Identity

Now, by the blessed Paphian queen,
Who heaves the breast of sweet sixteen;
By every name I cut on bark
Before my morning star grew dark;
By Hymen's torch, by Cupid's dart,
By all that thrills the beating heart;
The bright black eye, the melting blue, -
I cannot choose between the two.

I had a vision in my dreams; -
I saw a row of twenty beams;
From every beam a rope was hung,
In every rope a lover swung;
I asked the hue of every eye
That bade each luckless lover die;
Ten shadowy lips said, heavenly blue,
And ten accused the darker hue.

I asked a matron which she deemed
With fairest light of beauty beamed;
She answered, some thought both were fair, -
Give her blue eyes and golden hair.
I might have liked her judgment well,
B...

O Kate! my dear Partner, through joy and through strife!
When I look back at Hymen's dear day,
Not a lovelier bride ever chang'd to a wife,
Though you're now so old, wizen'd, and gray!

Those eyes, then, were stars, shining rulers of fate!
But as liquid as stars in a pool;
Though now they're so dim, they appear, my dear Kate,
Just like gooseberries boil'd for a fool!

That brow was like marble, so smooth and so fair;
Though it's wrinkled so crookedly now,
As if time, when those furrows were made by the share,
Had been tipsy whilst driving his plough!

Your nose, it was such as the sculptors all chose,
When a Venus demanded their skill;
Though now it can hardly be reckon'd a nose,
But a sort of Poll-Parroty bill!

Your mouth, it was then qui...

I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love - it led the rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

1.
Ye who intelligent the Third Heaven move,
Hear the discourse which is within my heart,
Which cannot be declared, it seems so new.
The Heaven whose course follows your power and art,
Oh, gentle creatures that ye are! me drew,
And therefore may I dare to speak to you,
Even of the life which now I live - and yet
I pray that ye will hear me when I cry,
And tell of mine own heart this novelty;
How the lamenting Spirit moans in it,
And how a voice there murmurs against her
Who came on the refulgence of your sphere.

2.
A sweet Thought, which was once the life within
This heavy heart, man a time and oft
Went up before our Father's feet, and there
It saw a glorious Lady throned aloft;
And its sweet talk of her my soul did win,
So that I said, 'T...

Time's finger on the dial of my life
Points to high noon! and yet the half-spent day
Leaves less than half remaining, for the dark,
Bleak shadows of the grave engulf the end.
To those who burn the candle to the stick,
The sputtering socket yields but little light.
Long life is sadder than an early death.
We cannot count on ravelled threads of age
Whereof to weave a fabric.    We must use
The warp and woof the ready present yields
And toil while daylight lasts.    When I bethink
How brief the past, the future, still more brief
Calls on to action, action!    Not for me
Is time for retrospection or for dreams,
Not time for self-laudation or remorse.
Have I done nobly?    Then I must not let
Dead yesterday unborn to-morrow shame.
Have I done wrong?    Well, l...

I

It is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
My heart will dream.

Is it because the windflower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white memory of it shapes
The April now?

Because the wild-rose wears the blush
That once made sweet her maidenhood,
Its thought makes June of barren bush
And empty wood?

And then I think how young she died -
Straight, barren Death stalks down the trees,
The hard-eyed Hours by his side,
That kill and freeze.

II

When orchards are in bloom again
My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
To hear the redbird so repeat,
On boughs of rosy stain,
His blithe, loud song, - like some far strain
From out the...

A Reverie
October, 1861

One noonday, at my window in the town,
I saw a sight--saddest that eyes can see--
Young soldiers marching lustily
    Unto the wars,
With fifes, and flags in mottoed pageantry;
While all the porches, walks, and doors
Were rich with ladies cheering royally.

They moved like Juny morning on the wave,
Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime
(It was the breezy summer time),
    Life throbbed so strong,
How should they dream that Death in a rosy clime
Would come to thin their shining throng?
Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime.

Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving bed,
By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft,
On those 'brave boys (Ah War! thy theft);
    Some marching feet
Found...

I Saw the daughters of the Dawn come dancing o'er the hills;
The winds of Morn danced with them, oh, and all the sylphs of air:
I saw their ribboned roses blow, their gowns, of daffodils,
As over eyes of sapphire tossed the wild gold of their hair.

I saw the summer of their feet imprint the earth with dew,
And all the wildflowers open eyes in joy and wonderment:
I saw the sunlight of their hands waved at each bird that flew,
And all the birds, as with one voice, to their wild love gave vent.

"And, oh I" I said, "how fair you are I how fair! how very fair!
Oh, leap, my heart; and laugh, my heart! as laughs and leaps the Dawn!
Mount with the lark and sing with him and cast away your care!
For love and life are come again and night and sorrow gone!"

I saw the acoly...

This is the place.    Stand still, my steed,
    Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
    The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
    Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
    But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
    There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
    O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
    Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
    A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
    And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
    Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
    Bend down t...

1.

You have asked for a verse: - the request
In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny;
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.

2.

Were I now as I was, I had sung
What Lawrence has painted so well;[607]
But the strain would expire on my tongue,
And the theme is too soft for my shell.

3.

I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the bard in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I now merely admire,
And my heart is as grey as my head.

4.

My Life is not dated by years -
There are moments which act as a plough,
And there is not a furrow appears
But is deep in my soul as my brow.

5.

Let the young and the brilliant aspire
To sing what I gaze on in...

Out of the body for ever,
Wearily sobbing, “Oh, whither?”
A Soul that hath wasted its chances
Floats on the limitless ether.

Lost in dim, horrible blankness;
Drifting like wind on a sea,
Untraversed and vacant and moaning,
Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!

Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;
Haunted and tracked by the Past,
With fragments of pitiless voices,
And desolate faces aghast!

One saith “It is well that he goeth
Naked and fainting with cold,
Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,
Arrayed with the cunning of old!

“Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,
With pain for the glittering things
He saw on the shoulders of Rulers,
And the might in the mouths of the Kings!

“This Soul hath been one of the idlers
W...

I will be happy if but for once:
Only help me, Autumn weather,
Me and my cares to screen, ensconce
In luxury’s sofa-lap of leather!

Sleep? Nay, comfort with just a cloud
Suffusing day too clear and bright:
Eve’s essence, the single drop allowed
To sully, like milk, Noon’s water-white.

Let gauziness shade, not shroud, adjust,
Dim and not deaden, somehow sheathe
Aught sharp in the rough world’s busy thrust,
If it reach me through dreaming’s vapor-wreath.

Be life so, all things ever the same!
For, what has disarmed the world? Outside,
Quiet and peace: inside, nor blame
Nor want, nor wish whate’er betide.

What is it like that has happened before?
A dream? No dream, more real by much.
A vision? But fanciful days of yore
Brough...

From Bolton's old monastic tower
The bells ring loud with gladsome power;
The sun shines bright; the fields are gay
With people in their best array
Of stole and doublet, hood and scarf,
Along the banks of crystal Wharf,
Through the Vale retired and lowly,
Trooping to that summons holy.
And, up among the moorlands, see
What sprinklings of blithe company!
Of lasses and of shepherd grooms,
That down the steep hills force their way,
Like cattle through the budded brooms;
Path, or no path, what care they?
And thus in joyous mood they hie
To Bolton's mouldering Priory.
What would they there? Full fifty years
That sumptuous Pile, with all its peers,
Too harshly hath been doomed to taste
The bitterness of wrong and waste:
Its courts are ravaged; bu...

"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?"


I stood where ocean lashed the sounding shore
With his unresting waves, and gazed far out
Upon the billowy strife. I saw the deep
Lifting his watery arms to grasp the clouds,
While the black clouds stooped from the sable arch
Of the storm-darkened heavens, and deep to deep
Answered responsive in the ceaseless roar
Of thunders and of floods.

                                                    "Here, then, I am alone,
And this is solitude, "I murmured low,
As in the presence of the risen storm
I bowed my head abashed. "Alone?" -
The echoing concave of the skies replied, -
"Alone?" - the waves responded, and the winds
In hollow murmurs answered back - "Alone?"

"Thou canst not be alone, for God is he...