Identity

And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee
Has been my heart - and thy dead memory
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,
Unchangingly preserved and buried there.

I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow;
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.
When the pilgrimage is done,
And we've the landscape overrun,
I am bitter, vacant, thwarted,
And your heart is unsupported.
Vainly valiant, you have missed
The manhood that should yours resist,--
Its complement; but if I could,
In severe or cordial mood,
Lead you rightly to my altar,
Where the wisest Muses falter,
And worship that world-warming spark
Which dazzles me in midnight dark,
Equalizing small and large,
While the soul it doth surcharge,
Till the poor is wealthy grown,
And the hermit never alone,--
The traveller and the road seem one
With the errand to be done,--
That were a man's and lover...

    I was the slyest boy at home,
    The slyest boy at school,
    I wanted all the world to know
    That I was no one's fool.

    I kept my childish hopes and schemes
    Locked closely in my breast,
    No single secret shared with Bob,
    The chum I liked the best.

    I never showed my squirrel's nest,
    Nor beaver dam, nor cave,
    Nor fortress where I used to go
    To be a soldier brave.

    Oh, I was sly, just awful sly,
    In winter, summer, spring,
    While Bob would tell me all he knew,
    I never told a thing.

    And yet Bob always got ahead;
    I'd find the careless knave
    Asleep within my fortress walls,
    And fishing in my cave.

    "What, yours!" he said, in great surprise,
...

I tread the paths of earlier times
Where all my steps were set to rhymes.

I gaze on scenes I used to see
When dreaming of a vague To be.

I walk in ways made bright of old
By hopes youth-limned in hues of gold.

But lo! those hopes of future bliss
Seem dull beside the joy that IS.

My noonday skies are far more bright
Than those dreamed of in morning's light,

And life gives me more joys to hold
Than all it promised me of old.

I.

What be those crown’d forms high over the sacred fountain?
Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain,
And over the flight of the Ages! O Goddesses, help me up thither!
Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither.
Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,
And stand with my head in the zenith, and roll my voice from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever thro’ Earth and her listening nations,
And mixt with the great sphere-music of stars and of constellations.


II.

What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,
Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?
On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening;
Poet, that evergreen laurel i...

Upon a day, a merry day,
When summer in her best,
Like Sunday belles, prepares for play,
And joins each merry guest,
A maid, as wild as is a bird
That never knew a cage,
Went out her parents' kine to herd,
And Jocky, as her page,

Must needs go join her merry toils;

A silly shepherd he,
And little thought the aching broils
That in his heart would be;
For he as yet knew nought of love,
And nought of love knew she;
Yet without learning love can move
The wildest to agree.

The wind, enamoured of the maid,
Around her drapery swims,
And moulds in luscious masquerade
Her lovely shape and limbs.
Smith's "Venus stealing Cupid's bow"
In marble hides as fine;
But hers were life and soul, whose glow
Makes meaner things d...

In every breast Affection fires, there dwells
    A secret consciousness to what degree
    They are themselves belov'd. - We hourly see
    Th' involuntary proof, that either quells,
Or ought to quell false hopes, - or sets us free
    From pain'd distrust; - but, O, the misery!
    Weak Self-Delusion timidly repels
    The lights obtrusive - shrinks from all that tells
Unwelcome truths, and vainly seeks repose
    For startled Fondness, in the opiate balm,
    Of kind profession, tho', perchance, it flows
To hush Complaint - O! in Belief's clear calm,
    Or 'mid the lurid clouds of Doubt, we find
    LOVE rise the Sun, or Comet of the Mind.

        1.

        FROM thine, as then, the healing virtue goes
        Into our hearts--that is the Father's plan.
        From heart to heart it sinks, it steals, it flows,
        From these that know thee still infecting those.
        Here is my heart--from thine, Lord, fill it up,
        That I may offer it as the holy cup
        Of thy communion to my every man.

        2.

        When thou dost send out whirlwinds on thy seas,
        Alternatest thy lightning with its roar,
        Thy night with morning, and thy clouds with stars
        Or, mightier force unseen in midst of these,
        Orderest the life in every airy pore;
        Guidest men's efforts, rul'st mishaps and jars,--
        'Tis only for their hearts, and nothing more...

    I would enshrine in silvern song
    The charm that bore our souls along,
        As in the sun-flushed days of summer
    We felt the pulsings of nature's throng;

    When flecks of foam of flying spray
    Smote white the red sun's torrid ray,
        Or wimpling fogs toyed with the mountain,
    Aërial spirits of dew at play;

    When hovering stars, poised in the blue,
    Came down and ever closer drew;
        Or, in the autumn air astringent,
    Glimmered the pearls of the moonlit dew.


    We talked of bird and flower and tree,
    Of God and man and destiny.
        The years are wise though days be foolish,
    We said, as swung to its goal the sea.

    Our spirits knew keen fellowship
    Of light and shadow, h...

    Lo, as a minstrel at the court of Love,
    The nightingale, who knows his mate is nigh,
    Thrills into rapture; and the stars above
    Look down, affrighted, as they would reply.
    There is contagion, and I know not why,
    In all this clamour, all this fierce delight,
    As if the sunset, when the day did swoon,
    Had drawn some wild confession from the moon.
    Have wrongs been done? Have crimes enacted been
    To shame the weird retirement of the night?
    O clamourous bird! O sad; sweet nightingale!
    Withhold thy voice, and blame not Beauty's queen.
    She may be pure, though dumb: and she is pale,
    And wears a radiance on her brow serene.

I asked of my Muse, had she any objection
    To laughing with me,--not a word for reply!
You see, it is Sfere, our time for dejection,--
    And can a Jew laugh when the rule is to cry?

You laughed then, you say? 'tis a sound to affright one!
    In Jewish delight, what is worthy the name?
The laugh of a Jew! It is never a right one,
    For laughing and groaning with him are the same.

You thought there was zest in a Jewish existence?
    You deemd that the star of a Jew could be kind?
The Spring calls and beckons with gracious insistence,--
    Jew,--sit down in sackcloth and weep yourself blind!

The garden is green and the woodland rejoices:
    How cool are the breezes, with fragrance how blent!
But Spring calls not you with her thousand swe...

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,

Ah, that Time could touch a form
That could show what Homer’s age
Bred to be a hero’s wage.
‘Were not all her life but storm,
Would not painters paint a form
Of such noble lines’ I said,
‘Such a delicate high head,
All that sternness amid charm,
All that sweetness amid strength?’
Ah, but peace that comes at length,
Came when Time had touched her form.

(Halted around the fire by night, after moon-set, they sing this beneath the trees.)



What light of unremembered skies
Hast thou relumed within our eyes,
Thou whom we seek, whom we shall find? . . .
A certain odour on the wind,
Thy hidden face beyond the west,
These things have called us; on a quest
Older than any road we trod,
More endless than desire. . . .
Far God,
Sigh with thy cruel voice, that fills
The soul with longing for dim hills
And faint horizons! For there come
Grey moments of the antient dumb
Sickness of travel, when no song
Can cheer us; but the way seems long;
And one remembers. . . .
Ah! the beat
Of weary unreturning feet,
And songs of pilgrims unreturning! . . .
The fires we left are always burning
O...

The days, the nights, flow one by one above us,
The hours go silently over our lifted faces,
We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea.
Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together.
We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee.

We sit at tables and sip our morning coffee,
We read the papers for tales of lust or crime.
The door swings shut behind the latest comer.
We set our watches, regard the time.

What have we done? I close my eyes, remember
The great machine whose sinister brain before me
Smote and smote with a rhythmic beat.
My hands have torn down walls, the stone and plaster.
I dropped great beams to the dusty street.

My eyes are worn with measuring cloths of purple,
And golden cloths, and wavering cloths, and pale.
I dream of a ...

"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa where Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd embower."
- Paradise Lost.


"Vallombrosa, I longed in thy shadiest wood
To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!"
Fond wish that was granted at last, and the Flood,
That lulled me asleep bids me listen once more.
Its murmur how soft! as it falls down the steep,
Near that Cell, yon sequestered Retreat high in air
Where our Milton was wont lonely vigils to keep
For converse with God, sought through study and prayer.

The Monks still repeat the tradition with pride,
And its truth who shall doubt? for his Spirit is here;
In the cloud-piercing rocks doth her grandeur abide,
In the pines pointing heavenward her beauty austere;
In the flower-be...

When I would muse in boyhood
The wild green woods among,
And nurse resolves and fancies
Because the world was young,
It was not foes to conquer,
Nor sweethearts to be kind,
But it was friends to die for
That I would seek and find.

I sought them far and found them,
The sure, the straight, the brave,
The hearts I lost my own to,
The souls I could not save.
They braced their belts about them,
They crossed in ships the sea,
They sought and found six feet of ground,
And there they died for me.

Mother, sit down, for I have much to say
Anent this widespread ever-growing theme
Of woman and her virtues and her rights.

I left you for the large, loud world of men,
When I had lived one little score of years.
I judged all women by you, and my heart
Was filled with high esteem and reverence
For your angelic sex; and for the wives,
The sisters, daughters, mothers of my friends
I held but holy thoughts.    To fallen stars
(Of whom you told me in our last sweet talk,
Warning me of the dangers in my path)
I gave wide pity as you bade me to,
Saying their sins harked back to my base sex.

Now listen, mother mine:    Ten years have passed
Since that clean-minded and pure-bodied youth,
Thinking to write his name upon the stars,
Went from your presenc...