Identity

1.
Shall we roam, my love,
To the twilight grove,
When the moon is rising bright;
Oh, I'll whisper there,
In the cool night-air,
What I dare not in broad daylight!

2.
I'll tell thee a part
Of the thoughts that start
To being when thou art nigh;
And thy beauty, more bright
Than the stars' soft light,
Shall seem as a weft from the sky.

3.
When the pale moonbeam
On tower and stream
Sheds a flood of silver sheen,
How I love to gaze
As the cold ray strays
O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!

4.
Wilt thou roam with me
To the restless sea,
And linger upon the steep,
And list to the flow
Of the waves below
How they toss and roar and leap?

5.
Those boiling waves,
And the s...

Psalm 137.


Captives by Babel's limpid streams,
We hung our harps on willows there;
Wept over Zion; and our dreams,
Waking or sleeping, she did share.

Our victors, with their battle arms,
Derided, jeered, and scorned our tears;
Required mirth, diversion's charms,
To thus allay their guilty fears.

"Sing us a song" is their demand,
"Yea, sing us one of Zion's songs!"
How can our voices thus expand
To what to us and God belongs?

How can we on this heathen shore,
Surrounded by idolatry,
Sing songs that unto us are more
Than all their glittering pageantry?

Jerusalem, should we forget,
We pray our hearts and tongues be still!
Jerusalem! Oh, may we yet
Worship upon thy holy hill.

Babylon, thou art to b...

Above the darkened house the night is spread,
The hidden valley holds
    Vapour and dew and silence in its folds,
And waters sighing on the river-bed.
No wandering wind there is
    To swing the star-wreaths of the clematis
Against the stone;
Out of the hanging woods, above the shores,
One liquid voice of throbbing crystal pours,
Singing alone.

A stream of magic through the heart of night
Its unseen passage cleaves;
    Into the darkened room below the eaves
It falls from out the woods upon the height,
A strain of ecstasy
    Wrought on the confines of eternity,
Glamour and pain,
And echoes gathered from a world of years,
Old phantoms, dim like mirage seen through tears,
But young again.

"Peace, peace," the bird sings on amid t...

Sea beyond sea, sand after sweep of sand,
Here ivory smooth, here cloven and ridged with flow
Of channelled waters soft as rain or snow,
Stretch their lone length at ease beneath the bland
Grey gleam of skies whose smile on wave and strand
Shines weary like a man’s who smiles to know
That now no dream can mock his faith with show,
Nor cloud for him seem living sea or land.
Is there an end at all of all this waste,
These crumbling cliffs defeatured and defaced,
These ruinous heights of sea-sapped walls that slide
Seaward with all their banks of bleak blown flowers
Glad yet of life, ere yet their hope subside
Beneath the coil of dull dense waves and hours?

The Elysian fields
gained commensurate with ability
quiet and shimmering in the sun;
varied realms
inverted islands
the angry blessed
ones - thrice born with
the option to survive
on into flesh and blood form.

The conveyer belt of souls
carrying the damaged ones
far into the night,
spitting out the lukewarm
with plenty of latitude
to manoeuvre
in between.

Lavender and the dye from purple shells
in piercing shrieks
extracting the enacted will
of Nietzscheans before their time;
fledglings in a world
ill begotten and
barely within a choosing.

Amor, se vuoi ch' i' torni al giogo antico.

UNLESS LOVE CAN RESTORE HER TO LIFE, HE WILL NEVER AGAIN BE HIS SLAVE.


    If thou wouldst have me, Love, thy slave again,
One other proof, miraculous and new,
Must yet be wrought by you,
Ere, conquer'd, I resume my ancient chain--
Lift my dear love from earth which hides her now,
For whose sad loss thus beggar'd I remain;
Once more with warmth endow
That wise chaste heart where wont my life to dwell;
And if as some divine, thy influence so,
From highest heaven unto the depths of hell,
Prevail in sooth--for what its scope below,
'Mid us of common race,
Methinks each gentle breast may answer well--
Rob Death of his late triumph, and replace
Thy conquering ensign in her lovely face!

...

1.
How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse
Bright day's resplendent colours fade!
How sweetly does the moonbeam's glance
With silver tint St. Irvyne's glade!

2.
No cloud along the spangled air,
Is borne upon the evening breeze;
How solemn is the scene! how fair
The moonbeams rest upon the trees!

3.
Yon dark gray turret glimmers white,
Upon it sits the mournful owl;
Along the stillness of the night,
Her melancholy shriekings roll.

4.
But not alone on Irvyne's tower,
The silver moonbeam pours her ray;
It gleams upon the ivied bower,
It dances in the cascade's spray.

5.
'Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal
The hour, when man must cease to be?
Why may not human minds unveil
The dim mists of futurity...

Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy, ah! even to tears!,
The fortune of their years
Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.

Scarce had they lifted up
Life’s full and fiery cup,
Than they had set it down untouched before them.
Before their day arose
They beckoned it to close,
Close in destruction and confusion o’er them.

They did not stay to ask
What prize should crown their task,
Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;
But passed into eclipse,
Her kiss upon their lips,
Even Belphoebe’s, whom they gave their lives for!

The highest marble Sorrow vanishes
Before a weeping child.[2] The one doth seem,
The other is. And wherefore do we dream,
But that we live? So I rejoice in this,
That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the bliss
Of conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream,
(Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem)
Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss.
Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lie
Mean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity;
Full well I know that if they were as high
In holy song as prophet's ecstasy,
'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me!
Speak gently to a child for love of Thee.

All my weary days I pass'd

Sick at heart and poor in purse.

Poverty's the greatest curse,

Riches are the highest good!
And to end my woes at last,

Treasure-seeking forth I sped.

"Thou shalt have my soul instead!"

Thus I wrote, and with my blood.

Ring round ring I forthwith drew,

Wondrous flames collected there,

Herbs and bones in order fair,

Till the charm had work'd aright.
Then, to learned precepts true,

Dug to find some treasure old,

In the place my art foretold

Black and stormy was the night.

Coming o'er the distant plain,

With the glimmer of a star,

Soon I saw a light afar,

As the hour of midnight knell'd.
Preparation was in vain.

    You would not believe, would you
    That I came from good Welsh stock?
    That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
    And of more direct lineage than the
    New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?
    You would not believe that I had been to school
    And read some books.
    You saw me only as a run-down man
    With matted hair and beard
    And ragged clothes.
    Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer
    From being bruised and continually bruised,
    And swells into a purplish mass
    Like growths on stalks of corn.
    Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
    Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
    With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
    Whom you tormented and drove to deat...

    O lovely moon, how well do I recall
    The time, - 'tis just a year - when up this hill
    I came, in my distress, to gaze at thee:
    And thou suspended wast o'er yonder grove,
    As now thou art, which thou with light dost fill.
    But stained with mist, and tremulous, appeared
    Thy countenance to me, because my eyes
    Were filled with tears, that could not be suppressed;
    For, oh, my life was wretched, wearisome,
    And is so still, unchanged, belovèd moon!
    And yet this recollection pleases me,
    This computation of my sorrow's age.
    How pleasant is it, in the days of youth,
    When hope a long career before it hath,
    And memories are few, upon the past
    To dwell, though sad, and though the sadness last!

Dear Carrie, were we truly wise,
And could discern with finer eyes,
And half-inspired sense,
The ways of Providence:

Could we but know the hidden things
That brood beneath the Future's wings,
Hermetically sealed,
But soon to be revealed:

Would we, more blest than we are now,
In due submission learn to bow, -
Receiving on our knees
The Omnipotent decrees?

That which is just, we have.    And we
Who lead this round of mystery,
This dance of strange unrest,
What are we at the best? -

Unless we learn to mount and climb;
Writing upon the page of time,
In words of joy or pain,
That we've not lived in vain.

We all are Ministers of Good;
And where our mission's understood,
How many hearts we must
Raise, t...

Ho! sportsman Time, whose chargers fleet
    The moments, madly driven,
Beat in the dust beneath their feet
    Sweet hopes that years have given;
Turn, turn aside those reckless steeds,
    Oh! do not urge them my way;
There's nothing that Time wants or needs
    In this contented by-way.

You have down-trodden, in your race,
    So much that proves your power,
Why not avoid my humble place?
    Why rob me of my dower?
With your vast cellars, cavern deep,
    Packed tier on tier with treasures,
You would not miss them should I KEEP
    My little store of pleasures.

As one who, frightened, flying, flings
    Her riches down at random,
Your course is paved with precious things
    Life casts before your tandem:
The warrior's fame,...

Under the orchard boughs,
    That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
        The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
        And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,
Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst,
Yet by the sun unkissed,
    Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass,
Brimful of red, red wine
Sweet as brown peasants glean along the castled Rhine

All sights and sounds are of the Autumn weather;
    The urchin rock'ng in the trees
        Shakes silver laughter with the apples down,--
    And wading to the knees
        Among the stubble and the husks so brown,
The oxen keeping every patient step together,
Bring in the creaking wain,
High-piled with yellow maize and sheaves of rustling grain.

While i...

Strange Sea! why is it that you never rest?
And tell me why you never go to sleep?
Thou art like one so sad and sin-oppressed --
(And the waves are the tears you weep) --
And thou didst never sin -- what ails the sinless deep?

To-night I hear you crying on the beach,
Like a weary child on its mother's breast --
A cry with an infinite and lonesome reach
Of unutterably deep unrest;
And thou didst never sin -- why art thou so distressed?

But, ah, sad Sea! the mother's breast is warm,
Where crieth the lone and the wearied child;
And soft the arms that shield her own from harm;
And her look is unutterably mild --
But to-night, O Sea! thy cry is wild, so wild!

What ails thee, Sea? The midnight stars are bright --
How safe they lean on heaven's sinl...

Stupidity and Selfishness and Fear,
Who hold enslaved the intellect of Man,
Have found their victims here.

We saw them go, alert to seek the van
Where phantom Glory showered her withering leaves;
Now they return who can.

Slowly, full-fraught with pain, the vessel heaves
From labouring seas, and creeps along the bay
To where the city grieves.

Happy are those who limp the dusty way;
And those whose eyes can meet the loving glance,
Happy indeed are they.

But mock them not with babble of romance:
They have glared at death across the orient rocks
Or in the mire of France.

O welcome to your land of herds and flocks
And fields that pray toward a fairy sky
That promises and mocks.

Welcome! our eyes are strained and sorrow-...

My hour is not yet come! - these burning eyes
    Have not yet look'd their last! - else, 'mid the roar
    Of this wild STORM, what gloomy joy to pour
    My freed, exhaling Soul! - sublime to rise,
Rend the conflicting clouds, inflame the skies,
    And lash the torrents! - Bending to explore
    Our evening seat, my straining eye once more
    Roves the wide watry Waste; - but nought descries
Save the pale Flood, o'erwhelming as it strays.
    Yet Oh! lest my remorseless Fate decree
    That all I love, with life's extinguish'd rays
Sink from my soul, to soothe this agony,
    To balm that life, whose loss may forfeit thee,
    COME DEAR REMEMBRANCE OF DEPARTED DAYS!