Identity

I think just how my shape will rise
When I shall be forgiven,
Till hair and eyes and timid head
Are out of sight, in heaven.

I think just how my lips will weigh
With shapeless, quivering prayer
That you, so late, consider me,
The sparrow of your care.

I mind me that of anguish sent,
Some drifts were moved away
Before my simple bosom broke, --
And why not this, if they?

And so, until delirious borne
I con that thing, -- "forgiven," --
Till with long fright and longer trust
I drop my heart, unshriven!

You thought I was that type:
That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.

It's certainly late.    I must earn something.
But they're all going right by today with smug expressions on their faces.
They don't want to give me a single good-luck penny.
It's a miserable life.
If I come home without money
The old lady will throw me out.
There is hardly anyone on the street any more.
I am dead tired and freezing.
I was never so miserable in my life.
I move around here like a piece of meat.
Finally someone comes over:
An extremely well-dressed man -
But in this life one can't tell much
By appearances.
He's also quite older. (they have more money,
Young ones tend to cheat you.)
We are face-to-face.
I raise my clothes above the knee.
I can get away with that.
That's the big draw..
Like flies to the light
The guys are ...

True as the church clock hand the hour pursues
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
And at the blacksmith's shop his hour will stand
To talk of "Lunun" as a foreign land.
For from his cottage door in peace or strife
He neer went fifty miles in all his life.
His knowledge with old notions still combined
Is twenty years behind the march of mind.
He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes
And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise.
On steam's almighty tales he wondering looks
As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books.
Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth,
He toils in quiet and enjoys his health,
He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer
And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.
He goes to market all the year about
And keeps one hou...

(Written for THE PORTFOLIO SOCIETY, January, 1862.

Subject given - "Light and Shade.")


She stepped upon Sicilian grass,
Demeter's daughter fresh and fair,
A child of light, a radiant lass,
And gamesome as the morning air.
The daffodils were fair to see,
They nodded lightly on the lea,
Persephone - Persephone!

Lo! one she marked of rarer growth
Than orchis or anemone;
For it the maiden left them both,
And parted from her company.
Drawn nigh she deemed it fairer still,
And stooped to gather by the rill
The daffodil, the daffodil.

What ailed the meadow that it shook?
What ailed the air of Sicily?
She wondered by the brattling brook,
And trembled with the trembling lea.
"The coal-black horses rise - they rise:

Since first I met thee, Dear, and long before
    I knew myself beloved, save by the sense
    All women have, a shadowy confidence
Half-fear, that feels its bliss nor asks for more,
    I have learned new desires, known Love's distress
    Sounded the deepest depths of loneliness.

I was a child at heart, and lived alone,
    Dreaming my dreams, as children may, at whiles,
    Between their hours of play, and Earth's broad smiles
Allured my heart, and ocean's marvellous tone
    Woke no strange echoes, and the woods' complain
    Made chants sonorous, stirred no thoughts of pain.

And if, sometimes, dear Nature spoke to me
    In tones mysterious, I had learned so much
    Dwelling beside her daily, that her touch
Made me discerning. Though I migh...

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells -
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

        Some dead undid undid their bushy jaws,
        and bags of blood let out their flies.. .
                    ? Dylan Thomas

    The land is barren
    wears straw wisps
    as an unkempt man
    might razor stubble.

    The land is dry, a faded yellow
    in its barrenness.
    A sky broods from afar,
    a stalactite sun accounts merely a jot
    above that thin road into despair.

    Grass lies everywhere dead,
    faded tongues above an
    earth afflicted with scleroderma,
    deadliest of skin disturbances,
    forerunner of deeper pestilence.

    An erasing wind whips the fields
    further into bereavement;
    turns tiny bits of chaff to pursue themselves
    in a mad St. Vitus dance
    of cold...

There was a time when I thought much of Fame,
And laid the golden edifice to be
That in the clear light of eternity
Should fitly house the glory of my name.

But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan,
Over the fair foundation scarce begun,
While I with lovers dallied in the sun,
The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran.

And now, too late to see my vision, rise,
In place of golden pinnacles and towers,
Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers,
Only beloved of birds and butterflies.

My friends were duped, my favorers deceived;
But sometimes, musing sorrowfully there,
That flowered wreck has seemed to me so fair
I scarce regret the temple unachieved.

Methinks that to some vacant hermitage
'My' feet would rather turn to some dry nook
Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook
Hurled down a mountain-cove from stage to stage,
Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage
In the soft heaven of a translucent pool;
Thence creeping under sylvan arches cool,
Fit haunt of shapes whose glorious equipage
Would elevate my dreams. A beechen bowl,
A maple dish, my furniture should be;
Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl
My night-watch: nor should e'er the crested fowl
From thorp or vill his matins sound for me,
Tired of the world and all its industry.

    To Youth there comes a whisper out of the west:
        "O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee
    A life to build, a love therein to nest,
        And a man's work, serving the age to be."

    Peace, peace awhile!    Before his tireless feet
        Hill beyond hill the road in sunlight goes;
    He breathes the breath of morning, clear and sweet,
        And his eyes love the high eternal snows.

There I halted. Further down the hollow
Stood the township, where my errand lay.
Firm my purpose, till a voice cried (Follow!
Come this way -- I tell you -- come this way!)

Silence, Thrush! You know I think of buying
A Spring-tide hat; my frock is worn and old.
So to the shops I go. What's that you're crying?
(Here! Come here! And gather primrose gold.)
Well, yes. Some day I will; but time is going.
I haste to purchase silks and satins fair.
I'm all in rags. (The Lady's Smock is showing
Up yonder, in the little coppice there.)

And wood anemones spread out their laces;
Each celandine has donned a silken gown;
The violets are lifting shy sweet faces.
(And there's a chiff-chaff, soft, and slim, and brown.)

But what about my hat? (The bees are hu...

L' aura serena che fra verdi fronde.

THE GENTLE BREEZE (L' AURA) RECALLS TO HIM THE TIME WHEN HE FIRST SAW HER.


    The gentle gale, that plays my face around,
Murmuring sweet mischief through the verdant grove,
To fond remembrance brings the time, when Love
First gave his deep, although delightful wound;
Gave me to view that beauteous face, ne'er found
Veil'd, as disdain or jealousy might move;
To view her locks that shone bright gold above,
Then loose, but now with pearls and jewels bound:
Those locks she sweetly scatter'd to the wind,
And then coil'd up again so gracefully,
That but to think on it still thrills the sense.
These Time has in more sober braids confined;
And bound my heart with such a powerful tie,
That death alone can disen...

,,
    Lissom and jimp and slim,
Calling me - calling me over the heather,
    'Neath the beech boughs dusk and dim.

I have followed a lady this night,
    Followed her far and lone,
Fox and adder and weasel know
    The ways that we have gone.

I sit at my supper 'mid honest faces,
    And crumble my crust and say
Naught in the long-drawn drawl of the voices
    Talking the hours away.

I'll go to my chamber under the gable,
    And the moon will lift her light
In at my lattice from over the moorland
    Hollow and still and bright.

And I know she will shine on a lady of witchcraft,
    Gladness and grief to see,
Who has taken my heart with her nimble fingers,
    Calls in my dreams to me;

Who has led me a dance...

        Willie speaks.

Is it wrong, the wish to be great,
    For I do wish it so?
I have asked already my sister Kate;
    She says she does not know.

Yestereve at the gate I stood
    Watching the sun in the west;
When I saw him look so grand and good
    It swelled up in my breast.

Next from the rising moon
    It stole like a silver dart;
In the night when the wind began his tune
    It woke with a sudden start.

This morning a trumpet blast
    Made all the cottage quake;
It came so sudden and shook so fast
    It blew me wide awake.

It told me I must make haste,
    And some great glory win,
For every day was running to waste,
    And at once I must begin.

I want to be great and strong,

When first Diana leaves her bed,
    Vapours and steams her looks disgrace,
A frowzy dirty-colour'd red
    Sits on her cloudy wrinkled face:

But by degrees, when mounted high,
    Her artificial face appears
Down from her window in the sky,
    Her spots are gone, her visage clears.

'Twixt earthly females and the moon,
    All parallels exactly run;
If Celia should appear too soon,
    Alas, the nymph would be undone!

To see her from her pillow rise,
    All reeking in a cloudy steam,
Crack'd lips, foul teeth, and gummy eyes,
    Poor Strephon! how would he blaspheme!

The soot or powder which was wont
    To make her hair look black as jet,
Falls from her tresses on her front,
    A mingled mass of dirt and sweat.
<...

        I.

Oh, to see in the night in a May moon's light
A nymph from siren caves,
With a crown of pearl, sea-gems in each curl
Dance down white, star-stained waves!
Oh, to list in the gloam by the pearly foam
Of a sad, far-sounding shore
The strain of the shell of an ocean belle
From caves where the waters roar!
With a hollow shell drift up in the moon
To sigh in my ears this ocean tune: -


        II.

"Wilt follow, wilt follow to caverns hollow,
That echo the tumbling spry?
Wilt follow thy queen to islands green,
Vague islands of witchery?
O follow, follow to grottoes hollow,
And isles in a purple sea,
Where rich roses twine and the lush woodbine
Weaves a musky canopy!"


        III.

Oh, to flo...

The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yet
A better native right to make men sweat?

The whole world on a raft! A Duke is here
At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer.
Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes,
In life's skullduggery he takes the prize -
Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams.
Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams.
The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam.
A candle shines fro...