Identity

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: “The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

“Look where we will o’er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

“Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

“This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older.”

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

He was, through boyhood's storm and shower,
My best, my nearest friend;
We wore one hat, smoked one cigar,
One standing at each end.

We were two hearts with single hope,
Two faces in one hood;
I knew the secrets of his youth;
I watched his every mood.

The little things that none but I
Saw were beyond his wont,
The streaming hair, the tie behind,
The coat tails worn in front.

I marked the absent-minded scream,
The little nervous trick
Of rolling in the grate, with eyes
By friendship's light made quick.

But youth's black storms are gone and past,
Bare is each aged brow;
And, since with age we're growing bald,
Let us be babies now.

Learning we knew; but still to-day,
With spelling-book devotion,
Words of...

A vision as of crowded city streets,
    With human life in endless overflow;
    Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
    To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,
Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;
    Tolling of bells in turrets, and below
    Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw
    O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!
This vision comes to me when I unfold
    The volume of the Poet paramount,
    Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;--
Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,
    And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,
    Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

My mother dandled me and sang,
‘How young it is, how young!’
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.

‘He went away,’ my mother sang,
‘When I was brought to bed,’
And all the while her needle pulled
The gold and silver thread.

She pulled the thread and bit the thread
And made a golden gown,
And wept because she had dreamt that I
Was born to wear a crown.

‘When she was got,’ my mother sang,
‘I heard a sea-mew cry,
And saw a flake of the yellow foam
That dropped upon my thigh.’

How therefore could she help but braid
The gold into my hair,
And dream that I should carry
The golden top of care?

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire.
I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.
She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound.
Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion in the darkness.
I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star overthrowing light and happiness.
But it is the moon that she makes one dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with her own influen...

Of Prometheus, how undaunted
    On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chanted,
    Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition
    Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition
Of the theft and the transmission
    Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,
    Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,--the despairing
    Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted
    Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
    Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,
    In thei...

Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love
for so enveloping my heart and brain
in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain.


In this vast landscape where chill south winds play,
where long nights hoarsen the shrill weather-vane,
it opens wide its raven’s wings, my soul,
freer than in times of mild renewal.


Nothing’s sweeter to my heart, full of sorrows,
on which the hoar-frost fell in some past time,
O pallid seasons, queens of our clime,


than the changeless look of your pale shadows,
except, two by two, to lay our grief to rest
in some moonless night, on a perilous bed.

A human skull in a church-yard lay;
For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old
On the graves of their dead were rotting away
To the like of their long-watched mould.

And an heremite toad in this desolate seat
Had made him an hermitage long agone,
Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet
Could creep o'er his cell of bone.

And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn,
When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave
A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan
This skull and its ivy would lave.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

The night her crescent had thinly hung
From a single star o'er the shattered wall,
And its feeble light on the stone was flung
Where I sat to hear him call.

And I heard this heremite toad as ...

My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river
Stirs anguish in the heart of me.

For the fast world in that rare glimmer
Puts on the witchery of a dream,
The straight grey buildings, richly dimmer,
The fiery windows, and the stream

With willows leaning quietly over,
The still ecstatic fading skies . . .
And all these, like a waiting lover,
Murmur and gleam, lift lustrous eyes,

Drift close to me, and sideways bending
Whisper delicious words.
But I
Stretch terrible hands, uncomprehending,
Shaken with love; and laugh; and cry.

My agony made the willows quiver;
I heard the knocking of my heart
Die loudly down the windless river,
I heard the pale skies fall apart,

It is a pity and a shame - alas! alas! I know it is,
To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been, so it is;
The purple vintage long is past, with ripened clusters bursting so
They filled the wine-vats to the brim,-'t is strange you will be thirsting so!

Too well our faithful memory tells what might be rhymed or sung about,
For all have sighed and some have wept since last year's snows were flung about;
The beacon flame that fired the sky, the modest ray that gladdened us,
A little breath has quenched their light, and deepening shades have saddened us.

No more our brother's life is ours for cheering or for grieving us,
One only sadness they bequeathed, the sorrow of their leaving us;
Farewell! Farewell! - I turn the leaf I read my chiming measure in;
Who knows but...

They brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun;
I said, they are drops of frozen wine
From Eden's vats that run.

I looked again,--I thought them hearts
Of friends to friends unknown;
Tides that should warm each neighboring life
Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice,
And give love's scarlet tides to flow,--
When shall that sun arise?

This book is not about heroes.    English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.    Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power,

                        except War.
            Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
            The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
            The Poetry is in the pity.
            Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
                        This is in no sense consolatory.

            They may be to the next.
            All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
            That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
            If I thought the letter of this book would last,
        I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,--my ambition ...

I. TO WERTHER.


Once more, then, much-wept shadow, thou dost dare

Boldly to face the day's clear light,
To meet me on fresh blooming meadows fair,

And dost not tremble at my sight.
Those happy times appear return'd once more.

When on one field we quaff'd refreshing dew,
And, when the day's unwelcome toils were o'er,

The farewell sunbeams bless'd our ravish'd view;
Fate bade thee go, to linger here was mine,
Going the first, the smaller loss was thine.

The life of man appears a glorious fate:
The day how lovely, and the night how great!
And we 'mid Paradise-like raptures plac'd,
The sun's bright glory scarce have learn'd to taste.

When strange contending feelings dimly cover,
Now us, and now the forms that round us...

If I should see your eyes again,
I know how far their look would go
Back to a morning in the park
With sapphire shadows on the snow.

Or back to oak trees in the spring
When you unloosed my hair and kissed
The head that lay against your knees
In the leaf shadow’s amethyst.

And still another shining place
We would remember—how the dun
Wild mountain held us on its crest
One diamond morning white with sun.

But I will turn my eyes from you
As women turn to put away
The jewels they have worn at night
And cannot wear in sober day.

Sometimes I wish the railroads all were torn out,
    The ships all sunk among the coral strands.
I am so very weary, yea so worn out,
    With tales of those who visit foreign lands.

When asked to dine, to meet these traveled people,
    My soup seems brewed from cemetery bones.
The fish grows cold on some cathedral steeple,
    I miss two courses while I stare at thrones.

I'm forced to leave my salad quite untasted,
    Some musty, moldy temple to explore.
The ices, fruit and coffee all are wasted
    While into realms of ancient art I soar.

I'd rather take my chance of life and reason,
    If in a den of roaring lions hurled
Than for a single year, ay, for one season,
    To dwell with folks who'd traveled round the world.

So patroni...

The phantoms of times forgotten
Arise from out their grave,
And show me how once in thy presence
I lived the life it gave.

In the day I wandered dreaming,
Through the streets with unsteady foot;
The people looked at me in wonder,
I was so mournful and mute.

At night, then it was better,
For empty was the town;
I and my shadow together
Walked speechless up and down.

My way, with echoing footstep,
Over the bridge I took;
The moon broke out of the waters,
And gave me a meaning look.

I stopped before thy dwelling,
And gazed, and gazed again--
Stood staring up at thy window,
My heart was in such pain.

I know that thou from thy window
Didst often look downward--and
Sawest me, there in the moonlight,
A ...

Found Solitary Among the Hills.


I.

O pansy-violet,
With early April wet,
How frail and pure you look
Lost in this glow-worm nook
Of heaven-holding hills:
Down which the hurrying rills
Fling scrolls of melodies:
O'er which the birds and bees
Weave gossamers of song,
Invisible, but strong:
Sweet music webs they spin
To snare the spirit in.


II.

O pansy-violet,
Unto your face I set
My lips, and - do you speak?
Or is it but some freak
Of fancy, love imparts
Through you unto the heart's
Desire? whispering low
A secret none may know,
But such as sit and dream
By forest-side and stream.


III.

O pansy-violet,
O darling floweret,
Hued like the timid gem
...

(An epistle from a narrow-minded old gentleman to a young artist of superior intellect and intense realism.)


Your thoughts are for the poor and weak?
    Ah, no, the picturesque's your passion!
Your tongue is always in your cheek
    At poverty that's not in fashion.

You like a ploughman's rugged face,
    Or painted eyes in Piccadilly;
But bowler hats are commonplace,
    And thread-bare tradesmen simply silly.

The clerk that sings "God save the King,"
    And still believes his Tory paper,--
You hate the anæmic fool? I thought
    You loved the weak! Was that all vapour?

Ah, when you sneer, dear democrat,
    At such a shiny-trousered Tory
Because he doffs his poor old hat
    To what he thinks his country's glory,
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