Identity

And has the Spring's all glorious eye
No lesson to the mind?
The birds that cleave the golden sky--
Things to the earth resigned--
Wild flowers that dance to every wind--
Do they no memory leave behind?

Aye, flowers! The very name of flowers,
That bloom in wood and glen,
Brings Spring to me in Winter's hours,
And childhood's dreams again.
The primrose on the woodland lea
Was more than gold and lands to me.

The violets by the woodland side
Are thick as they could thrive;
I've talked to them with childish pride
As things that were alive:
I find them now in my distress--
They seem as sweet, yet valueless.

The cowslips on the meadow lea,
How have I run for them!
I looked with wild and childish glee
Upon each golden gem:

Be void of feeling!
A heart that soon is stirr'd,
Is a possession sad
Upon this changing earth.

Behrisch, let spring's sweet smile
Never gladden thy brow!
Then winter's gloomy tempests
Never will shadow it o'er.

Lean thyself ne'er on a maiden's
Sorrow-engendering breast.
Ne'er on the arm,
Misery-fraught, of a friend.

Already envy
From out his rocky ambush
Upon thee turns
The force of his lynx-like eyes,

Stretches his talons,
On thee falls,
In thy shoulders
Cunningly plants them.

Strong are his skinny arms,
As panther-claws;
He shaketh thee,
And rends thy frame.

Death 'tis to part,
'Tis threefold death
To part, not hoping
Ever to meet again.

Thou wouldst rejoic...

Soul of the leaping flame;
Heart of the scarlet fire,
Spirit that hath for name
Only the name - Desire!

Subtle art thou and strong;
Glowing in sunlit skies;
Sparkling in wine and song;
Shining in women's eyes;

Gleaming on shores of Sleep
Moon of the wild dream-clan
Burning within the deep
Passionate heart of Man.

Spirit we can but name,
Essence of Forms that seem,
Odour of violet flame,
Weaver of Thought and Dream.

Laught of the World's great Heart,
Who shall thy rune recote?
Child of the gods thou art,
Offspring of Day and Night.

Lord of the Rainbow ealm,
Many a shape hast thou
Glory with laurelled helm;
Love with the myrtled brow;

Sanctity, robed in white;
Liberty, proud and cal...

    I
I seem to be
Sundered from Thee,
Thou Harmony of all creation.
Am I disowned
For talents loaned
And useless hid in vain probation?
Now powerless,
In weariness,
Now in despair a beggar humble
For help, for cheer,
A voice, an ear,
To hear and guide, while on I stumble.
God, let me be.
Of use to Thee!
If vain my purpose and my powers,
Then sinks from sight
My star, - and night
Henceforth my steps enfolding lowers.
Then break and bind
My ravaged mind
The terrors dread of doubt and anguish.
I know the pack,
I drove them back; -
Only to-day does courage languish.
Oh, come now, peace!
Come faith's increase,
That life's strong chain shall ever bind me!
That not in vain
I strive and strain
Myse...

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade
On desolate sea and lonely sand,
Out of the silence and the shade
What is the voice of strange command
Calling you still, as friend calls friend
With love that cannot brook delay,
To rise and follow the ways that wend
Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street
A roaring reach of death and life,
Of vortices that clash and fleet
And ruin in appointed strife,
Hark to it calling, calling clear,
Calling until you cannot stay
From dearer things than your own most dear
Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of ebb and flow,
Out of the sight of lamp and star,
It calls you where the good winds blow,
And the unchanging meadows are:
From faded hopes and hopes agleam,
It ...

H. W. L.

Pride of the sister realm so long our own,
We claim with her that spotless fame of thine,
White as her snow and fragrant as her pine!
Ours was thy birthplace, but in every zone
Some wreath of song thy liberal hand has thrown
Breathes perfume from its blossoms, that entwine
Where'er the dewdrops fall, the sunbeams shine,
On life's long path with tangled cares o'ergrown.
Can Art thy truthful counterfeit command, -
The silver-haloed features, tranquil, mild, -
Soften the lips of bronze as when they smiled,
Give warmth and pressure to the marble hand?
Seek the lost rainbow in the sky it spanned
Farewell, sweet Singer! Heaven reclaims its child.

Carved from the block or cast in clinging mould,
Will grateful Memory fondly try her best
The m...

I love the thought of ancient, naked days
When Phoebus gilded statues with his rays.
Then women, men in their agility
Played without guile, without anxiety,
And, while the sky stroked lovingly their skin,
They tuned to health their excellent machine.
Cybele, in offering her bounty there,
Found mortals not a heavy weight to bear,
But, she-wolf full of common tenderness,
From her brown nipples fed the universe.
Man had the right, robust and flourishing,
Of pride in beauties who proclaimed him king;
Pure fruit unsullied, lovely to the sight,
Whose smooth, firm flesh went asking for the bite!

Today, the Poet, when he would conceive
These native grandeurs, where can now be seen
Women and men in all their nakedness,
Feels in his soul a chill of hopelessne...

I.

How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark autumn-evenings come:
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life’s November too!

II.

I shall be found by the fire, suppose,
O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age,
While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose!

III.

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,
“There he is at it, deep in Greek:
“Now then, or never, out we slip
“To cut from the hazels by the creek
“A mainmast for our ship!”

IV.

I shall be at it indeed, my friends:
Greek puts already on either side
Such a branch-work forth as soon extends
To a vista opening...

O to be a woman! to be left to pique and pine,
When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of mine.
Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be still?
There! the last leaves of the beech-tree go dancing down the hill.
All the boats at anchor they are plunging to be free-
O to be a sailor, and away across the sea!
When the sky is black with thunder, and the sea is white with foam,
The gray-gulls whirl up shrieking and seek their rocky home,
Low his boat is lying leeward, how she runs upon the gale,
As she rises with the billows, nor shakes her dripping sail.
There is danger on the waters-there is joy where dangers be-
Alas! to be a woman and the nomad’s heart in me.

Ochone! to be a woman, only sighing on the shore-
With a soul that finds a passion ...

Delicious gloom! asylum of repose!
Within your verdant shades, your tranquil bound,
A wretched fugitive[A], oppress'd by woes,
The balm of peace, that long had left him, found.

Ne'er does the trump of war disturb this grove;
Throughout its deep recess the warbling bird
Discourses sweetly of its happy lore,
Or distant sounds of rural joy are heard.

Life's checquer'd scene is softly pictur'd here;
Here the proud moss-rose spreads its transient pride;
Close by, the willow drops a dewy tear,
And gaudy flow'rs the modest lily hide.

Alas! poor Hermit! happy had it been
For thee, if in these shades thy days had past,
If, well contented with the happy scene,
Thou ne'er again had fac'd life's stormy blast!

And Pity oft shall shed the ...

I have been pondering what our teachers call
    The mystery of Pain; and lo! my thought
    After it's half-blind reaching out has caught
This truth and held it fast. We may not fall
    Beyond our mounting; stung by life's annoy,
    Deeper we feel the mystery of Joy.

Sometimes they steal across us like a breath
    Of Eastern perfume in a darkened room,
    These joys of ours; we grope on through the gloom
Seeking some common thing, and from its sheath
    Unloose, unknowing, some bewildering scent
    Of spice-thronged memories of the Orient.

Sometimes they dart across our turbid sky
    Like a quick flash after a heated day.
    A moment, where the sombrous shadows lay
We see a glory. Though it passed us by
    No earthly power can filch that ...

There was a girl that lost things--
    Nor only from her hand;
She lost, indeed--why, most things,
    As if they had been sand!

She said, "But I must use them,
    And can't look after all!
Indeed I did not lose them,
    I only let them fall!"

That's how she lost her thimble,
    It fell upon the floor:
Her eyes were very nimble
    But she never saw it more.

And then she lost her dolly,
    Her very doll of all!
That loss was far from jolly,
    But worse things did befall.

She lost a ring of pearls
    With a ruby in them set;
But the dearest girl of girls
    Cried only, did not fret.

And then she lost her robin;
    Ah, that was sorrow dire!
He hopped along, and--bob in--
    Hopped bob in...

        Let you not say of me when I am old,
        In pretty worship of my withered hands
        Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
        Of such a life as mine run red and gold
        Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,
        Here walketh passionless age!"--for there expands
        A curious superstition in these lands,
        And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

        In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;
        I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;
        Impious no less in ruin than in strength,
        When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,
        Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site
        The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer."

I wish this world and its green hills were mine,
But it is not; the wandering shepherd star
Is not more distant, gazing from afar
On the unreapèd pastures of the sea,
Than I am from the world, the world from me.
At night the stars on milky way that shine
Seem things one might possess, but this round green
Is for the cows that rest, these and the sheep:
To them the slopes and pastures offer sleep;
My sleep I draw from the far fields of blue,
Whence cold winds come and go among the few
Bright stars we see and many more unseen.

Birds sing on earth all day among the flowers,
Taking no thought of any other thing
But their own hearts, for out of them they sing:
Their songs are kindred to the blossom heads,
Faint as the petals which the blackthorn sheds,
A...

When I reflect how little I have done,
    And add to that how little I have seen,
Then furthermore how little I have won
    Of joy, or good, how little known, or been:
    I long for other life more full, more keen,
And yearn to change with such as well have run -
    Yet reason mocks me - nay, the soul, I ween,
Granted her choice would dare to change with none;
No, - not to feel, as Blondel when his lay
    Pierced the strong tower, and Richard answered it -
No, - not to do, as Eustace on the day
    He left fair Calais to her weeping lit -
No, - not to be, Columbus, waked from sleep
When his new world rose from the charmèd deep.

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,

His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;

When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,

He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.

His presence is ench...

    Musician, with the bent and brooding face,
    White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing
    Merely the music that dead hand did trace.

    Musician, with the lifted resolute face,
    And scornful smile about your closed mouth straying,
    And hand that moves with swift or fluttering grace,
    It is not that man's music you are playing.

    The grave and merry tunes he made you are playing,
    Each march and dirge and dance he made endures,
    But changed and mastered, and these things you're saying,
    These joys and sorrows are not his but yours.

    You take those notes of his: you seize and fling
    His music as a dancer flings her veil,
    Toss it and twist it, mould it, make it sing,
    Whisper, shout savagely, lament and w...

Simple was I and was young;
Kept no gallant tryst, I;
Even from good words held my tongue,
Quoniam Tu fecisti!

Through my youth I stirred me not,
High adventure missed I,
Left the shining shrines unsought;
Yet me deduxisti!

At my start by Helicon
Love-lore little wist I,
Worldly less; but footed on;
Why? Me suscepisti!

When I failed at fervid rhymes,
"Shall," I said, "persist I?"
"Dies" (I would add at times)
"Meos posuisti!"

So I have fared through many suns;
Sadly little grist I
Bring my mill, or any one's,
Domine, Tu scisti!

And at dead of night I call:
"Though to prophets list I,
Which hath understood at all?
Yea: Quem elegisti?"