Identity

I

THE RIVER

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
Silent the swans beside us float
None speaks, none heeds, ah, turn thy head.

Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland:
Ah, let them rest, those eyes, on mine;
On mine let rest that lovely hand.

My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid:
Ah, let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head.

Before I die, before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again:

Before this teas’d o’erlabour’d heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes o...

Elegance floats about thee like a dress,
    Melting the airy motion of thy form
Into one swaying grace, and loveliness,
    Like a rich tint that makes a picture warm,
Is lurking in the chesnut of thy tress,
    Enriching it, as moonlight after storm
Mingles dark shadows into gentleness.
    A beauty that bewilders like a spell
Reigns in thine eye's clear hazel, and thy brow
    So pure in vein'd transparency doth tell
How spiritually beautiful art thou -
    A temple where angelic love might dwell.
Life in thy presence were a thing to keep,
Like a gay dreamer clinging to his sleep.

An ancient chestnut’s blossoms threw
Their heavy odour over two:
Leucippe, it is said, was one;
The other, then, was Alciphron.
‘Come, come! why should we stand beneath?’
This hollow tree’s unwholesome breath?’
Said Alciphron, ‘here’s not a blade
Of grass or moss, and scanty shade.
Come; it is just the hour to rove
In the lone dingle shepherds love;
There, straight and tall, the hazel twig
Divides the crookàed rock-held fig,
O’er the blue pebbles where the rill
In winter runs and may run still.
Come then, while fresh and calm the air,
And while the shepherds are not there.’

Leucippe.    But I would rather go when they
                    Sit round about and sing and play.
                    Then why so hurry me? for you
                  ...

I

Queer are the ways of a man I know:
    He comes and stands
    In a careworn craze,
    And looks at the sands
    And the seaward haze,
    With moveless hands
    And face and gaze,
    Then turns to go . . .
And what does he see when he gazes so?

II

They say he sees as an instant thing
    More clear than to-day,
    A sweet soft scene
    That once was in play
    By that briny green;
    Yes, notes alway
    Warm, real, and keen,
    What his back years bring -
A phantom of his own figuring.

III

Of this vision of his they might say more:
    Not only there
    Does he see this sight,
    But everywhere
    In his brain day, night,
    As if on the air
    It were drawn...

One gloomy eve I roamed about
Neath Oxey's hazel bowers,
While timid hares were darting out,
To crop the dewy flowers;
And soothing was the scene to me,
Right pleased was my soul,
My breast was calm as summer's sea
When waves forget to roll.

But short was even's placid smile,
My startled soul to charm,
When Nelly lightly skipt the stile,
With milk-pail on her arm:
One careless look on me she flung,
As bright as parting day;
And like a hawk from covert sprung,
It pounced my peace away.

Two children in two neighbor villages
Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
Two strangers meeting at a festival;
Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall:
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower,
Wash’d with still rains and daisy-blossomed;
Two children in one hamlet born and bred:
So runs the round of life from hour to hour.

Poichè per mio destino.

IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: IN THEM HE FINDS EVERY GOOD, AND HE CAN NEVER CEASE TO PRAISE THEM.


    Since then by destiny
I am compell'd to sing the strong desire,
Which here condemns me ceaselessly to sigh,
May Love, whose quenchless fire
Excites me, be my guide and point the way,
And in the sweet task modulate my lay:
But gently be it, lest th' o'erpowering theme
Inflame and sting me, lest my fond heart may
Dissolve in too much softness, which I deem,
From its sad state, may be:
For in me--hence my terror and distress!
Not now as erst I see
Judgment to keep my mind's great passion less:
Nay, rather from mine own thoughts melt I so,
As melts before the summer sun the snow.

At first I fondly thought

He lets me listen, when he moves me,
Words are not like other words
He takes me, from under my arms
He plants me, in a distant cloud
And the black rain in my eyes
Falls in torrents, torrents
He carries me with him, he carries me
To an evening of perfumed balconies


And I am like a child in his hands
Like a feather carried by the wind
He carries for me seven moons in his hands
and a bundle of songs
He gives me sun, he gives me summer
and flocks of swallows
He tells me that I am his treasure
And that I am equal to thousands of stars
And that I am treasure, and that I am
more beautiful than he has seen of paintings
He tells me things that make me dizzy
that make me forget the dance and the steps


Words...which overturn my...

    When in the Thracian dust uprooted lay,
    In ruin vast, the strength of Italy,
    And Fate had doomed Hesperia's valleys green,
    And Tiber's shores,
    The trampling of barbarian steeds to feel,
    And from the leafless groves,
    On which the Northern Bear looks down,
    Had called the Gothic hordes,
    That Rome's proud walls might fall before their swords;
    Exhausted, wet with brothers' blood,
    Alone sat Brutus, in the dismal night;
    Resolved on death, the gods implacable
    Of heaven and hell he chides,
    And smites the listless, drowsy air
    With his fierce cries of anger and despair.

    "O foolish virtue, empty mists,
    The realms of shadows, are thy schools,
    And at thy heels repentance follows fast.
  ...

My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,
As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;
As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,
To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.

I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow
Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set;
Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow
The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.

Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound,
To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er,
The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around
With their insatiate need to wonder and adore.

The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands,
The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine,
Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beade...

The jungle where the meow goes in, is
a forest for hoodlums.
Trucking up, the empty warriors
breakfast on lost impatience,
apricot fields away.


Now see them speed away.
Their lollipop cars drizzling in the sun.
Their apathetic stares really cantaloupe harvests,
left too long in the sun.

Was it a dream? We sail’d, I thought we sail’d,
Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream,
Under o’erhanging pines; the morning sun,
On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,
On the red pinings of their forest floor,
Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines
The mountain skirts, with all their sylvan change
Of bright-leaf’d chestnuts, and moss’d walnut-trees,
And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.
Swiss chalets glitter’d on the dewy slopes,
And from some swarded shelf high up, there came
Notes of wild pastoral music: over all
Rang’d, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow.
Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge.
Back’d by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood,
Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves
Muffled its walls, and on the stone-stre...

The waning moon looks upward; this grey night
Slopes round the heavens in one smooth curve
Of easy sailing; odd red wicks serve
To show where the ships at sea move out of sight.

The place is palpable me, for here I was born
Of this self-same darkness. Yet the shadowy house below
Is out of bounds, and only the old ghosts know
I have come, I feel them whimper in welcome, and mourn.

My father suddenly died in the harvesting corn
And the place is no longer ours. Watching, I hear
No sound from the strangers, the place is dark, and fear
Opens my eyes till the roots of my vision seems torn.

Can I go no nearer, never towards the door?
The ghosts and I we mourn together, and shrink
In the shadow of the cart-shed. Must we hover on the brink
Forever, and nev...

Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
The other birds woke all around,
Rising with toot and howl they stirred
Their plumage, broke the trembling sound,
They craned their necks, they fluttered wings,
"While we are silent no one sings,
And while we sing you hush your throat,
Or tune your melody to our note."

Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
The screams and hootings rose again:
They gaped with raucous beaks, they whirred
Their noisy plumage; small but plain
The lonely hidden singer made
A well of grief within the glade.
"Whist, silly fool, be off," they shout,
"Or we'll come pluck your feathers out."

Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
Slight and small the lovely cry
Came trickling down, but no one heard.
Parrot and cuckoo, crow,...

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

Ariel to Miranda: - Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee,
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain;
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who,
From life to life, must still pursue
Your happiness; - for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlu...

So, I’ve battled it through on my own, Jack,
I have done with all dreaming and doubt.
Though “stoney” to-night and alone, Jack,
I am watching the Old Year out.
I have finished with brooding and fears,
Jack, And the spirit is rising in me,
For the sake of the old New Years, Jack,
And the bright New Years to be.

I have fallen in worldly disgrace, Jack,
And I know very well that you heard;
They have blackened my name in this place, Jack,
And I answered them never a word.
But why should I bluster or grieve,
Jack? So narrow and paltry they be,
I knew you would never believe, Jack,
The lies that were said against me.

That is done which shall never be undone,
And I blame not, I blame not my land,
But I’m hearing the Calling of London,
And I...

A wild spring upland all this charmed page,
Where, in the early dawn, the maenads rage,
Mad, chaste, and lovely! This, a darker spot
Where lone Antigone bewails her lot.
Death for her spouse, her bridal-bed the tomb.
And this, again, is some rich palace-room.
Where Phsedra pines: "0 woodlands! 0, the sea!"
Or some sweet walk of Sappho, beauteously
Built o'er with rose, with bloom of purple grapes!
They are all here, the ancient Attic shapes
Of passion, beauty, terror, love, and shame;
Proud shadows, you do summon them by name:
Achaean princes, Helen, the young god.
Fair Dionysus, CEdipus, who trod
Such ways of doom! Aye, these and more than these
You call across the ages and the seas!
And each one, answering, doth dream he lists
To the great voices of old...