Identity

Honour to you who sit
Near to the well of wit,
And drink your fill of it!

Glory and worship be
To you, sweet Maids, thrice three,
Who still inspire me;

And teach me how to sing
Unto the lyric string,
My measures ravishing!

Then, while I sing your praise,
My priest-hood crown with bays
Green to the end of days!

And why not I, as hee
That's greatest, if as free,
(In sundry strains that striue,
Since there so many be)
Th' old Lyrick kind reuiue?

I will, yea, and I may;
Who shall oppose my way?
For what is he alone,
That of himselfe can say,
Hee's Heire of Helicon?

APOLLO, and the Nine,
Forbid no Man their Shrine,
That commeth with hands pure;
Else be they so diuine,
They will not him indure.

For they be such coy Things,
That they care not for Kings,
And dare let them know it;
Nor may he touch their Springs,
That is not borne a Poet.

[1]The Phocean it did proue,
Whom when foule Lust did moue,
Those Mayds vnchast to make,
Fell, as with them he stroue,
His Neck and iustly brake.

That ins...

More sweet thy pipe's enchanting melody
Than streams that fall from broken rocks on high.
Say, by the nymphs, that guard the sacred scene,
Where lowly tamarisks shade these hillocks green,
At noontide shall we lie?
No; for o'erwearied with the forest chase,
Pan, the great hunter god, sleeps in this place.
Beneath the branching elm, while thy sad verse,
O Thyrsis! Daphnis' sorrows shall rehearse,
Fronting the wood-nymph's solitary seat,
Whose fountains flash amid the dark retreat;
Where the old statue leans, and brown oaks wave
Their ancient umbrage o'er the pastoral cave;
There will we rest, and thou, as erst, prolong
The sweet enchantment of the Doric song!

An awful tempest mashed the air,
The clouds were gaunt and few;
A black, as of a spectre's cloak,
Hid heaven and earth from view.

The creatures chuckled on the roofs
And whistled in the air,
And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth.
And swung their frenzied hair.

The morning lit, the birds arose;
The monster's faded eyes
Turned slowly to his native coast,
And peace was Paradise!

A king - estranged from his loving Queen
    By a foolish royal whim -
Tired and sick of the dull routine
    Of matters surrounding him -
Issued a mandate in this wise. -
    "THE DOWER OF MY DAUGHTER'S HAND
I WILL GIVE TO HIM WHO HOLDS THIS PRIZE,
    THE STRANGEST THING IN THE LAND."

But the King, sad sooth! in this grim decree
    Had a motive low and mean; -
'Twas a royal piece of chicanery
    To harry and spite the Queen;
For King though he was, and beyond compare,
    He had ruled all things save one -
Then blamed the Queen that his only heir
    Was a daughter - not a son.

The girl had grown, in the mother's care,
    Like a bud in the shine and shower
That drinks of the wine of the balmy air
    Till it blooms into matchles...

May is back, and You and I
Are at the stream again -
The leaves are out,
And all about
The building birds begin
To make a merry din:
May is back, and You and I
Are at the dream again.

May is back, and You and I
Lie in the grass again, -
The butterfly
Flits painted by,
The bee brings sudden fear,
Like people talking near;
May is back, and You and I
Are lad and lass again.

May is back, and You and I
Are heart to heart again, -
In God's green house
We make our vows
Of summer love that stays
Faithful through winter days;
May is back, and You and I
Shall never part again.

When my time comes to quit this pleasing scene,
And drop from out the busy life of men;
When I shall cease to be where I have been
So willingly, and ne'er may be again;
When my abandoned tabernacle's dust
With dust is laid, and I am counted dead;
Ere I am quite forgotten, as I must
Be in a little while, let this be said:

He loved this good God's world, the night and day,
Men, women, children (these he loved the best);
Pictures and books he loved, and work and play,
Music and silence, soberness and jest;
His mind was open, and his heart was gay;
Green be his grave, and peaceful be his rest!

The wisest scholler of the wight most wise
By Phoebus doom, with sugred sentence sayes,
That vertue, if it once met with our eyes,
Strange flames of loue it in our souls would raise;
But for that man with paine this truth descries,
Whiles he each thing in Senses balance wayes,
And so nor will nor can behold those skies
Which inward sunne to heroick mind displaies
Vertue of late, with vertuous care to ster
Loue of herself, tooke Stellas shape, that she
To mortall eyes might sweetly shine in her.
It is most true; for since I her did see,
Vertues great beauty in that face I proue,
And find th' effect, for I do burn in loue.

Skrew lives by shifts; yet swears by no small oaths
For all his shifts he cannot shift his clothes.

I saw a certain sailorman who sat beside the sea,
And in the manner of his tribe he yawned this yarn to me:
"'Twere back in eighteen-fifty-three, or mebbe fifty-four,
I skipped the farm, no, 't were the shop, an' went to Baltimore.
I shipped aboard the Lizzie or she might ha' bin the Jane;
Them wimmin names are mixey, so I don't remember plain;
But anyhow, she were a craft that carried schooner rig,
(Although Sam Swab, the bo'sun, allus swore she were a brig);
We sailed away from Salem Town, no, lemme think; 't were Lynn,
An' steered a course for Africa (or Greece, it might ha' bin);
But anyway, we tacked an' backed an' weathered many a storm
Oh, no, as I recall it now, that week was fine an' warm!
Who did I say the cap'n was? I didn't say at all?

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
We'll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
We'll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,
We'll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.

1875

A child came singing through the dusty town
A song so sweet that all men stayed to hear,
Forgetting for a space their ancient fear
Of evil days and death and fortune’s frown.

She sang of Winter dead and Spring new-born
In the green fields beyond the far hills’ bound;
And how this fair Spring, coming blossom-crowned,
Would cross the city’s threshold on the morn.

And each caged bird in every house anigh,
Even as she sang, caught up the glad refrain
Of Love and Hope and fair days come again,
Till all who heard forgot they had to die.

And all the ghosts of buried woes were laid
That heard the song of this sweet sorceress;
The Past grew to a dream of old distress,
And merry were the hearts of man and maid.

So, at the first faint blush of ten...

Sequestered in their calm domestic bower,
    They sat together.    He in manhood's prime
And she a matron in her fullest flower.
    The mantel clock gave forth a warning chime.
She put her work aside; his bright cigar
    Grew pale, and crumbled in an ashen heap.
The lights went out, save one remaining star
    That watched beside the children in their sleep.
She hummed a little song and nestled near,
    As side by side they went to their repose.
His arm about her waist, he whispered "Dear,"
    And pressed his lips upon her mouth's full rose -
The sacred sweetness of their wedded life
    Breathed in that kiss of husband and of wife.

Though I cannot give thee fires
Glittering to my free desires;
These accept, and I'll be free,
Offering poppy unto thee.

At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play
For sugar-cakes and wine:
Or for a tansy let us pay,
The loss, or thine, or mine.

If thou, my dear, a winner be
At trundling of the ball,
The wager thou shall have, and me,
And my misfortunes all.

But if, my sweetest, I shall get,
Then I desire but this:
That likewise I may pay the bet
And have for all a kiss.

"Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree!
Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree!
Growing by the rushing river,
Tall and stately in the valley!
I a light canoe will build me,
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing,
That shall float on the river,
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily!
    "Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-tree!
Lay aside your white-skin wrapper,
For the Summer-time is coming,
And the sun is warm in heaven,
And you need no white-skin wrapper!"
    Thus aloud cried Hiawatha
In the solitary forest,
By the rushing Taquamenaw,
When the birds were singing gayly,
In the Moon of Leaves were singing,
And the sun, from sleep awaking,
Started up and said, "Behold me!
Gheezis, the great Sun, behold me!"
    And the tree with a...

A golden fly one show'd to me,
Clos'd in a box of ivory,
Where both seem'd proud: the fly to have
His burial in an ivory grave;
The ivory took state to hold
A corpse as bright as burnish'd gold.
One fate had both, both equal grace;
The buried, and the burying-place.
Not Virgil's gnat, to whom the spring
All flowers sent to's burying;
Not Martial's bee, which in a bead
Of amber quick was buried;
Nor that fine worm that does inter
Herself i' th' silken sepulchre;
Nor my rare Phil,[K] that lately was
With lilies tomb'd up in a glass;
More honour had than this same fly,
Dead, and closed up in ivory.

Through the green twilight of a hedge
I peered, with cheek on the cool leaves pressed,
And spied a bird upon a nest:
Two eyes she had beseeching me
Meekly and brave, and her brown breast
Throbb'd hot and quick above her heart;
And then she oped her dagger bill, -
'Twas not a chirp, as sparrows pipe
At break of day; 'twas not a trill,
As falters through the quiet even;
But one sharp solitary note,
One desperate, fierce, and vivid cry
Of valiant tears, and hopeless joy,
One passionate note of victory:
Off, like a fool afraid, I sneaked,
Smiling the smile the fool smiles best,
At the mother bird in the secret hedge
Patient upon her lonely nest.