Identity

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond’rous,
And the parle of voices thund’rous;
With the whisper of heaven’s trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On...

Robert Rawlin! Frosts were falling
When the ranger's horn was calling
Through the woods to Canada.

Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,
Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,
Gone the summer's harvest mowing,
And again the fields are gray.
Yet away, he's away!
Faint and fainter hope is growing
In the hearts that mourn his stay.

Where the lion, crouching high on
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,
Glares o'er wood and wave away,
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,
Or as thunder spent and dying,
Come the challenge and replying,
Come the sounds of flight and fray.
Well-a-day! Hope and pray!
Some are living, some are lying
In their red graves far away.

Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,
Homeward faring, weary strang...

I.

A pool of broken sunbeams lay
    Upon the passage-floor,
Radiant and rich, profound and gay
    As ever diamond bore.

Small, flitting hands a handkerchief
    Spread like a cunning trap:
Prone lay the gorgeous jewel-sheaf
    In the glory-gleaner's lap!

Deftly she folded up the prize,
    With lovely avarice;
Like one whom having had made wise,
    She bore it off in bliss.

But ah, when for her prisoned gems
    She peeped, to prove them there,
No glories broken from their stems
    Lay in the kerchief bare!

For still, outside the nursery door,
    The bright persistency,
A molten diadem on the floor,
    Lay burning wondrously.

II.

How oft have I laid fold from fold
    And peere...

        When I too long have looked upon your face,
        Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
        Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
        And terrible beauty not to be endured,
        I turn away reluctant from your light,
        And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
        A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
        From having looked too long upon the sun.
        Then is my daily life a narrow room
        In which a little while, uncertainly,
        Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
        Among familiar things grown strange to me
        Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
        Till I become accustomed to the dark.

A poet’s cat, sedate and grave
As poet well could wish to have,
Was much addicted to inquire
For nooks to which she might retire,
And where, secure as mouse in chink,
She might repose, or sit and think.
I know not where she caught the trick—
Nature perhaps herself had cast her
In such a mould philosophique,
Or else she learn’d it of her master.
Sometimes ascending, debonnair,
An apple-tree, or lofty pear,
Lodged with convenience in the fork,
She watch’d the gardener at his work;
Sometimes her ease and solace sought
In an old empty watering pot:
There, wanting nothing save a fan,
To seem some nymph in her sedan
Apparell’d in exactest sort,
And ready to be borne to court.
But love of change, it seems, has place
Not only in our wiser race...

The Youths.

O Winter, O white winter, wert thou gone
No more within the wilds were I alone
Leaping with bent bow over stock and stone!

No more alone my love the lamp should burn,
Watching the weary spindle twist and turn,
Or o'er the web hold back her tears and yearn:
O winter, O white winter, wert thou gone!

The Maidens.

Sweet thoughts fly swiftlier than the drifting snow,
And with the twisting threads sweet longings grow,
And o'er the web sweet pictures come and go,
For no white winter are we long alone.

The Youths.

O stream so changed, what hast thou done to me,
That I thy glittering ford no more can see
Wreathing with white her fair feet lovingly?

See, in the rain she stands, and, looking ...

I.
Is it you, that preach’d in the chapel there looking over the sand?
Follow’d us too that night, and dogg’d us, and drew me to land?

II.
What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I tell?
Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued me—yet—was it well
That you came unwish’d for, uncall’d, between me and the deep and my doom,
Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless gloom
Of a life without sun, without health, with out hope, without any delight
In anything here upon earth? but ah God, that night, that night
When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse there on the fatal neck
Of land running out into rock—they had saved many hundreds from wreck—
Glared on our way toward death, I remember I thought, as we past,
Does it matter how many they saved?...

The day opens with the brown light of snowfall
And past the window snowflakes fall and fall.
I sit in my chair all day and work and work
Measuring words against each other.
I open the piano and play a tune
But find it does not say what I feel,
I grow tired of measuring words against each other,
I grow tired of these four walls,
And I think of you, who write me that you have just had a daughter
And named her after your first sweetheart,
And you, who break your heart, far away,
In the confusion and savagery of a long war,
And you who, worn by the bitterness of winter,
Will soon go south.
The snowflakes fall almost straight in the brown light
Past my window,
And a sparrow finds refuge on my window-ledge.
This alone comes to me out of the world outside
A...

Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?
Not death; for who is he?
The porter of my father's lodge
As much abasheth me.

Of life? 'T were odd I fear a thing
That comprehendeth me
In one or more existences
At Deity's decree.

Of resurrection? Is the east
Afraid to trust the morn
With her fastidious forehead?
As soon impeach my crown!

    It was the morning; through the shutters closed,
    Along the balcony, the earliest rays
    Of sunlight my dark room were entering;
    When, at the time that sleep upon our eyes
    Its softest and most grateful shadows casts,
    There stood beside me, looking in my face,
    The image dear of her, who taught me first
    To love, then left me to lament her loss.
    To me she seemed not dead, but sad, with such
    A countenance as the unhappy wear.
    Her right hand near my head she sighing placed;
    "Dost thou still live," she said to me, "and dost
    Thou still remember what we were and are?"
    And I replied: "Whence comest thou, and how,
    Beloved and beautiful? Oh how, how I
    Have grieved, still grieve for thee! Nor did I think
...

I.

        That phantoms fair, with radiant hair,
        May seek at midnight hour
        The sons of men, belov'd again,
        And give them holy power;
    That souls survive the mortal hive, and sinless come and go,
    Is true as death, the prophet saith; and God will have it so.


II.

        For who be ye who doubt and prate?
        O sages! make it clear
        If ye be more than men of fate,
        Or less than men of cheer;
    If ye be less than bird or beast? O brothers! make it plain
    If ye be bankrupts at a feast, or sharers in a gain.


III.

        You say there is no future state;
        The clue ye fail to find.
        The flesh is here, and bones appear
        When graves are underm...

Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path, how soft to pace!
This May, what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?
In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
Where, outside, rain and wind combine
With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,
With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
With a malice that marks each word, each sign!
O enemy sly and serpentine,
Uncoil thee from the waking man!
Do I hold the Past
Thus firm and fast
Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?
This path so soft to pace shall lead
Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed!
Or narrow if needs the house must be,
Outside are the storms and strangers: we
Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,
I and...

Nom d' atra e tempestosa onda marina.

HE IS LED BY LOVE TO REASON.


    No wearied mariner to port e'er fled
From the dark billow, when some tempest's nigh,
As from tumultuous gloomy thoughts I fly--
Thoughts by the force of goading passion bred:
Nor wrathful glance of heaven so surely sped
Destruction to man's sight, as does that eye
Within whose bright black orb Love's Deity
Sharpens each dart, and tips with gold its head.
Enthroned in radiance there he sits, not blind,
Quiver'd, and naked, or by shame just veil'd,
A live, not fabled boy, with changeful wing;
Thence unto me he lends instruction kind,
And arts of verse from meaner bards conceal'd,
Thus am I taught whate'er of love I write or sing.

NOTT.


    Ne'er...

Among the myrtles as I walk'd
Love and my sighs thus intertalk'd:
Tell me, said I, in deep distress,
Where I may find my Shepherdess?
Thou fool, said Love, know'st thou not this?
In every thing that's sweet she is.
In yond' carnation go and seek,
There thou shalt find her lip and cheek;
In that enamell'd pansy by,
There thou shalt have her curious eye;
In bloom of peach and rose's bud,
There waves the streamer of her blood.
'Tis true, said I; and thereupon
I went to pluck them one by one,
To make of parts an union;
But on a sudden all were gone.
At which I stopp'd; Said Love, these be
The true resemblances of thee;
For as these flowers, thy joys must die;
And in the turning of an eye;
And all thy hopes of her must wither,
Like those sh...

THE CHORUS

Well hath he done who hath seiz’d happiness.
For little do the all-containing Hours,
Though opulent, freely give.
Who, weighing that life well
Fortune presents unpray’d,
Declines her ministry, and carves his own:
And, justice not infring’d,
Makes his own welfare his unswerv’d-from law.

He does well too, who keeps that clue the mild
Birth-Goddess and the austere Fates first gave.
For from the clay when these
Bring him, a weeping child,
First to the light, and mark
A country for him, kinsfolk, and a home,
Unguided he remains,
Till the Fates come again, alone, with death.

In little companies,
And, our own place once left,
Ignorant where to stand, or whom to avoid,
By city and household group’d, we live: and many sh...

    Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,
    The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew
    Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,".
    And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light
    By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools."
    And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after
    Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death
    Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried
    The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls
    And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear
    Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?
    Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart
    Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour
    When I seemed to be turned to a tree...

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
And lonely see the shooting stars appear,
Worlds rushing into judgment all the year.
O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.
Farewell to poesy--and leave the will;
Take all the world away--and leave me still
The mirth and music of a woman's voice,
That bids the heart be happy and rejoice.

Dark as the silent stream beneath the night,
    Thy funeral glides to Life's eternal home,
    Child of its narrow house! - how late the bloom,
    The facile smile, the soft eye's crystal light,
Each grace of Youth's gay morn, that charms our sight,
    Play'd o'er that Form! - now sunk in Death's cold gloom,
    Insensate! ghastly! - for the yawning tomb,
    Alas! fit Inmate. - Thus we mourn the blight
Of Virgin-Beauty, and endowments rare
    In their glad hours of promise. - O! when Age
    Drops, like the o'er-blown, faded rose, tho' dear
Its long known worth, no stormy sorrows rage;
    But swell when we behold, unsoil'd by time,
    Youth's broken Lily perished in its prime.