Hope

    Poems are holy things. Eternal Truth,
    Borrowing the robes of song and lovely grown,
    In them her glory unto man proclaims
    And fills his longing soul. They softly speak
    Of Nature's beauty and the secrets old
    Concealed behind the shadows of the hills,
    And love on angel fingers borne to men,
    Naming them over in so sweet a voice
    That music leads their footsteps in the ways
    Where God has walked; and with a lofty Harp,
    As wondrous as the gentle harps of heaven,
    Uplifts, ennobles, soothes and leads the race
    Unto its last great ultimate of power,
    To words of tenderness and goodly deeds.

When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend!    I am not lone,
While then canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it, that all around
Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason, indeed, may oft complain
For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain

Dear mother, dry those flowing tears,
    They grieve me much to see;
And calm, oh! calm thine anxious fears -
    What dost thou dread for me?
'Tis true that tempests wild oft ride
    Above the stormy main,
But, then, in Him I will confide
    Who doth their bounds ordain.

I go to win renown and fame
    Upon the glorious sea;
But still my heart will be the same -
    I'll ever turn to thee!
See, yonder wait our gallant crew,
    So, weep not, mother dear;
My father was a sailor too -
    What hast thou then to fear?

Is it not better I should seek
    To win the name he bore,
Than waste my youth in pastimes weak
    Upon the tiresome shore?
Then, look not thus so sad and wan,
For yet your son you'll see
Return with w...

Let the dream go.    Are there not other dreams
    In vastness of clouds hid from thy sight
That yet shall gild with beautiful gold gleams,
    And shoot the shadows through and through with light?
    What matters one lost vision of the night?
        Let the dream go!!

Let the hope set.    Are there not other hopes
    That yet shall rise like new stars in thy sky?
Not long a soul in sullen darkness gropes
    Before some light is lent it from on high;
    What folly to think happiness gone by!
        Let the hope set!

Let the joy fade.    Are there not other joys,
    Like frost-bound bulbs, that yet shall start and bloom?
Severe must be the winter that destroys
    The hardy roots locked in their silent tomb.
    What cares the earth for her ...

Two little children toddled up to me,
Their faces fair as faces well could be,
Roses and snow, but pale the roses were
Like flowers fainting for the lack of air.
Sad was the tender study which I gave
The winning creatures, both so sweet and grave,
Two beautiful young Saxons, scarce knee high!
As like as peas! Two Lilliputian men!
Immortal ere they knew it by the pen
Which waketh laughter or bedews the eye.
God bless you, little people! May His hand
Hold you within its hollow all your days!
Smooth all the rugged places, and your ways
Make long and pleasant in a fruitful land!

The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue,
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the earth was green;
There is little colour, if any,
’Neath the sunlight now to be seen.

Then the rays of the sunset glinted
Through the blackwoods’ emerald bough
On an emerald sward, rose-tinted,
And spangled, and gemm’d; and now
The rays of the sunset redden
With a sullen and lurid frown,
From the skies that are dark and leaden,
To earth that is dusk and brown.

To right and to left extended
The uplands are blank and drear,
And their neutral tints are blended
With the dead leaves sombre and sere;
The cold grey mist from the still side
Of the l...

O Poesy is on the wane,
For Fancy's visions all unfitting;
I hardly know her face again,
Nature herself seems on the flitting.
The fields grow old and common things,
The grass, the sky, the winds a-blowing;
And spots, where still a beauty clings,
Are sighing "going! all a-going!"
O Poesy is on the wane,
I hardly know her face again.

The bank with brambles overspread,
And little molehills round about it,
Was more to me than laurel shades,
With paths of gravel finely clouted;
And streaking here and streaking there,
Through shaven grass and many a border,
With rutty lanes had no compare,
And heaths were in a richer order.
But Poesy is on the wane,
I hardly know her face again.

I sat beside the pasture stream,
When Beauty's sel...

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,
Fade slowly from the last gray height,
And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve
The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem
Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;
In the dusk forest, dreamingly,
Droops slowly down each plumèd head;
The river flowing softly by
Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea
Dreams of the unseen stars; and I
Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,
But red rays of the sunset stain
Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,
Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree
Glow like the figures on a pane
Of some old church by twilight seen,
Or like the rich devices wrought
In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat
Through shi...

The days go by, the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms,
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!

Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they,
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?

My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling constantly...

As a forlorn soul waiting by the Styx
    Dimly expectant of lands yet more dim,
Might peer afraid where shadows change and mix
    Till the dark ferryman shall come for him.

And past all hope a long ray in his sight,
    Fall'n trickling down the steep crag Hades-black
Reveals an upward path to life and light,
    Nor any let but he should mount that track.

As with the sudden shock of joy amazed,
    He might a motionless sweet moment stand,
So doth that mortal lover, silent, dazed,
    For hope had died and loss was near at hand.

'Wilt thou?' his quest. Unready but for 'Nay,'
He stands at fault for joy, she whispering 'Ay.'

If, when in cheerless wanderings, dull and cold,
A sense of human kindliness hath found us,
We seem to have around us
An atmosphere all gold,
’Midst darkest shades a halo rich of shine,
An element, that while the bleak wind bloweth,
On the rich heart bestoweth
Imbreathed draughts of wine;
Heaven guide, the cup be not, as chance may be,
To some vain mate given up as soon as tasted!
No, nor on thee be wasted,
Thou trifler, Poesy!
Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely, ere
Youth fly, with life’s real tempest would be coping:
The fruit of dreamy hoping
Is, waking, blank despair.

The fourteen centuries fall away
Between us and the Afric saint,
And at his side we urge, to-day,
The immemorial quest and old complaint.

No outward sign to us is given,
From sea or earth comes no reply;
Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven
He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky.

No victory comes of all our strife,
From all we grasp the meaning slips;
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life,
With the old question on her awful lips.

In paths unknown we hear the feet
Of fear before, and guilt behind;
We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat
Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind.

From age to age descends unchecked
The sad bequest of sire to son,
The body's taint, the mind's defect;
Through every web of life the dark threads run.

            TO E.M. II.

Dear friend, you love the poet's song,
    And here is one for your regard.
    You know the "melancholy bard,"
Whose grief is wise as well as strong;

Already something understand
    For whom he mourns and what he sings,
    And how he wakes with golden strings
The echoes of "the silent land;"

How, restless, faint, and worn with grief,
    Yet loving all and hoping all,
    He gazes where the shadows fall,
And finds in darkness some relief;

And how he sends his cries across,
    His cries for him that comes no more,
    Till one might think that silent shore
Full of the burden of his loss;

And how there comes sublimer cheer--
    Not darkness solacing sad eyes,
    Not the wild joy of mournf...

I stood upon a hill, and watched the death
    Of the day's turmoil. Still the glory spread
    Cloud-top to cloud-top, and each rearing head
Trembled to crimson. So a mighty breath
    From some wild Titan in a rising ire
    Might kindle flame in voicing his desire.

Soft stirred the evening air; the pine-crowned hills
    Glowed in an answering rapture where the flush
    Grew to a blood-drop, and the vesper hush
Moved in my soul, while from my life all ills
    Faded and passed away. God's voice was there
    And in my heart the silence was a prayer.

There was a day when to my fearfulness
    Was born a joy, when doubt was swept afar
    A shadow and a memory, and a star
Gleamed in my sky more bright for the distress.
    The stillness breathed ...

No new delights to our desire
    The singers of the past can yield.
    I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
    Poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
    To song? what words of yours be sent
    Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
    Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
    Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
    And crown these towers in circling flight
And cross these seas like summer birds,
    And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
    Some mystic part of you belongs
    To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flo...

On these green banks, where falls too soon
The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
The south wind blowing soft and sweet,
The water gliding at nay feet,
The distant northern range uplit
By the slant sunshine over it,
With changes of the mountain mist
From tender blush to amethyst,
The valley's stretch of shade and gleam
Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
With glad young faces smiling near
And merry voices in my ear,
I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might
In Iran's Garden of Delight.
For Persian roses blushing red,
Aster and gentian bloom instead;
For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;
For feast, the blueberries which I share
With one who proffers with stained hands
Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,
Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
The harvest o...

Along the hot and endless road,
    Calm and erect, with haggard eyes,
The prisoner bore his fetters' load
    Beneath the scorching, azure skies.

Serene and tall, with brows unbent,
    Without a hope, without a friend,
He, under escort, onward went,
    With death to meet him at the end.

The Poppy fields were pink and gay
    On either side, and in the heat
Their drowsy scent exhaled all day
    A dream-like fragrance almost sweet.

And when the cool of evening fell
    And tender colours touched the sky,
He still felt youth within him dwell
    And half forgot he had to die.

Sometimes at night, the Camp-fires lit
    And casting fitful light around,
His guard would, friend-like, let him sit
    And talk awhile with them...

I

Peradventure of old, some bard in Ionian Islands,
    Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves,
Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac,
    Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea.

For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations,
    Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats,
So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous,
    Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows?

II

Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet
    Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.

III

Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet;
    Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.