Identity

I know it all . . . I know.
For I am God. I am Jehovah, He
Who made you what you are; and I can see
The tears that wet your pillow night by night,
When nurse has lowered that too-brilliant light;
When the talk ceases, and the ward grows still,
And you have doffed your will:
I know the anguish and the helplessness.
I know the fears that toss you to and fro.
And how you wrestle, weariful,
With hosts of little strings that pull
About your heart, and tear it so.
I know.

Lord, do You know
I had no time to put clean curtains up;
No time to finish darning all the socks;
Nor sew clean frilling in the children's frocks?
And do You know about my Baby's cold?
And how things are with my sweet three- year-old?
Will Jane remember right
Their cough ...

Dear little Ethel,
    Child that I love,
Come, as an angel,
    Down from above.

Golden-rayed tresses,
    Shining and bright,
Inviting caresses,
    Mirroring light.

Eyes blue and tender,
    Beaming with joy.
Who would offend her?
    Who would annoy?

Ripple thy laughter!
    Bubble thy glee!
Loud will the rafter
    Echo to thee.

Clinging to mother,
    Set on her knee;
She has no other
    Dearer than thee.

Slave thou hast bound her;
    Nestles thine arm,
Twining around her,
    Telling thy charm.

Innocent speeches
    Silencing strife;
Hallowed each is:
    Pearls of a life.

Come, come and kiss me,
    Child of my heart.
Oh! I would miss thee<...

Fair summer home peninsula,
    Enriched by every breeze
From fragrant islands, wafted far
    Across the sunny seas!

A profile rare! a height of land
    Outlined 'gainst heaven's blue
With bolder touch than skillful hand
    Of artist ever drew.

In "mountain billows" that parade
    The grandeur of the deep,
Is His supremacy displayed
    Whose hands the waters keep.

No sweep of waves, in broad expanse,
    With wild, weird melody,
Shall thus an unseen world enhance -
    "There shall be no more sea!"

A wealth of joy-perfected days,
    Where glorious sunset dyes,
Resplendent in declining rays,
    Surpass Italia's skies!

Proud caravansaries that compete
    In studied arts to please
The multitude, ...

Death!    I know not what room you are abiding in,
    But I will go my way,
    Rejoicing day by day,
    Nor will I flee or stay
For fear I tread the path you may be hiding in.

Death!    I know not, if my small barque be nearing you;
    But if you are at sea,
    Still there my sails float free;
    'What is to be will be.'
Nor will I mar the happy voyage by fearing you.

Death!    I know not, what hour or spot you wait for me;
    My days untroubled flow,
    Just trusting on, I go,
    For oh, I know, I know,
Death is but Life that holds some glad new fate for me.

Builder, in building the little house,
In every way you may please yourself;
But please please me in the kitchen chimney:
Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.

However far you must go for bricks,
Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound,
But me enough for a full-length chimney,
And build the chimney clear from the ground.

It's not that I'm greatly afraid of fire,
But I never heard of a house that throve
(And I know of one that didn't thrive)
Where the chimney started above the stove.

And I dread the ominous stain of tar
That there always is on the papered walls,
And the smell of fire drowned in rain
That there always is when the chimney's false.

A shelf's for a clock or vase or picture,
But I don't see why it should have to bear

The Beasts that be
In wood and waste,
Now sit and see,
Nor ride nor haste.

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.

IRREGULAR ODE.

Bring me the slumbering souls of flowers,
    While yet, beneath some northern sky,
Ungilt by beams, ungemmed by showers,
They wait the breath of summer hours,
    To wake to light each diamond eye,
    And let loose every florid sigh!

Bring me the first-born ocean waves,
From out those deep primeval caves,
Where from the dawn of Time they've lain--
    THE EMBRYOS OF A FUTURE MAIN!--
Untaught as yet, young things, to speak
    The language of their PARENT SEA
(Polyphlysbaean named, in Greek),
Tho' soon, too soon, in bay and creek,
Round startled isle and wondering peak,
    They'll thunder loud and long as HE!

Bring me, from Hecla's iced abode,
    Young fires--

    I had got, dear, thus far in my ODE

There is nothing at all to do to-day.
I can't go out and run and play;
For it's raining and snowing and sleeting, too;
And Old Man Winter he is to blame.
And I just sit here and think it a shame.
There is nothing at all to do.

I stand or sit at the windowpane,
And look at the snow and look at the rain,
And the old dead leaves go flying by;
For Wild Man Wind is making a din;
And mother says that it is a sin:
And I'm almost ready to cry.

I can't go out in the wind and wet,
And it's a long time yet till the table's set,
And we are ready for toast and tea:
It's a long time too till the lamp is lit,
And my father's home and I can sit,
And he can read to me.

And I can not play or do a thing;
And there's no one coming visiting,
F...

        If I should die, how kind you all would grow!
        In that strange hour I would not have one foe.
    There are no words too beautiful to say
    Of one who goes forevermore away
        Across that ebbing tide which has no flow.

        With what new lustre my good deeds would glow!
        If faults were mine, no one would call them so,
    Or speak of me in aught but praise that day,
    If I should die.

        Ah, friends! before my listening ear lies low,
        While I can hear and understand, bestow
    That gentle treatment and fond love, I pray,
    The lustre of whose late though radiant way
        Would gild my grave with mocking light, I know,
    If I should die.

Set me back for twenty summers,
For I’m tired of cities now,
Set my feet in red-soil furrows
And my hands upon the plough,
With the two ‘Black Brothers’ trudging
On the home stretch through the loam,
While, along the grassy siding,
Come the cattle grazing home.

And I finish ploughing early,
And I hurry home to tea,
There’s my black suit on the stretcher,
And a clean white shirt for me.
There’s a dance at Rocky Rises,
And, when all the fun is o’er,
For a certain favoured party
There’s a shake-down on the floor.

You remember Mary Carey,
Bushmen’s favourite at the Rise?
With her sweet small freckled features,
Red-gold hair, and kind grey eyes;
Sister, daughter, to her mother,
Mother, sister, to the rest,
And of all my fri...

"My sweet, my child, through all this night
    Of dark and wind and rain,
Where thunder crashes, and the light
    Sears the bewildered brain,

"It is your face, your lips, your eyes
    I see rise up; I hear
Your voice that sobs and calls and cries,
    Or shrills and mocks at fear.

"O this that's mine is yours as well,
    For side by side our feet
Trod through these bitter brakes of hell.
    Take it, my child, my sweet!"

From morn till noon upon the window-pane
The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails,
And all the afternoon the blustering gales
Beat at the door with furious feet of rain.
The rose, near which the lily bloom lay slain,
Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails,
On which the sullen slug left slimy trails
Meseemed the sun would never shine again.
Then in the drench, long, loud and full of cheer,
A skyey herald tabarded in blue,
A bluebird bugled... and at once a bow
Was bent in heaven, and I seemed to hear
God's sapphire spaces crystallizing through
The strata'd clouds in azure tremolo.

I curst thee oft, I pitie now thy case,
Blind-hitting Boy, since she that thee and me
Rules with a becke, so tyranniseth thee,
That thou must want or food or dwelling-place,
For she protests to banish thee her face.
Her face! O Loue, a roge thou then shouldst be,
If Loue learne not alone to loue and see,
Without desire to feed of further grace.
Alas, poor wag, that now a scholler art
To such a schoolmistresse, whose lessons new
Thou needs must misse, and so thou needs must smart.
Yet, deare, let me his pardon get of you,
So long, though he from book myche to desire,
Till without fewell you can make hot fire.

O the night was dark and the night was late,
    And the robbers came to rob him;
And they picked the locks of his palace-gate,
    The robbers that came to rob him -
They picked the locks of his palace-gate,
Seized his jewels and gems of state,
His coffers of gold and his priceless plate, -
    The robbers that came to rob him.

But loud laughed he in the morning red! -
    For of what had the robbers robbed him? -
Ho! hidden safe, as he slept in bed,
    When the robbers came to rob him, -
They robbed him not of a golden shred
Of the childish dreams in his wise old head -
"And they're welcome to all things else," he said,
    When the robbers came to rob him.

That learned Father which so firmly proues
The soule of man immortall and diuine,
And doth the seuerall offices define,
Anima. Giues her that name as shee the body moues,
Amor. Then is she loue imbracing Charitie,
Animus. Mouing a will in vs, it is the mind,
Mens. Retayning knowledge, still the same in kind;
Memoria. As intelectuall it is the memorie,
Ratio. In judging, Reason onely is her name,
Sensus. In speedy apprehension it is sence,
Conscientia. In right or wrong, they call her conscience.
Spiritus. The spirit, when it to Godward doth inflame.
    These of the soule the seuerall functions bee,
    Which my hart lightned by thy loue doth see.

I

In days when men had joy of war,
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
From Israel's land to isles afar.

II

His crimson form, with clang and chime,
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,
And kings invoked, for rape and raid,
His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.

III

On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,
On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:
His haloes rayed the very gore,
And corpses wore his glory-gleam.

IV

Often an early King or Queen,
And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;
'Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,
And Nelson on his blue demesne.

V

But new light spread. That god's gold nimb
And blazon have waned dimme...

They 've got a brand-new organ, Sue,
For all their fuss and search;
They've done just as they said they'd do,
And fetched it into church.
They're bound the critter shall be seen,
And on the preacher's right
They've hoisted up their new machine,
In every body's sight.
They've got a chorister and choir,
Ag'in' my voice and vote;
For it was never my desire,
To praise the Lord by note!

I've been a sister good an' true
For five-an'-thirty year;
I've done what seemed my part to do,
An' prayed my duty clear;
I've sung the hymns both slow and quick,
Just as the preacher read,
And twice, when Deacon Tubbs was sick,
I took the fork an' led!
And now, their bold, new-fangled ways
Is comin' all about;
And I, right in my latter days,