Identity

[Footnote: Sickness may be often an incentive to poetical composition; I found it so; and I esteem the following lines only because they remind me of past feelings which I would not willingly forget.]


Health! I seek thee; - dost thou love
The mountain top or quiet vale,
Or deign o'er humbler hills to rove
On showery June's dark south-west gale?
If so, I'll meet all blasts that blow,
With silent step, but not forlorn;
Though, goddess, at thy shrine I bow,
And woo thee each returning morn.

I seek thee where, with all his might,
The joyous bird his rapture tells,
Amidst the half-excluded light,
That gilds the fox-glove's pendant bells;
Where, cheerly up this bold hill's side
The deep'ning groves triumphant climb;
In groves Delight and Peace abide,

    The gipsy's life is a merry life,
    And ranting boys we be;
    We pay to none or rent or tax,
    And live untith'd and free.
    None care for us, for none care we,
    And where we list we roam,
    And merry boys we gipsies be,
    Though the wild woods are our home.

    And come what will brings no dismay;
    Our minds are ne'er perplext;
    For if to-day is a swaly day,
    We meet with luck the next.
    And thus we sing and kiss our mates,
    While our chorus still shall be,--
    Bad luck to tyrant magistrates,
    And the gipsies' camp still free.

    To mend old pans and bottom chairs
    Around the towns we tramp,
    Then a day or two our purse repairs,
    And plenty fills our camp;
    And our song we sin...

You know,
Don't you, Joe,
Those merry evenings long ago?
You know the room, the narrow stair,
The wreaths of smoke that circled there,
The corner table where we sat
For hours in after-dinner chat,
And magnified
Our little world inside.
You know,
Don't you, Joe?

Ah, those nights divine!
The simple, frugal wine,
The airs on crude Italian strings,
The joyous, harmless revelings,
Just fit for us - or kings!
At times a quaint and wickered flask
Of rare Chianti, or from the homelier cask
Of modest Pilsener a stein or so,
Amid the merry talk would flow;
Or red Bordeaux
From vines that grew where dear Montaigne
Held his domain.
And you remember that dark eye,
None too shy;
In fact, she seemed a bit too free
For y...

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.

POET.

O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
By the wind's voice and that of the drum,
By the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and father's voice,
Low on the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father and child stand,
In the upward air where their eyes turn,
Where the banner at day-break is flapping.

Words! book-words! what are you?
Words no more, for hearken and see,
My song is there in the open air--and I must sing,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

I'll weave the chord and twine in,
Man's desire and babe's desire--I'll twine them in, I'll put in life;
I'll put the bayonet's flashing point--I'll let bullets and slugs whizz;
(As one carrying a symb...

[1]From Possibility's dim chaos sprung,
    High o'er its gloom the Aërostatic Power
    Arose! - Exulting Nations hail'd the hour,
    Magnific boast of Science! - Loud they sung
Her victory o'er the element, that hung,
    Pressing to earth the Beings, who now soar
    Aerial heights; - but Wisdom bids explore
    This vaunted skill; - if, tides of air among,
We know to steer our bark. - Here Science finds
    Her buoyant hopes burst, like the bubble vain,
    Type of this art; - guilty, if still she blinds
The sense of Fear; persists thy flame to fan,
    Sky-vaulting Pride, that to the aweless winds
    Throws, for an idle Show, the LIFE OF MAN!

1: This Sonnet was written when the Balloon enthusiasm was at its height.

With a sweeter voice than birds
    Dare to twitter in their sleep,
Pipe for me a tune of words,
    Till my dancing fancies leap
Into freedom vaster far
Than the realms of Reason are!
Sing for me with wilder fire
    Than the lover ever sung,
From the time he twanged the lyre
    When the world was baby-young.

O my maiden Autumn, you -
You have filled me through and through
With a passion so intense,
All of earthly eloquence
    Fails, and falls, and swoons away
In your presence.    Like as one
Who essays to look the sun
    Fairly in the face, I say,
Though my eyes you dazzle blind
Greater dazzled is my mind.
So, my Autumn, let me kneel
    At your feet and worship you!
Be my sweetheart; let me feel
Your caress; and t...

Beside me, in the car, she sat,
She spake not, no, nor looked to me
From her to me, from me to her,
What passed so subtly, stealthily?
As rose to rose that by it blows
Its interchanged aroma flings;
Or wake to sound of one sweet note
The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this! but this,
That influent as within me dwelt
Her life, mine too within her breast,
Her brain, her every limb she felt
We sat; while o’er and in us, more
And more, a power unknown prevailed,
Inhaling, and inhaled, and still
’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed;
I passed; and know not to this day
If gold or jet her girlish hair,
If black, or brown, or lucid-grey
Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance
...

This little rill, that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope a while, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new,
When woods in early green were dressed,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Words cannot tell how br...

OCEAN GROVE, June 30, 18 - .

DEAR COUSIN JOHN:

    We got here safe - my worthy wife and me -
    And took a tent here in the woods contigious to the sea;
    We've harvested such means of grace as growed within our reach -
    We've been to several meetings here, and heard the Bishop preach;
    And everything went easy like until we took a whim -
    My wife and I - one breezy day, to take an ocean swim.

    We shouldn't have ventured on't, I think, if Sister Sunnyhopes
    Hadn't urged us over and again, and said she knew "the ropes,"
    And told how soothing it would be "in ocean rills to lave,"
    And "sport within the bounding surf," and "ride the crested wave;"
    And so we went along with her - my timid wife and me -
    Two inland noodles...

I know not wherefore, but mine eyes
    See bloom, where other eyes see blight.
They find a rainbow, a sunrise,
    Where others but discern deep night.

Men call me an enthusiast,
    And say I look through gilded haze:
Because where'er my gaze is cast,
    I see some thing that calls for praise.

I say, "Behold those lovely eyes -
    That tinted cheek of flower-like grace."
They answer in amused surprise:
    "We thought it such a common face."

I say, "Was ever scene more fair?
    I seem to walk in Eden's bowers."
They answer with a pitying air,
    "The weeds are choking out the flowers."

I know not wherefore, but God lent
    A deeper vision to my sight.
On whatsoe'er my gaze is bent
    I catch the beauty Infinite;

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -
Chríst - for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

A cold, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky;--
Thus cold and colorless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.

Full late they slept.    They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,
Disdainful of the rain outside,
Was strutting with a martial stride,
As if upon his t...

(A LEGEND OF THE PACIFIC COAST)

There are fires on Lulu Island, and the sky is opalescent
    With the pearl and purple tinting from the smouldering of peat.
And the Dream Hills lift their summits in a sweeping, hazy crescent,
    With the Capilano canyon at their feet.

There are fires on Lulu Island, and the smoke, uplifting, lingers
    In a faded scarf of fragrance as it creeps across the day,
And the Inlet and the Narrows blur beneath its silent fingers,
    And the canyon is enfolded in its grey.

But the sun its face is veiling like a cloistered nun at vespers;
    As towards the alter candles of the night a censer swings,
And the echo of tradition wakes from slumbering and whispers,
    Where the Capilano river sobs and sings.

It was Yaada, love...

You are here, and you are wanted,
    Though a waif upon life's stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
    With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing
Called your spirit into being -
Gave you strength for any fate.
Since your life by Him was needed,
All your ways by Him are heeded -
    You can trust and you can wait.

You can wait to know the meaning
    Of the troubles sent your soul;
Of the chasms intervening
    'Twixt your purpose and your goal;
Of the sorrows and the trials,
Of the silence and denials,
    Ofttimes answering to your pleas;
Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,
And of pain's too generous measure -
    You can wait the WHY of these.

Forth from planet unto planet,
    You have go...

Fair faces crowd on Christmas night
Like seven suns a-row,
But all beyond is the wolfish wind
And the crafty feet of the snow.

But through the rout one figure goes
With quick and quiet tread;
Her robe is plain, her form is frail--
Wait if she turn her head.

I say no word of line or hue,
But if that face you see,
Your soul shall know the smile of faith's
Awful frivolity.

Know that in this grotesque old masque
Too loud we cannot sing,
Or dance too wild, or speak too wide
To praise a hidden thing.

That though the jest be old as night,
Still shaketh sun and sphere
An everlasting laughter
Too loud for us to hear.

When Age comes on! -
"The deepening dusk is where the dawn
    Once glittered splendid, and the dew
In honey-drips, from red rose-lips
    Was kissed away by me and you. -
And now across the frosty lawn
Black foot-prints trail, and Age comes on -
        And Age comes on!
    And biting wild-winds whistle through
Our tattered hopes - and Age comes on!

When Age comes on! -
O tide of raptures, long withdrawn,
    Flow back in summer-floods, and fling
Here at our feet our childhood sweet,
    And all the songs we used to sing! . . .
Old loves, old friends - all dead and gone -
Our old faith lost - and Age comes on -
        And Age comes on!
    Poor hearts! have we not anything
But longings left when Age comes on?

A faint sea without wind or sun;
A sky like flameless vapour dun;
A valley like an unsealed grave
That no man cares to weep upon,
Bare, without boon to crave,
Or flower to save.

And on the lip’s edge of the down,
Here where the bent-grass burns to brown
In the dry sea-wind, and the heath
Crawls to the cliff-side and looks down,
I watch, and hear beneath
The low tide breathe.

Along the long lines of the cliff,
Down the flat sea-line without skiff
Or sail or back-blown fume for mark,
Through wind-worn heads of heath and stiff
Stems blossomless and stark
With dry sprays dark,

I send mine eyes out as for news
Of comfort that all these refuse,
Tidings of light or living air
From windward where the low clouds muse
And ...