Identity

Welcome, thrice welcome is thy silvery gleam,
Thou long-imprisoned stream!
Welcome the tinkle of thy crystal beads
As plashing raindrops to the flowery meads,
As summer's breath to Avon's whispering reeds!
From rock-walled channels, drowned in rayless night,
Leap forth to life and light;
Wake from the darkness of thy troubled dream,
And greet with answering smile the morning's beam!

No purer lymph the white-limbed Naiad knows
Than from thy chalice flows;
Not the bright spring of Afric's sunny shores,
Starry with spangles washed from golden ores,
Nor glassy stream Bandusia's fountain pours,
Nor wave translucent where Sabrina fair
Braids her loose-flowing hair,
Nor the swift current, stainless as it rose
Where chill Arveiron steals from Alpine snows.<...

I, too, at length discerned great Hercules' energy mighty,
Saw his shade. He himself was not, alas, to be seen.
Round him were heard, like the screaming of birds, the screams of tragedians,
And, with the baying of dogs, barked dramaturgists around.
There stood the giant in all his terrors; his bow was extended,
And the bolt, fixed on the string, steadily aimed at the heart.
"What still hardier action, unhappy one, dost thou now venture,
Thus to descend to the grave of the departed souls here?"
"'Tis to see Tiresias I come, to ask of the prophet
Where I the buskin of old, that now has vanished, may find?"
"If they believe not in Nature, nor the old Grecian, but vainly
Wilt thou convey up from hence that dramaturgy to them."
"Oh, as for Nature, once more to tread our stage she has ...

Long locks of late our zealot Peason wears,
Not for to hide his high and mighty ears;
No, but because he would not have it seen
That stubble stands where once large ears have been.

What others have with cheapness seen and ease
In varnish'd maps, by th' help of compasses,
Or read in volumes and those books with all
Their large narrations incanonical,
Thou hast beheld those seas and countries far,
And tell'st to us what once they were, and are.
So that with bold truth thou can'st now relate
This kingdom's fortune, and that empire's fate:
Can'st talk to us of Sharon, where a spring
Of roses have an endless flourishing;
Of Sion, Sinai, Nebo, and with them
Make known to us the new Jerusalem;
The Mount of Olives, Calvary, and where
Is, and hast seen, thy Saviour's sepulchre.
So that the man that will but lay his ears
As inapostate to the thing he hears,
Shall by his hearing quickly come to see
The truth of travels less in books than thee....

I

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders.    Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume. -
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts, ...

    Daphne is running, running through the grass,
        The long stalks whip her ankles as she goes.
    I saw the nymph, the god, I saw them pass
        And how a mounting flush of tender rose
    Invaded the white bosom of the lass
        And reached her shoulders, conquering their snows.
    He wasted all his breath, imploring still:
    They passed behind the shadow of the hill.

    The mad course goes across the silent plain,
        Their flying footsteps make a path of sound
    Through all the sleeping country.    Now with pain
        She runs across a stretch of stony ground
    That wounds her soft-palmed feet and now again
        She hastens through a wood where flowers abound,
    Which staunch her cuts with balsam where she treads
    And f...

    Two infants in their cradles lie,
        Where lullabies of peace
    In gentle strains of tender music die.
        And carols never cease.

    Two urchins o'er the meadow lands
        Are bounding in their plays,
    Where sweet enjoyment with angelic hands
        Winds gladness o'er the days.

    Two boys, where golden fancies bless,
        Repose in sunny beams,
    And muse away the hours of happiness
        On couches made of dreams.

    Two men upon a summer sea
        Are toiling, brave and strong,
    Where pleasures roll their elfin harmony
        And labor ends in song.

    Two gray-haired sages, silvered o'er,
        In life meet once again,
    To name the wondrous happiness they bore
        Amon...

While far along the eastern sky
I saw the flags of Havoc fly,
As if his forces would assault
The sovereign of the starry vault
And hurl Him back the burning rain
That seared the cities of the plain,
I read as on a crimson page
The words of Israel's sceptred sage: -

For riches make them wings, and they
Do as an eagle fly away.

O vision of that sleepless night,
What hue shall paint the mocking light
That burned and stained the orient skies
Where peaceful morning loves to rise,
As if the sun had lost his way
And dawned to make a second day, -
Above how red with fiery glow,
How dark to those it woke below!

On roof and wall, on dome and spire,
Flashed the false jewels of the fire;
Girt with her belt of glittering panes,<...

A desolate shore,
The sinister seduction of the Moon,
The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim,
From cloud to cloud along her beat,
Leering her battered and inveterate leer,
She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,
Her horrible old man,
Mumbling old oaths and warming
His villainous old bones with villainous talk -
The secrets of their grisly housekeeping
Since they went out upon the pad
In the first twilight of self-conscious Time:
Growling, hideous and hoarse,
Tales of unnumbered Ships,
Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance,
In some vile alley of the night
Waylaid and bludgeoned -
Dead.

Deep cellared in primeval ooze,
Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled,
They lie where the lean water-worm
...

A Faint, sickening scent of irises
Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table
A fine proud spike of purple irises
Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable
To see the class's lifted and bended faces
Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.

I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless
Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast you
With fire on your cheeks and your brow and your chin as you dipped
Your face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrast you,
Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks,
Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should not outlast.

You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation,
You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above,
Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,

I.

Ulysses, much-experienced man,
Whose eyes have known this globe of ours,
Her tribes of men, and trees, and flowers,
From Corrientes to Japan,



II.

To you that bask below the Line,
I soaking here in winter wet–
The century’s three strong eights have met
To drag me down to seventy-nine



III.

In summer if I reach my day–
To you, yet young, who breathe the balm
Of summer-winters by the palm
And orange grove of Paraguay,



IV.

I tolerant of the colder time,
Who love the winter woods, to trace
On paler heavens the branching grace
Of leafless elm, or naked lime,



V.

And see my cedar green, and there
My giant ilex keeping leaf
When fro...

Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky
(Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly),
Full calm thine image in our love doth lie,
A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity.
So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene -
Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!


Baltimore, 1875.

The change has come, and Helen sleeps--
Not sleeps; but wakes to greater deeps
Of wisdom, glory, truth, and light,
Than ever blessed her seeking sight,
In this low, long, lethargic night,
Worn out with strife
Which men call life.

The change has come, and who would say
"I would it were not come to-day"?
What were the respite till to-morrow?
Postponement of a certain sorrow,
From which each passing day would borrow!
Let grief be dumb,
The change has come.

Thou who comest from on high,

Who all woes and sorrows stillest,
Who, for twofold misery,

Hearts with twofold balsam fillest,
Would this constant strife would cease!

What are pain and rapture now?
Blissful Peace,

To my bosom hasten thou!

    O Petrarch! I am here. I bow to thee,
    Great king of sonnets, thronèd long ago
    And lover-like, as Love enjoineth me,
    And miser-like, enamoured of my woe,
    I reckon up my teardrops as they flow.
    I would not lose the power to shed a tear
    For all the wealth of Plutus and his reign.
    I would not be so base as not complain
    When she I love is absent from my sight.
    No, not for all the marvels of the night,
    And all the varying splendours of the year.
    Do thou assist me, thou! that art the light
    Of all true lovers' souls, in all the sphere,
    To make a May-time of my sorrows slain.

Not Aladdin magian
Ever such a work began;
Not the wizard of the Dee
Ever such a dream could see;
Not St. John, in Patmos' Isle,
In the passion of his toil,
When he saw the churches seven,
Golden aisl'd, built up in heaven,
Gaz'd at such a rugged wonder.
As I stood its roofing under
Lo! I saw one sleeping there,
On the marble cold and bare.
While the surges wash'd his feet,
And his garments white did beat.
Drench'd about the sombre rocks,
On his neck his well-grown locks,
Lifted dry above the main,
Were upon the curl again.
"What is this? and what art thou?"
Whisper'd I, and touch'd his brow;
"What art thou? and what is this?"
Whisper'd I, and strove to kiss
The spirit's hand, to wake his eyes;
Up he started in a trice:
...

Prometheus, forming Mr. Day,
Carved something like a man in clay:
The mortal's work might well miscarry;
He that does heaven and earth control
Has only power to form a soul;
His hand is evident in Harry,
Since one is but a moving clod,
Th' other the lively form of God.
'Squire Wallis, you will scarce be able
To prove all poetry but fable.

From lands where old abuses sit entrenched
And stern restriction thwarts aspiring merit,
And by gaunt men a meagre dole is wrenched
From the unkind conditions they inherit;
From teeming cities where the ceaseless moan
Of want is burthen to the traffic's hum,
From shrouded mills, and fields they ne'er might own,
From servitude and blank despair, they come.

And every ship that sails across the foam,
And every train that rushes from the sea,
And every sun that brightens heaven's dome,
And every breeze that stirs the leafing tree,
Sings to the pilgrims a glad song of home,
With freedom, joy and opportunity.