Identity

After having read a Great Deal of Good Current Poetry in the Magazines and Newspapers



    Ah, they are passing, passing by,
    Wonderful songs, but born to die!
    Cries from the infinite human seas,
    Waves thrice-winged with harmonies.
    Here I stand on a pier in the foam
    Seeing the songs to the beach go home,
    Dying in sand while the tide flows back,
    As it flowed of old in its fated track.
    Oh, hurrying tide that will not hear
    Your own foam-children dying near:
    Is there no refuge-house of song,
    No home, no haven where songs belong?
    Oh, precious hymns that come and go!
    You perish, and I love you so!

Young Mary, loitering once her garden way,
Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day,
As wine that blushes water through. And soon,
Out of the gold air of the afternoon,
One knelt before her: hair he had, or fire,
Bound back above his ears with golden wire,
Baring the eager marble of his face.
Not man's nor woman's was the immortal grace
Rounding the limbs beneath that robe of white,
And lighting the proud eyes with changeless light,
Incurious. Calm as his wings, and fair,
That presence filled the garden.
    She stood there,
Saying, "What would you, Sir?"
    He told his word,
"Blessed art thou of women!" Half she heard,
Hands folded and face bowed, half long had known,
The message of that clear and holy tone,
That fluttered hot sweet sobs about h...

    Sorrow:

A garland for a grave! Fair flowers that bloom,
And only bloom to fade as fast away,
We twine your leaflets 'round our Claudia's tomb,
And with your dying beauty crown her clay.

Ye are the tender types of life's decay;
Your beauty, and your love-enfragranced breath,
From out the hand of June, or heart of May,
Fair flowers! tell less of life and more of death.

My name is Sorrow. I have knelt at graves,
All o'er the weary world for weary years;
I kneel there still, and still my anguish laves
The sleeping dust with moaning streams of tears.

And yet, the while I garland graves as now,
I bring fair wreaths to deck the place of woe;
Whilst joy is crowning many a living brow,
I crown the poor, frail dust that sleeps below.

Spirit here that reignest!
Spirit here that painest!
Spirit here that burneth!
Spirit here that mourneth!
Spirit! I bow
My forehead low,
Enshaded with thy pinions!
Spirit! I look
All passion struck,
Into thy pale dominions!


Spirit here that laughest!
Spirit here that quaffest!
Spirit here that danceth!
Spirit here that pranceth!
Spirit! with thee
I join in the glee,
While nudging the elbow of Momus!
Spirit! I flush
With a Bacchanal blush,
Just fresh from the banquet of Comus!

    A plummet of the changing universe,
    Far-cast, I flare
    Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind,
    And spaces bare
    That intermediate darks immerse
    By road of sun nor world confined.
    Upon my star-undominated gyre
    I mark the systems vanish one by one;
    Among the swarming worlds I lunge,
    And sudden plunge
    Close to the zones of solar fire;
    Or 'mid the mighty wrack of stars undone,
    Flash, and with momentary rays
    Compel the dark to yield
    Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze
    In ashes chill is now inurned.
    A space revealed,
    I see their planets turned,
    Where holders of the heritage of breath
    Exultant rose, and sank to barren death
    Beneath the stars' unhe...

My spirit holds you, Dear,
Though worlds away," -
This to their absent ones
Many can say.

"Thoughts, fancies, hopes, desires,
All must be yours;
Sweetest my memories still
Of our past hours."

I can say more than this
Now, lover mine, -
Here can I feel your kiss
Warmer than wine,

Feel your arms folding me,
Know that quick breath
That aye my soul would stir
Even in death.

'Tis not a memory, Love,
Thoughts of the past,
Fleeting remembrances
Which may not last, -

But, as I shut my eyes
Know I the sign
That you are here, yourself,
Bodily, mine. -

So, Love, I cannot say
"My spirit flies
Over the widening space,
Under dull skies,

To where your spirit is...

        One time in Arcadie's fair bowers
    There met a bright immortal band,
        To choose their emblems from the flowers
    That made an Eden of that land.

        Sweet Constancy, with eyes of hope,
    Strayed down the garden path alone
        And gathered sprays of heliotrope,
    To place in clusters at her zone.

        True Friendship plucked the ivy green,
    Forever fresh, forever fair.
        Inconstancy with flippant mien
    The fading primrose chose to wear.

        One moment Love the rose paused by;
    But Beauty picked it for her hair.
        Love paced the garden with a sigh
    He found no fitting emblem there.

        Then suddenly he saw a flame,
    A conflagration turned to bloom;
        It ...

Introductory

Art thou beautiful, O my daughter, as the budding rose of April?
Are all thy motions music, and is poetry throned in thine eye?
Then hearken unto me; and I will make the bud a fair flower,
I will plant it upon the bank of Elegance, and water it with the water of Cologne;
And in the season it shall "come out," yea bloom, the pride of the parterre;
Ladies shall marvel at its beauty, and a Lord shall pluck it at the last.

Of Propriety.

Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Polestar
Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair;
Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society;
The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros.
Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked;
Where...

Blest Spirit of Calm that dwellest in these woods!
Thou art a part of that serene repose
That ofttimes lingers in the solitudes
Of my lone heart, when the tumultuous throes
Of some vast Grief have borne me to the earth.
For I have fought with Sorrow face to face;
Have tasted of the cup that brings to some
A frantic madness and delirious mirth,
But prayed and trusted for the light to come,
To break the gloom and darkness of the place.
Through the dim aisles the sunlight penetrates,
And nature's self rejoices; heaven's light
Comes down into my heart, and in its might
My soul stands up and knocks at God's own temple-gates.

Behind my father's cottage lies
    A gentle grassy height
Up which I often ran--to gaze
    Back with a wondering sight,
For then the chimneys I thought high
    Were down below me quite!

All round, where'er I turned mine eyes,
    Huge hills closed up the view;
The town 'mid their converging roots
    Was clasped by rivers two;
From, one range to another sprang
    The sky's great vault of blue.

It was a joy to climb their sides,
    And in the heather lie!
A joy to look at vantage down
    On the castle grim and high!
Blue streams below, white clouds above,
    In silent earth and sky!

And now, where'er my feet may roam,
    At sight of stranger hill
A new sense of the old delight
    Springs in my bosom still,

Scene I. Near the place of the damned. Enter Werner and Spirit.

Werner.

    What piercing, stunning sounds assail my ear!
Wild shrieks and wrathful curses, groans and prayers,
A chaos of all cries! making the space
Through which they penetrate to flutter like
The heart of a trapped hare, - are revelling round us.
    Unlike the gloomy realm we just have quitted,
Silent and solemn, all is restless here,
All wears the ashy hue of agony.
Above us bends a black and starless vault,
Which ever echoes back the fearful voices
That rise from the abodes of wo beneath.
Around us grim-browed desolation broods,
While, far below, a sea of pale gray clouds,
Like to an ocean tempest beaten, boils.
Whither shall we direct our journey now?

Spirit.

Young ardent soul, graced with fair Nature's truth,
Spring warmth of heart, and fervency of mind,
And still a large late love of all thy kind.
Spite of the world's cold practice and Time's tooth, -
For all these gifts, I know not, in fair sooth,
Whether to give thee joy, or bid thee blind
Thine eyes with tears, - that thou hast not resign'd
The passionate fire and freshness of thy youth:
For as the current of thy life shall flow,
Gilded by shine of sun or shadow-stain'd,
Through flow'ry valley or unwholesome fen,
Thrice blessed in thy joy, or in thy woe
Thrice cursed of thy race, - thou art ordain'd
To share beyond the lot of common men.

Dear, had the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim “I know you both,
“Have recognized your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you: live in peace!”
How many precious months and years
Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,
The world, and what it fears?


How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,
Society’s true ornament,
Ere we dared wander, nights like this,
Thro’ wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
And feel the Boulevart break again
To warmth and light and bliss?


I know! the world proscribes not love;
Allows my finger to caress
Your lips’ contour and downiness,
Provided it supply a glove.
The world’s good word! the Institute!<...

I'm twenty-two - I'm twenty-two -
    They gaily give me joy,
As if I should be glad to hear
    That I was less a boy.
They do not know how carelessly
    Their words have given pain,
To one whose heart would leap to be
    A happy boy again.

I had a light and careless heart
    When this brief year began,
And then I pray'd that I might be
    A grave and perfect man.
The world was like a blessed dream
    Of joyous coming years -
I did not know its manliness
    Was but to wake in tears.

A change has on my spirit come,
    I am forever sad;
The light has all departed now
    My early feelings had;
I used to love the morning grey,
    The twilight's quiet deep,
But now like shadows on the sea,
    Upon my thought...

Farewell thou thing, time past so known, so dear
To me as blood to life and spirit; near,
Nay, thou more near than kindred, friend, man, wife,
Male to the female, soul to body; life
To quick action, or the warm soft side
Of the resigning, yet resisting bride.
The kiss of virgins, first fruits of the bed,
Soft speech, smooth touch, the lips, the maidenhead:
These and a thousand sweets could never be
So near or dear as thou wast once to me.
O thou, the drink of gods and angels! wine
That scatter'st spirit and lust, whose purest shine
More radiant than the summer's sunbeams shows;
Each way illustrious, brave, and like to those
Comets we see by night, whose shagg'd portents
Foretell the coming of some dire events,
Or some full flame which with a pride aspires,

Nevermore at doorways that are barken
Shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight;
Nor the circle which thou once didst darken,
Shine with footsteps of the neighbouring moonlight,
Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,
Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,
Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;
Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,
Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

And no more, between the savage wonder
Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,
Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under
Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming
Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken,
Of the Spring called; and the music measure
Of thy sap mad...

A wondrous city, that had temples there
More rich than that one built by David's son,
Which called forth Ophir's gold, when Israel
Made Lebanon half naked for her sake.
I saw white towers where so-called traitors died,
True men whose tongues were bells to honest hearts,
And rang out boldly in false monarch's ears.
Saw old black gateways, on whose arches crouched
Stone lions with their bodies gnawed by age.
I looked with awe on iron gates that could
Tell bloody stones if they had our tongues.
I saw tall mounted spires shine in the sun,
That stood amidst their army of low streets.
I saw in buildings pictures, statues rare,
Made in those days when Rome was young, and new
In marble quarried from Carrara's hills;
Statues by sculptors that could almost make
Fin...

Alone they walked - their fingers knit together,
And swaying listlessly as might a swing
Wherein Dan Cupid dangled in the weather
Of some sun-flooded afternoon of Spring.

Within the clover-fields the tickled cricket
Laughed lightly as they loitered down the lane,
And from the covert of the hazel-thicket
The squirrel peeped and laughed at them again.

The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases
Along the road-side in the shadows dim,
Went following the blossoms of their faces
As though their sweets must needs be shared with him.

Between the pasture bars the wondering cattle
Stared wistfully, and from their mellow bells
Shook out a welcoming whose dreamy rattle
Fell swooningly away in faint farewells.

And though at last the gloom of night fe...