless sadness
    With ears laid close to the Austral earth,
Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,
    Of hopeless anguish and murd'rous mirth
Beneath all noise of maudlin gladness
    Awail, environ the world's wide girth -

Almost arise with Hope's keen urging
    When out the vasty and night-bound North
Red rays ascend, and Songs resurging
    Through all the darkness and chill, come forth!

The comet climbs until it scorches
    The sacred dais that skies the great,
Until it gleams on palace porches,
    Where blissful aeons-to-be hold state -
Fades, and we know it one of the torches
    Madmen a moment elevate!

And, closer cl...

I.
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.

II.
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

III.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.

IV.
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.

V.
So wore night; the East was gray,
...