Identity

I arise in the silence of the dawn hour.
And softly steal out to the garden
Under the Favrile goblet of the dawning.
And a wind moves out of the south-land,
Like a film of silver,
And thrills with a far borne message
The flowers of the garden.
Poppies untie their scarlet hoods and wave them
To the south wind as he passes.
But the zinnias and calendulas,
In a mood of calm reserve, nod faintly
As the south wind whispers the secret
Of the dawn hour!

I stand in the silence of the dawn hour
In the garden,
As the star of morning fades.
Flying from scythes of air
The hare-bells, purples and golden glow
On the sand-hill back of the orchard
Race before the feet of the wind.
But clusters of oak-leaves over the yellow sand rim
Begin to flut...

When I should be asleep to mine own voice
In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,
I find me listening to myself, the noise
Of my words othered in my hearing them.
Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul.
I could not tell thee well of how I love,
Loved I not less by knowing it, were all
My self my love and no thought love to prove.
What consciousness makes more by consciousness,
It makes less, for it makes it less itself,
My sense of love could not my love rich-dress
Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf.
    Poet's love's this (as in these words I prove thee):
    I love my love for thee more than I love thee.

Though the bold wings of Poesy affect
The clouds, and wheel around the mountain tops
Rejoicing, from her loftiest height she drops
Well pleased to skim the plain with wild flowers deckt
Or muse in solemn grove whose shades protect
The lingering dew there steals along, or stops
Watching the least small bird that round her hops,
Or creeping worm, with sensitive respect.
Her functions are they therefore less divine,
Her thoughts less deep, or void of grave intent
Her simplest fancies? Should that fear be thine,
Aspiring Votary, ere thy hand present
One offering, kneel before her modest shrine,
With brow in penitential sorrow bent!

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:

The air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
high, so high

I want to touch down now
and taste the ground
I want to take in
my silk
and ask where I am
before it is too late to know

Flesh and blood, bone and skin,
Are the house that beauty lives in.
Formed in darkness, grown in light
Are they the substance of delight.
Who could have dreamed the things he sees
In these strong lovely presences--
In cheeks of children, thews of men,
Women's bodies beloved of men?
Who could have dreamed a thing so wise
As that clear look of the child's eyes?
Who the thin texture of her hand
But with a hand's touch understand?
Shaped in eternity were these
Body's miracles, where the seas
Their continuous rhythm learned,
And the stars in their bright order burned.
From stars and seas was motion caught
When flesh, blood, bone and skin were wrought
Into swift lovely liveliness.
Oh, but beauty less and less
Than beauty grows. The cheeks fall in...

Form 8889512, Sub-Section Q

How slowly learns the child at school
The names of all the nobs that rule
From Ponsonby to Pennant;
Ere his bewildered mind find rest,
Knowing his host can be a Guest,
His landlord is a Tennant.

He knew not, at the age of three,
What Lord St. Leger next will be
Or what he was before;
A Primrose in the social swim
A Mr. Primrose is to him,
And he is nothing more.

But soon, about the age of ten,
He finds he is a Citizen,
And knows his way about;
Can pause within, or just beyond,
The line 'twixt Mond and Demi-Mond,
'Twixt Getting On--or Out.

The Citizen will take his share
(In every sense) as bull and bear;
Nor need this oral ditty
Invoke the philologic pen
To show you t...

Elia, thy reveries and visioned themes
To care's lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove;
Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams,
Soft as the anguish of remembered love:
Like records of past days their memory dances
Mid the cool feelings manhood's reason brings,
As the unearthly visions of romances
Peopled with sweet and uncreated things;--
And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances!
Then wake again thy wild harp's tenderest strings,
Sing on, sweet Bard, let fairy loves again
Smile in thy dreams, with angel ecstasies;
Bright over our souls will break the heavenly strain
Through the dull gloom of earth's realities.

O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and do not forget    it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night. It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not p...

Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane
And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine,
Apparelled in magnificent attire,
With retinue of many a knight and squire,
On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat
And heard the priests chant the Magnificat,
And as he listened, o'er and o'er again
Repeated, like a burden or refrain,
He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes
De sede, et exaltavit humiles";
And slowly lifting up his kingly head
He to a learned clerk beside him said,
"What mean these words?"    The clerk made answer meet,
"He has put down the mighty from their seat,
And has exalted them of low degree."
Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully,
"'T is well that such seditious words are sung
Only by priests and in the Latin tongue;
For unto priests and people b...

I.

To—

As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude,
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, ‘All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where;’
So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true–
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each–
That, tho’ I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either’s heart and speech.



II.

To J.M.K.

My hope and heart is with thee–thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scar...

No new delights to our desire
    The singers of the past can yield.
    I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
    Poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
    To song? what words of yours be sent
    Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
    Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
    Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
    And crown these towers in circling flight
And cross these seas like summer birds,
    And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
    Some mystic part of you belongs
    To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flo...

Remember me as I was then;
Turn from me now, but always see
The laughing shadowy girl who stood
At midnight by the flowering tree,
With eyes that love had made as bright
As the trembling stars of the summer night.

Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew,
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.

In calm and cool and silence, once again
I find my old accustomed place among
My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue
Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung,
Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear;
Read in my heart a still diviner law
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw!
There let me strive with each besetting sin,
Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
The sore disquiet of a restless brain;
And, as the path of duty is made plain,
May grace be given that I may walk therein,
Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain,
With backward glances and reluctant tread,
Making a merit of his coward ...

The year lies fallen and faded
On cliffs by clouds invaded,
With tongues of storms upbraided,
With wrath of waves bedinned;
And inland, wild with warning,
As in deaf ears or scorning,
The clarion even and morning
Rings of the south-west wind.

The wild bents wane and wither
In blasts whose breath bows hither
Their grey-grown heads and thither,
Unblest of rain or sun;
The pale fierce heavens are crowded
With shapes like dreams beclouded,
As though the old year enshrouded
Lay, long ere life were done.

Full-charged with oldworld wonders,
From dusk Tintagel thunders
A note that smites and sunders
The hard frore fields of air;
A trumpet stormier-sounded
Than once from lists rebounded
When strong men sense-confounded
Fel...

    1

    And like a cobbler at a bench
    I return to my musings
    why Kensington Gardens
    with its grand, theatrical entrance
    is gateway to London's poor
    - why the stiff Victoria and Albert
    monument or grand canopy
    to the Hemispheres
    has a bison for the Americas
    or sultry elephant of
    Asia fame
    (India being the brightest
    jewel in the Empress' crown);
    why other archetypal animals at their pleasure
    are carved in gleaming milk white
    when the rich at their
    leisure, to and fro,
    dine elegantly as tight
    buds arranged on a stem.

    2
    I've not mentioned the poor
    come to the Serpentine
    a little ways up in Hyde Park
    only to be chased out...

    The demoiselles of sunny France
        Have gaiety and grace;
    Britannia's maids a tender glance,
        A sweet and gentle face;
    Columbia's virgins bring to knee
        Full many a duke and earl;
    But there is none can equal thee,
        My own Canadian girl.

    Thy hair is finer than the floss
        That tufts the ears of corn;
    Its tresses have a silken gloss,
        A glory like the morn;
    I prize the rich, luxuriant mass,
        And each endearing curl
    A special grace and beauty has,
        My own Canadian girl.

    Thy brow is like the silver moon
        That sails in summer skies,
    The mirror of a mind immune
        From care, serene and wise,
    Thy nose is sculptured ivory;
 ...

    Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
    Night has gone out beneath the hill
    Many sweet times; before our eyes
    Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
    The magic that we call the rose.
    The gentle history of the rain
    Has been unfolded, traced and lost
    By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
    Birds in the hawthorn build again;
    The hare makes soft her secret house;
    The wind at tourney comes and goes,
    Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
    The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
    He knew the beauty of all those
    Last year, and who remembers him?

    Love sometimes walks the waters still,
    Laughter throws back her radiant head;
    Utterly beauty is not gone,
    And wonder is not wholly dead.

Dell' aureo albergo con l' Aurora innanzi.


    Behind Aurora's wheels the rising sun
His voyage from his golden shrine begun,
With such ethereal speed, as if the Hours
Had caught him slumb'ring in her rosy bowers.
With lordly eye, that reach'd the world's extreme,
Methought he look'd, when, gliding on his beam,
That wingèd power approach'd that wheels his car
In its wide annual range from star to star,
Measuring vicissitude; till, now more near,
Methought these thrilling accents met my ear:--
"New laws must be observed if mortals claim,
Spite of the lapse of time, eternal fame.
Those laws have lost their force that Heaven decreed,
And I my circle run with fruitless speed;
If fame's loud breath the slumb'ring dust inspire,
And bid to live wit...