Identity

Off with the fetters
That chafe and restrain!
Off with the chain!
Here Art and Letters,
Music and wine,
And Myrtle and Wanda,
The winsome witches,
Blithely combine.
Here are true riches,
Here is Golconda,
Here are the Indies,
Here we are free--
Free as the wind is,
Free, as the sea.
Free!

Houp-la!

What have we
To do with the way
Of the Pharisee?
We go or we stay
At our own sweet will;
We think as we say,
And we say or keep still
At our own sweet will,
At our own sweet will.

Here we are free
To be good or bad,
Sane or mad,
Merry or grim
As the mood may be,--
Free as the whim
Of a spook on a spree,--
Free to be oddities,
Not mere commodities,
Stupid and sa...

It is better, O day, that you go to your rest,
For you go like a guest who was loth to remain!
Swing open, ye gates of the east and the west,
And let out the wild shadows the night and the rain.

Ye winds, ye are dead, with your voices attuned,
That thrilled the green life in the sweet-scented sheaves,
When I touched a warm hand which has faded, and swooned
To a trance of the darkness, and blight on the leaves.

I had studied the lore in her maiden-like ways,
And the large-hearted love of my Annie was won,
’Ere Summer had passed into passionate days,
Or Autumn made ready her fruits for the Sun.

So my life was complete, and the hours that went by,
And the moon and the willow-wooed waters around,
Might have known that we rested, my Annie and I,
In hap...

1.
Far, far away, O ye
Halcyons of Memory,
Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast!
No news of your false spring
To my heart's winter bring,
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.

2.
Vultures, who build your bowers
High in the Future's towers,
Withered hopes on hopes are spread!
Dying joys, choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.

A Sense of sadness in the golden air,
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

A breathlessness, a feeling as of fear,
Holy and dim as of a mystery near,
As if the World about us listening went,
With lifted finger, and hand-hollowed ear,
Hearkening a music that we cannot hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

A prescience of the soul that has no name,
Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,
As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.

From Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all;
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself--to Michigan then,
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs--to Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas, to sing theirs,
To Tennessee and Kentucky--to the Carolinas and Georgia, to sing theirs,
To Texas, and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;
To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum, if need be,)
The idea of all--of the western world, one and inseparable.
And then the song of each member of These States.

    I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death,
    But never a face like Harold's who passed in a throe of pain.
    There were maidens and youths in the bud, and men in the lust of life;
    And women whom child-birth racked till the crying soul slipped through;
    Patriarchs withered with age and nuns ascetical white;
    And one who wasted her virgin wealth in a riot of joy.
    Brothers and sisters at last in a quiet and purple pall,
    Fellow voyagers bound to a port on an ash-blue sea,
    Locked in an utterless grief, in a mystery fearful to dream.
    All of these I have seen, but the face of Harold the bold
    Looked with a penitent pallor and stared with a sad surprise.

    For now at last he was still who never knew rest in life.
    And the ardent ...

The plain with still and wand'ring feet,

And gun full-charged, I tread,
And hov'ring see thine image sweet,

Thine image dear, o'er head.

In gentle silence thou dost fare

Through field and valley dear;
But doth my fleeting image ne'er

To thy mind's eye appear?

His image, who, by grief oppress'd,

Roams through the world forlorn,
And wanders on from east to west,

Because from thee he's torn?

When I would think of none but thee,

Mine eyes the moon survey;
A calm repose then steals o'er me,

But how, 'twere hard to say.

'I am Beauty itself among beautiful things.'
        Bhagavad-Gita


The East was crowned with snow-cold bloom
And hung with veils of pearly fleece:
They died away into the gloom,
Vistas of peace--and deeper peace.

And earth and air and wave and fire
In awe and breathless silence stood;
For One who passed into their choir
Linked them in mystic brotherhood.

Twilight of amethyst, amid
Thy few strange stars that lit the heights,
Where was the secret spirit hid?
Where was Thy place, O Light of Lights?

The flame of Beauty far in space--
Where rose the fire: in thee? in me?
Which bowed the elemental race
To adoration silently?

Sang Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her dusky face,
‘All day long from mid-day
We have talked in the one place,
All day long from shadowless noon
We have gone round and round
In the narrow theme of love
Like an old horse in a pound.’

To Solomon sang Sheba,
Planted on his knees,
‘If you had broached a matter
That might the learned please,
You had before the sun had thrown
Our shadows on the ground
Discovered that my thoughts, not it,
Are but a narrow pound.’

Said Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her Arab eyes,
‘There’s not a man or woman
Born under the skies
Dare match in learning with us two,
And all day long we have found
There’s not a thing but love can make
The world a narrow pound.’

They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less
Of sound than of words,
In lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
And songless bright birds;
Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses,
Insatiable Summer oppresses
Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses,
And faint flocks and herds.

Where in dreariest days, when all dews end,
And all winds are warm,
Wild Winter’s large flood-gates are loosen’d,
And floods, freed by storm,
From broken up fountain heads, dash on
Dry deserts with long pent up passion,
Here rhyme was first framed without fashion,
Song shaped without form.

Whence gather’d?, The locust’s glad chirrup
May furnish a stave;
The ring of a rowel and stirrup,
The wash of a wave.
The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes,<...

That I were Keats! And with a golden pen
Could for all time preserve these golden days
In rich and glowing verse, for poorer men,
Who felt their wonder, but could only gaze
With silent joy upon sweet Autumn's face,
And not record in any wise its grace!
Alas! But I am even dumb as they -
I cannot bid the fleeting hours stay,
Nor chain one moment on a page's space.

That I were Grieg! Then, with a haunting air
Of murmurs soft, and swelling, grand refrains
Would I express my love of Autumn fair
With all its wealth of harvest, and warm rains:
And with fantastic melodies inspire
A memory of each mad sunset's fire
In which the day goes slowly to its death
As through the fragrant woods dim Evening's breath
Doth soothe to sleep the drowsy songbirds' choir.

Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only, I see not only Liberty's nation, but other nations preparing;
I see tremendous entrances and exits, I see new combinations, I see the solidarity of races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage;
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?)
I see Freedom, completely arm'd, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law on one side, and Peace on the other,
A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old...

We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.
You say (but use no words) ‘this night is passing
As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .’
Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only,
‘How deathly pale my face looks in that glass . . .’

You say: ‘We sit and talk, of things important . . .
How many others like ourselves, this instant,
Mark the pendulum swinging against the wall?
How many others, laughing, sip their coffee,
Or stare at mirrors, and do not talk at all? . . .

‘This is the moment’ (so you would say, in silence)
When suddenly we have had too much of laughter:
And a freezing stillness falls, no word to say.
Our mouths feel foolish . . . For all the days hereafter
What have we saved, what news, what tune, what play?

‘We see each othe...

To E. H.


The dawn of night more fair than morning rose,
Stars hurrying forth on stars, as snows on snows
Haste when the wind and winter bid them speed.
Vague miles of moorland road behind us lay
Scarce traversed ere the day
Sank, and the sun forsook us at our need,
Belated. Where we thought to have rested, rest
Was none; for soft Maree's dim quivering breast,
Bound round with gracious inland girth of green
And fearless of the wild wave-wandering West,
Shone shelterless for strangers; and unseen
The goal before us lay
Of all our blithe and strange and strenuous day.
For when the northering road faced westward, when
The dark sharp sudden gorge dropped seaward, then,
Beneath the stars, between the steeps, the track
We followed, lighted not...

To this moment a rebel I throw down my arms,
Great Love, at first sight of Olinda's bright charms.
Make proud and secure by such forces as these,
You may now play the tyrant as soon as you please.

When Innocence, Beauty, and Wit do conspire
To betray, and engage, and inflame my Desire,
Why should I decline what I cannot avoid?
And let pleasing Hope by base Fear be destroyed?

Her innocence cannot contrive to undo me,
Her beauty's inclined, or why should it pursue me?
And Wit has to Pleasure been ever a friend,
Then what room for Despair, since Delight is Love's end?

There can be no danger in sweetness and youth,
Where Love is secured by good nature and truth;
On her beauty I'll gaze and of pleasure complain
While every kind look adds a link to my c...

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you, your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Non ha tanti animali il mar fra l' onde.

HE DESPAIRS OF ESCAPE FROM THE TORMENTS BY WHICH HE IS SURROUNDED.


    Nor Ocean holds such swarms amid his waves,
Not overhead, where circles the pale moon,
Were stars so numerous ever seen by night,
Nor dwell so many birds among the woods,
Nor plants so many clothe the field or hill,
As holds my tost heart busy thoughts each eve.

Each day I hope that this my latest eve
Shall part from my quick clay the sad salt waves,
And leave me in last sleep on some cold hill;
So many torments man beneath the moon
Ne'er bore as I have borne; this know the woods
Through which I wander lonely day and night.

For never have I had a tranquil night,
But ceaseless sighs instead from morn till eve,
Sinc...