Identity

I

There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
That in its girdle of wild acres bears
The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
With fragrance - as in some old instrument
Sweet chords; - calm things, that Nature's magic spell
Distills from Heaven's azure crucible,
And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
There lies the path, they say -
Come away! come away!

II

There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
Vague, whispering' touches, gle...

They stream across the fading western sky
A sable cloud, far o'er the lonely leas;
Now parting into scattered companies,
Now closing up the broken ranks, still high
And higher yet they mount, while, carelessly,
Trail slow behind, athwart the moving trees
A lingering few, 'round whom the evening breeze
Plays with sad whispered murmurs as they fly.

A lonely figure, ghostly in the dim
And darkening twilight, lingers in the shade
Of bending willows: "Surely God has laid
His curse on me," he moans, "my strength of limb
And old heart-courage fail me, and I flee
Bowed with fell terror at this augury."

I.

It's a long, long way to the country, where
I wade and splash in the creek;
And a long, long way to the Ferncreek Fair,
The Fair where I was last week:
It's a long, long way to the end of the world,
Where the sun blows out his beams;
But the way is short, in your warm bed curled,
To the old, old Land of Dreams.

II.

It's a long, long way to go up stairs
When you're down in the yard below;
And a long, long way where no boy cares
To ever want to go:
It's a long, long way to the world's far end,
Where the stars sit down with God;
But the way is short, so I comprehend,
To the wonderful Land of Nod.

III.

It's a long, long way when you have to be dressed,
When you'd very much rather play;
And a long, long way,...

God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage
And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled,
No table or chair or stool not simple enough
For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant
That I myself for portions of the year
May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing
But what the great and passionate have used
Throughout so many varying centuries
We take it for the norm; yet should I dream
Sinbad the sailor's brought a painted chest,
Or image, from beyond the Loadstone Mountain,
That dream is a norm; and should some limb of the Devil
Destroy the view by cutting down an ash
That shades the road, or setting up a cottage
Planned in a government office, shorten his life,
Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom.

(Prologue To The University Of Oxford, Spoken By Mr Hart, At The Acting Of "The Silent Woman.")


    No poor Dutch peasant, wing'd with all his fear,
    Flies with more haste, when the French arms draw near,
    Than we with our poetic train come down,
    For refuge hither, from the infected town:
    Heaven, for our sins, this summer has thought fit
    To visit us with all the plagues of wit.
    A French troop first swept all things in its way;
    But those hot Monsieurs were too quick to stay:
    Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find
    They left their itch of novelty behind.
    The Italian Merry-Andrews took their place,
    And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace:
    Instead of wit and humours, your delight
    Was there to see tw...

I see the tall church steeples -
    They reach so far, so far;
But the eyes of my heart see the world's great mart
Where the starving people are.

    I hear the church bells ringing
    Their chimes on the morning air;
But my soul's sad ear is hurt to hear
    The poor man's cry of despair.

Thicker and thicker the churches,
    Nearer and nearer the sky -
But alack for their creeds while the poor man's needs
    Grow deeper as years roll by!

So, sit you down in a straight-backed chair, with your pipe and your wife content,
And cross your knees with your wisest air, and preach of the ‘days mis-spent;’
Grown fat and moral apace, old man! you prate of the change ‘since then’,
In spite of all, I’d as lief be back in those hard old days again.

They were hard old days; they were battling days; they were cruel at times, but then,
In spite of all, I would rather be back in those hard old days again.
The land was barren to sow wild oats in the days when we sowed our own,
(’Twas little we thought or our friends believed that ours would ever be sown)

But the wild oats wave on their stormy path, and they speak of the hearts of men,
I would sow a crop if I had my time in those hard old days again.
We travel first, or we go salo...

I


For toils which patriots have endur'd,
For treason quell'd and laws secur'd,
In every nation Time displays
The palm of honourable praise.
Envy may rail; and faction fierce
May strive: but what, alas, can those
(Though bold, yet blind and sordid foes)
To gratitude and love oppose,
To faithful story and persuasive verse?


O nurse of freedom, Albion, say,
Thou tamer of despotic sway,
What man, among thy sons around,
Thus heir to glory hast thou found?
What page, in all thy annals bright,
Hast thou with purer joy survey'd
Than that where truth, by Hoadly's aid,
Shines through imposture's solemn shade,
Through kingly and through sacerdotal night?


To him the Teacher bless'd,
Who sent religion, from the palmy f...

Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
And all the clouds are gone,
The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
Good times are coming on",
The evil that was threatened late
To all of our degree
Hath passed in discord and debate,
And,Hey then up go we!

A common people strove in vain
To shame us unto toil,
But they are spent and we remain,
And we shall share the spoil
According to our several needs
As Beauty shall decree,
As Age ordains or Birth concedes,
And, Hey then up go we!

And they that with accursed zeal
Our Service would amend,
Shall own the odds and come to heel
Ere worse befall their end:
For though no naked word be wrote
Yet plainly shall they see
What pinneth Orders on their coat,
And, Hey then up go we!
<...

This is the story of G.R.D.,
Who went on a mission across the sea
To borrow some money for you and me.

This G. R. Dibbs was a stalwart man
Who was built on a most extensive plan,
And a regular staunch Republican.

But he fell in the hands of the Tory crew
Who said, "It's a shame that a man like you
Should teach Australia this nasty view.

"From her mother's side she should ne'er be gone,
And she ought to be glad to be smiled upon,
And proud to be known as our hanger-on."

And G. R. Dibbs, he went off his peg
At the swells who came for his smiles to beg
And the Prince of Wales, who was pulling his leg

And he told them all when the wine had flown,
"The Australian has got no land of his own,
His home is England, and there alone."

[1]

The wise, sometimes, as lobsters do,
To gain their ends back foremost go.
It is the rower's art; and those
Commanders who mislead their foes,
Do often seem to aim their sight
Just where they don't intend to smite.
My theme, so low, may yet apply
To one whose fame is very high,
Who finds it not the hardest matter
A hundred-headed league to scatter.
What he will do, what leave undone,
Are secrets with unbroken seals,
Till victory the truth reveals.
Whatever he would have unknown
Is sought in vain. Decrees of Fate
Forbid to check, at first, the course
Which sweeps at last with torrent force.
One Jove, as ancient fables state,
Exceeds a hundred gods in weight.
So Fate and Louis[2] would seem able
The univers...

To the Elect of Love, - or side-by-side
In raptest ecstasy, or sundered wide
By seas that bear no message to or fro
Between the loved and lost of long ago.




So were I but a minstrel, deft
At weaving, with the trembling strings
Of my glad harp, the warp and weft
Of rondels such as rapture sings, -
    I'd loop my lyre across my breast,
    Nor stay me till my knee found rest
    In midnight banks of bud and flower
    Beneath my lady's lattice-bower.

And there, drenched with the teary dews,
I'd woo her with such wondrous art
As well might stanch the songs that ooze
Out of the mockbird's breaking heart;
    So light, so tender, and so sweet
    Should be the words I would repeat,
    Her casement, on my gradual sight,
...

"There are no ghosts in America."


There are no ghosts, you say,
    To haunt her blaze of light;
No shadows in her day,
    No phantoms in her night.
Columbus' tattered sail
Has passed beyond our hail.

What? On that magic coast,
    Where Raleigh fought with fate,
Or where that Devon ghost
    Unbarred the Golden Gate,
No dark, strange, ear-ringed men
Beat in from sea again?

No ghosts in Salem town
    With silver buckled shoon?
No lovely witch to drown
    Or burn beneath the moon?
Not even a whiff of tea,
On Boston's glimmering quay.

O, ghostly Spanish walls,
    Where brown Franciscans glide,
Is there no voice that calls
    Across the Great Divide,
To pilgrims on their way
Along t...

When Autumn's here and days are short,
Let LYDIA laugh and, hey!
Straightway 't is May-day in my heart,
And blossoms strew the way.

When Summer's here and days are long,
Let LYDIA sigh and, ho!
December's fields I walk among,
And shiver in the snow.

No matter what the Seasons are,
My LYDIA is so dear,
My soul admits no Calendar
Of earth when she is near.

I bring the simplest pledge of love,
Friend of my earlier days;
Mine is the hand without the glove,
The heart-beat, not the phrase.

How few still breathe this mortal air
We called by school-boy names!
You still, whatever robe you wear,
To me are always James.

That name the kind apostle bore
Who shames the sullen creeds,
Not trusting less, but loving more,
And showing faith by deeds.

What blending thoughts our memories share!
What visions yours and mine
Of May-days in whose morning air
The dews were golden wine,

Of vistas bright with opening day,
Whose all-awakening sun
Showed in life's landscape, far away,
The summits to be won!

The heights are gained. Ah, say not so
For him who smiles at time,
Leaves...

In the old days (a custom laid aside
With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent
Their wisest men to make the public laws.
And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,
Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,
Stamford sent up to the councils of the State
Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.

'T was on a May-day of the far old year
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell,

The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky
Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim
Was fringed with a d...

Call me no more,
As heretofore,
The music of a feast;
Since now, alas!
The mirth that was
In me is dead or ceas'd.

Before I went,
To banishment,
Into the loathed west,
I could rehearse
A lyric verse,
And speak it with the best.

But time, ay me!
Has laid, I see,
My organ fast asleep,
And turn'd my voice
Into the noise
Of those that sit and weep.

I.

Let Britain boast her British hosts,
About them all right little care we;
Not British seas nor British coasts
Can match the Man of Tipperary!


II.

Tall is his form, his heart is warm,
His spirit light as any fairy--
His wrath is fearful as the storm
That sweeps the Hills of Tipperary!


III.

Lead him to fight for native land,
His is no courage cold and wary;
The troops live not on earth would stand
The headlong charge of Tipperary!


IV.

Yet meet him in his cabin rude,
Or dancing with his dark-haired Mary,
You'd swear they knew no other mood
But Mirth and Love in Tipperary!


V.

You're free to share his scanty meal,
His plighted word he'll never vary--
...