Identity

    My little boy, with smooth, fair cheeks,
    And dreamy, large, brown eyes,
    Not often, little wisehead, speaks,
    But hearing, weighs and tries.

    "God is not only in the sky,"
    His sister said one day--
    Not older much, but she would cry
    Like Wisdom in the way--

    "He's in this room." His dreamy, clear,
    Large eyes look round for God:
    In vain they search, in vain they peer;
    His wits are all abroad!

    "He is not here, mamma? No, no;
    I do not see him at all!
    He's not the shadows, is he?" So
    His doubtful accents fall--

    Fall on my heart, no babble mere!
    They rouse both love and shame:
    But for earth's loneliness and fear,
    I might be saying the same!

 ...

A yellow leaf from the darkness
Hops like a frog before me.
Why should I start and stand still?

I was watching the woman that bore me
Stretched in the brindled darkness
Of the sick-room, rigid with will
To die: and the quick leaf tore me
Back to this rainy swill
Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.

When I was still a youthful wight,

So full of enjoyment and merry,
The painters used to assert, in spite,

That my features were small yes, very;
Yet then full many a beauteous child
With true affection upon me smil'd.

Now as a greybeard I sit here in state,

By street and by lane held in awe, sirs;
And may be seen, like old Frederick the Great,

On pipebowls, on cups, and on saucers.
Yet the beauteous maidens, they keep afar;
Oh vision of youth! Oh golden star!

There came a day at summer's full
Entirely for me;
I thought that such were for the saints,
Where revelations be.

The sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new.

The time was scarce profaned by speech;
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at sacrament
The wardrobe of our Lord.

Each was to each the sealed church,
Permitted to commune this time,
Lest we too awkward show
At supper of the Lamb.

The hours slid fast, as hours will,
Clutched tight by greedy hands;
So faces on two decks look back,
Bound to opposing lands.

And so, when all the time had failed,
Without external sound,
Each bound the other's crucifix,
We gave no ...

High beyond the granite portal arched across
Like the gateway of some godlike giant’s hold
Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss
East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold
Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold
Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark
Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark
Full of spicery wrought from herb and flower and tree.
None would dream that grief even here may disembark
On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.
Rocks emblazoned like the mid shield’s royal boss
Take the sun with all their blossom broad and bold.
None would dream that all this moorland’s glow and gloss
Could be dark as tombs that strike the spirit acold
Even in eyes that opened here, and here behold
Now no sun relume fr...

O! were I one of the Olympian twelve,
Their godships should pass this into law,
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,
Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,
A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller's lips.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1.
The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I;
And the moon, all silve-proud,
Might as well be in a cloud.

2.
And O the spring the spring!
I lead the life of a king!
Couch'd in the teeming grass,
I spy each pretty lass.

3.
I look where no one dares,
And I st...

Rain on the face of the sea,
    Rain on the sodden land,
And the window-pane is blurred with rain
    As I watch it, pen in hand.

Mist on the face of the sea,
    Mist on the sodden land,
Filling the vales as daylight fails,
    And blotting the desolate sand.

Voices from out of the mist,
    Calling to one another:
"Hath love an end, thou more than friend,
    Thou dearer than ever brother?"

Voices from out of the mist,
    Calling and passing away;
But I cannot speak, for my voice is weak,
    And ... this is the end of my lay.

I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth,
And searched for Pleasure.    On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies.
Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway
I caught the glimmer of a golden goal,
While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love.

Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed at Love
With all the haughty insolence of youth,
As past her bower I strode to seek my goal.
"Now will I climb to glory's dizzy height,"
I said, "for there above the common way
Doth pleasure dwell companioned by the skies."

But when I reached that summit near the skies,
So far from man I seemed, so far from Love -
"Not here," I cried, "doth Pleasure find her way."
Seen from the distant borderland of youth,
Fame smiles upon us from he...

A California song!
A prophecy and indirection a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky farewell, ye neighboring waters;
My time has ended, my term has come.

Along the northern coast,
Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves,
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino country,
With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and hoarse,
With crackling blows of axes, sounding musically, driven by strong arms,
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes there in the Redwood forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death...

A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom;
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

They were like dreams that in a drowsy hour
A sad old God had dreamed in loneliness of power.
They were like dreams that in his drowsy mind
Rose slowly and then, darkening, made him wise and blind--
So that he saw no more the level sun,
Nor the small solid shadow of unclouded noon.
The dark green heights rose slowly from the green
Of the dark water till the sky was narrowly seen;
Only at night the lifting walls were still,
And stars were bright and calm above each calm dark hill.
... I could not think but that a God grown old
Saw in a dream or waking all this round of bold
And wavelike hills, and knew them but a thought,
Or but a wave uptost and poised awhile then caught
Back to the sea with waves a million more
That rise and pause and break at last upon the shore....

Beyond the need of weeping,
Beyond the reach of hands,
May she be quietly sleeping,
In what dim nebulous lands?
Ah, she who understands!

The long, long winter weather,
These many years and days,
Since she, and Death, together,
Left me the wearier ways:
And now, these tardy bays!

The crown and victor's token:
How are they worth to-day?
The one word left unspoken,
It were late now to say:
But cast the palm away!

For once, ah once, to meet her,
Drop laurel from tired hands:
Her cypress were the sweeter,
In her oblivious lands:
Haply she understands!

Yet, crossed that weary river,
In some ulterior land,
Or anywhere, or ever,
Will she stretch out a hand?
And will she understand?

"And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home."

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,
And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;
I view them talking in quiet glee
As they drop down towards the puffins' lair
By the roughest of ways;
But another with the three rides on, I see,
Whom I like not to be there!

No: it's not anybody you think of. Next
A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream
Where two sit happy and half in the dark:
They read, helped out by a frail-wick'd gleam,
Some rhythmic text;
But one sits with them whom they don't mark,
One I'm wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now
I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,
And the guests dropping wit - pert, prim, or choice,<...

In through the open window
    To the chamber where I lay,
There came the beat of merry feet,
    From the dancers over the way.
And back on the wings of the music
    That rose on the midnight air,
My rare youth came and spoke my name,
    And lo!    I was young and fair.

Once more in the glitter of gaslight
    I stood in my life's glad prime:
And heart and feet in a rhythm sweet
    Were keeping the music's time.
Like a leaf in the breeze of summer
    I drifted down the hall,
On an arm that is cold with death and mould,
    And is hidden under the pall.

Once more at a low voice's whisper
    (A voice that is long since stilled)
I felt the flush of a rising blush,
    And my pulses leaped and thrilled.
Once more in a sea of f...

No rack can torture me,
My soul's at liberty
Behind this mortal bone
There knits a bolder one

You cannot prick with saw,
Nor rend with scymitar.
Two bodies therefore be;
Bind one, and one will flee.

The eagle of his nest
No easier divest
And gain the sky,
Than mayest thou,

Except thyself may be
Thine enemy;
Captivity is consciousness,
So's liberty.

Hither from Mexico I came,
To serve a proud Iernian dame:
Was long submitted to her will;
At length she lost me at quadrille.
Through various shapes I often pass'd,
Still hoping to have rest at last;
And still ambitious to obtain
Admittance to the patriot Dean;
And sometimes got within his door,
But soon turn'd out to serve the poor:[1]
Not strolling Idleness to aid,
But honest Industry decay'd.
At length an artist purchased me,
And wrought me to the shape you see.
    This done, to Hermes I applied:
"O Hermes! gratify my pride;
Be it my fate to serve a sage,
The greatest genius of his age;
That matchless pen let me supply,
Whose living lines will never die!"
    "I grant your suit," the God replied,
And here he left me to reside.

    Another night has turned itself to day,
    Another day has melted into eve,
    And lo! again I tread the measured way
    Of word and thought, the twain to interweave,
    As flowers absorb the rays that they receive.
    And, all along the woodland where I stray,
    I think of thee, and Nature keeps me gay,
    And sorrow soothes the soul it would bereave.
    Nor will I fear that thou, so far apart,
    So dear to me, so fair, and so benign,
    Wilt un-desire the fealty of a heart
    Which evermore is pledg'd to thee and thine,
    And turns to thee, in regions where thou art,
    To hymn the praises of thy face divine!

"False," they said, "thy Pale-face lover, from the land of waking morn;
Rise and wed thy Redskin wooer, nobler warrior ne'er was born;
Cease thy watching, cease thy dreaming,
        Show the white thine Indian scorn."

Thus they taunted her, declaring, "He remembers naught of thee:
Likely some white maid he wooeth, far beyond the inland sea."
But she answered ever kindly,
        "He will come again to me,"

Till the dusk of Indian summer crept athwart the western skies;
But a deeper dusk was burning in her dark and dreaming eyes,
As she scanned the rolling prairie,
        Where the foothills fall, and rise.

Till the autumn came and vanished, till the season of the rains,
Till the western world lay fettered in midwinter's crystal chains,
Still she list...