Identity

The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine
Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more;
The woven wreaths of oak and pine
Are dust along the Isthmian shore.

But beauty hath its homage still,
And nature holds us still in debt;
And woman's grace and household skill,
And manhood's toil, are honored yet.

And we, to-day, amidst our flowers
And fruits, have come to own again
The blessings of the summer hours,
The early and the latter rain;

To see our Father's hand once more
Reverse for us the plenteous horn
Of autumn, filled and running o'er
With fruit, and flower, and golden corn!

Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold;
Once more with harvest-song and shout
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.

O...

Ere my heart beats too coldly and faintly
    To remember sad things, yet be gay,
I would sing a brief song of the world's little children
    Magic hath stolen away.

The primroses scattered by April,
    The stars of the wide Milky Way,
Cannot outnumber the hosts of the children
    Magic hath stolen away.

The buttercup green of the meadows,
    The snow of the blossoming may,
Lovelier are not than the legions of children
    Magic hath stolen away.

The waves tossing surf in the moonbeam,
    The albatross lone on the spray,
Alone know the tears wept in vain for the children
    Magic hath stolen away.

In vain: for at hush of the evening,
    When the stars twinkle into the grey,
Seems to echo the far-away calling of children...

In form and feature, face and limb,
    I grew so like my brother,
That folks got taking me for him,
    And each for one another.
It puzzled all our kith and kin,
    It reach'd an awful pitch;
For one of us was born a twin,
    Yet not a soul knew which.

One day (to make the matter worse),
    Before our names were fix'd,
As we were being wash'd by nurse
    We got completely mix'd;
And thus, you see, by Fate's decree,
    (Or rather nurse's whim),
My brother John got christen'd me,
    And I got christen'd him.

This fatal likeness even dogg'd
    My footsteps when at school,
And I was always getting flogg'd,
    For John turned out a fool.
I put this question hopelessly
    To every one I knew,
What 

On Translations of Homer

Hexameters acrd Pentameters.

These lame hexameters the strong-wing’d music of Homer!
No—but a most burlesque barbarous experiment.
When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England?
When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon?
Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us,
Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters.



Milton

Alcaics.

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
O skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr’d from Jehovah’s gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrëan
Rings to the roar of an angel onset—
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
Th...

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed
Beated and chopp’d with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
’Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Life is not all for effort: there are hours,
When fancy breaks from the exacting will,
And rebel thought takes schoolboy's holiday,
Rejoicing in its idle strength. 'Tis then,
And only at such moments, that we know
The treasure of hours gone - scenes once beheld,
Sweet voices and words bright and beautiful,
Impetuous deeds that woke the God within us,
The loveliness of forms and thoughts and colors,
A moment marked and then as soon forgotten.
These things are ever near us, laid away,
Hidden and waiting the appropriate times,
In the quiet garner-house of memory.
There in the silent unaccounted depth,
Beneath the heated strainage and the rush
That teem the noisy surface of the hours,
All things that ever touched us are stored up,
Growing more mellow like sea...

Down through the woods, along the way
That fords the stream; by rock and tree,
Where in the bramble-bell the bee
Swings; and through twilights green and gray
The redbird flashes suddenly,
My thoughts went wandering to-day.
I found the fields where, row on row,
The blackberries hang dark with fruit;
Where, nesting at the elder's root,
The partridge whistles soft and low;
The fields, that billow to the foot
Of those old hills we used to know.
There lay the pond, all willow-bound,
On whose bright face, when noons were hot,
We marked the bubbles rise; some plot
To lure us in; while all around
Our heads, like faery fancies, shot
The dragonflies without a sound.
The pond, above which evening bent
To gaze upon her gypsy face;
Wherein the twinkling...

I.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.

III.
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.

IV.
What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her thr...

Heart of my heart, the day is chill,
The mist hangs low o'er the wooded hill,
The soft white mist and the heavy cloud
The sun and the face of heaven shroud.
The birds are thick in the dripping trees,
That drop their pearls to the beggar breeze;
No songs are rife where songs are wont,
Each singer crouches in his haunt.

Heart of my heart, the day is chill,
Whene'er thy loving voice is still,
The cloud and mist hide the sky from me,
Whene'er thy face I cannot see.
My thoughts fly back from the chill without,
My mind in the storm drops doubt on doubt,
No songs arise. Without thee, love,
My soul sinks down like a frightened dove.

With little here to do or see
Of things that in the great world be,
Daisy! again I talk to thee,
For thou art worthy,
Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!

Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similies,
Loose types of things through all degrees,
Thoughts of thy raising:
And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,
As is the humour of the game,
While I am gazing.

A nun demure of lowly port;
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies drest;
A starveling in a scanty vest;
Are all, as seems to suit thee best,
Thy appellations....

To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song;
Through that vague wafture, expirations strong
Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long
With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring
And ecstasy of burgeoning.
Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry,
Forth venture odors of more quality
And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry,
Long musca...

Must I believe this beauty wholly gone
    That in her picture here so deathless seems,
And must I henceforth speak of her as one
    Tells of some face of legend or of dreams,
Still here and there remembered - scarce believed,
Or held the fancy of a heart bereaved.

So beautiful she - was; ah! "was," say I,
    Yet doubt her dead - I did not see her die.
Only by others borne across the sea
Came the incredible wild blasphemy
They called her death - as though it could be true
Of such an immortality as you!

True of these eyes that from her picture gaze,
    Serene, star-steadfast, as the heaven's own eyes;
Of that deep bosom, white as hawthorn sprays,
    Where my world-weary head forever lies;
True of these quiet hands, so marble-cool,
Still on ...

‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land,
‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with sho...

I have come with my verses - I think I may claim
It is not the first time I have tried on the same.
They were puckered in rhyme, they were wrinkled in wit;
But your hearts were so large that they made them a fit.

I have come - not to tease you with more of my rhyme,
But to feel as I did in the blessed old time;
I want to hear him with the Brobdingnag laugh -
We count him at least as three men and a half.

I have come to meet judges so wise and so grand
That I shake in my shoes while they're shaking my hand;
And the prince among merchants who put back the crown
When they tried to enthrone him the King of the Town.

I have come to see George - Yes, I think there are four,
If they all were like these I could wish there were more.
I have come to see one whom...

Fate now allows us,

'Twixt the departing

And the upstarting,
Happy to be;
And at the call of

Memory cherish'd,

Future and perish'd
Moments we see.

Seasons of anguish,

Ah, they must ever

Truth from woe sever,
Love and joy part;
Days still more worthy

Soon will unite us,

Fairer songs light us,
Strength'ning the heart.

We, thus united,

Think of, with gladness,

Rapture and sadness,
Sorrow now flies.
Oh, how mysterious

Fortune's direction!

Old the connection,

New-born the prize!

Thank, for this, Fortune,

Wavering blindly!

Thank all that kindly
Fate may bestow!
Revel in change's

Impulses cl...

You hearken, fellows? Turned aside
Into the road-house of the past!
The prince of vagabonds is gone
To house among his peers at last.

The stainless gallant gentleman,
So glad of life, he gave no trace,
No hint he even once beheld
The spectre peering in his face;

But gay and modest held the road,
Nor feared the Shadow of the Dust;
And saw the whole world rich with joy,
As every valiant farer must.

I think that old and vasty inn
Will have a welcome guest to-night,
When Chaucer, breaking off some tale
That fills his hearers with delight,

Shall lift up his demure brown eyes
To bid the stranger in; and all
Will turn to greet the one on whom
The crystal lot was last to fall.

Keats of the more than mortal tongue
...

    Mariachis, almost a Spanish temperament within those stars,
    - a screen peppered to black,
    pebbles as pinholes bright in the night air.

    Winged bats, moist velvet foot-pads
    that spring from ink spots onto an El Greco canvas
    where Garcia Lorca's green, Andalusian hills
    find the wind a gypsy bandit
    sage, red flower of the cacti,
    ballad to rakish cloud.

    A ship shamelessly at sea -
    the scorpion cloth of open wounds,
    dark implants, sturdy oak
    constellations, English yew
    spouts tremulous shafts
    across weather-burnt sky.

    A dock in a prison of rose-petal harbour.
    Piers along deep, inner space.
    Our planet, rockface. Sheer plummet.
    Accordion of white light.

 ...

I.

What part is left thee, lion? Ravenous beast,
Which hadst the world for pasture, and for scope
And compass of thine homicidal hope
The kingdom of the spirit of man, the feast
Of souls subdued from west to sunless east,
From blackening north to bloodred south aslope,
All servile; earth for footcloth of the pope,
And heaven for chancel-ceiling of the priest;
Thou that hadst earth by right of rack and rod,
Thou that hadst Rome because thy name was God,
And by thy creed’s gift heaven wherein to dwell;
Heaven laughs with all his light and might above
That earth has cast thee out of faith and love;
Thy part is but the hollow dream of hell.



II.

The light of life has faded from thy cause,
High priest of heaven and hell and purgato...