Identity

Who is it that says most, which can say more,
Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you?
In whose confine immured is the store
Which should example where your equal grew.
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
That to his subject lends not some small glory;
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story,
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired every where.
You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow?
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew,
What is it worth unless I win,
Love, love and you?

Why, my heart, when we speak her name
(Geraldine, Geraldine!),
Throbs the word like a flinging flame?
Why does the spring begin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me indeed to be,
Open your heart and take us in,
Love, love and me.

Unhoused in deserts of accepted thought,
    And lost in jungles of confusing creeds,
    My soul strayed, homeless, finding its own needs
Unsatisfied with what tradition taught.

The pros and cons, the little ifs and ands,
    The but and maybe, and the this and that,
    On which the churches thicken and grow fat,
I found but structures built on shifting sands.

And all their heavens were strange and far away,
    And all their hells were made of human hate;
    And since for death I did not care to wait,
A heaven I fashioned for myself one day.

Of happy thoughts I built it stone by stone,
    With joy of life I draped each spacious room,
    With love's great light I drove away all gloom,
And in the centre I made God a throne.

And this...

He lived beyond us and we stood
As pygmies to his every mood,
Mere pupils at his beck and nod,
That spoke the influence of a god.
And oft we wondered, when his thought
Made our humanity seem naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Were not a birth for Avalon.

When wand'ring 'neath the sighing trees,
His soul waxed genial with the breeze,
That, voiceful, from the piney glades
Companioned seemed of Oreads;
A Dryad life lived in each oak,
And with its many leaf-tongues spoke,
Glorying the deity whose power
Gave it its life in sun and shower.
By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water-sounds,
He walked as one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain...

The sun sinks down in the crimson west,
    Oh, a beautiful sun is he;
With his purple robes and his crown of gold
    And his feet dipped in the sea.

Along the shore where the sea-weeds lie
    Like threads of her tangled hair,
Naomi stands in the amber glow
    Of the mystical sunset air.

Her hair is brown, with a yellow tinge
    That rivals the gold of the west;
Her eyes are dark with the velvety glow
    That darkens the pansy's breast.

A star shines out in the purple east,
    Oh, a beautiful star is he!
With his home in the wonderful azure skies,
    And his throne in the deep blue sea.

There are bars of gold in the crimson west
    And jewels on every bar;
Yet Naomi's soul is beyond the sea,
    And her eyes are f...

Swings the way still by hollow and hill,
And all the world's a song;
"She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,
"Quiet," it laughs, "and strong!"

Oh! spite of the miles and years between us,
Spite of your chosen part,
I do remember; and I go
With laughter in my heart.

So above the little folk that know not,
Out of the white hill-town,
High up I clamber; and I remember;
And watch the day go down.

Gold is my heart, and the world's golden,
And one peak tipped with light;
And the air lies still about the hill
With the first fear of night;

Till mystery down the soundless valley
Thunders, and dark is here;
And the wind blows, and the light goes,
And the night is full of fear,

And I know, one night, on some fa...

Over the threshold of his pleasant home
Set in green clearings passed the exiled Friend,
In simple trust, misdoubting not the end.
"Dear heart of mine!" he said, "the time has come
To trust the Lord for shelter." One long gaze
The goodwife turned on each familiar thing,
The lowing kine, the orchard blossoming,
The open door that showed the hearth-fire's blaze,
And calmly answered, "Yes, He will provide."
Silent and slow they crossed the homestead's bound,
Lingering the longest by their child's grave-mound.
"Move on, or stay and hang!" the sheriff cried.
They left behind them more than home or land,
And set sad faces to an alien strand.

Safer with winds and waves than human wrath,
With ravening wolves than those whose zeal for God
Was cruelty to man, the ...

They have left the doors ajar; and by their clash,
And prelude on the keys, I know the song,
Their favourite—which I call ‘The Tables Turned.’
Evelyn begins it ‘O diviner Air.’

EVELYN.

O diviner Air,
Thro’ the heat, the drowth, the dust, the glare,
Far from out the west in shadowing showers,
Over all the meadow baked and bare,
Making fresh and fair
All the bowers and the flowers,
Fainting flowers, faded bowers,
Over all this weary world of ours,
Breathe, diviner Air!

A sweet voice that—you scarce could better that.
Now follows Edith echoing Evelyn.

EDITH.

O diviner light,
Thro’ the cloud that roofs our noon with night,
Thro’ the blotting mist, the blinding showers,
Far from out a sky for ever bright,
Over ...

Ho! I'm going back to where
We were youngsters. - Meet me there,
Dear old barefoot chum, and we
Will be as we used to be, -
Lawless rangers up and down
The old creek beyond the town -
Little sunburnt gods at play,
Just as in that far-away: -
Water nymphs, all unafraid,
Shall smile at us from the brink
Of the old millrace and wade
Tow'rd us as we kneeling drink
At the spring our boyhood knew,
Pure and clear as morning-dew:

And, as we are rising there,
Doubly dow'rd to hear and see,
We shall thus be made aware
Of an eerie piping, heard
High above the happy bird
In the hazel: And then we,
Just across the creek, shall see
(Hah! the goaty rascal!) Pan
Hoof it o'er the sloping green,
Mad with his own melody,
Aye, and (bl...

IDYLL. VII.


Scarce midway were we yet, nor yet descried
The stone that hides what once was Brasidas:
When there drew near a wayfarer from Crete,
Young Lycidas, the Muses' votary.
The horned herd was his care: a glance might tell
So much: for every inch a herdsman he.
Slung o'er his shoulder was a ruddy hide
Torn from a he-goat, shaggy, tangle-haired,
That reeked of rennet yet: a broad belt clasped
A patched cloak round his breast, and for a staff
A gnarled wild-olive bough his right hand bore.
Soon with a quiet smile he spoke - his eye
Twinkled, and laughter sat upon his lip:
"And whither ploddest thou thy weary way
Beneath the noontide sun, Simichides?
For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall,
The crested lark hath closed his wandering wing.

'Tis summer still, yet now and then a leaf
Falls from some stately tree.    True type of life!
How emblamatic of the pangs that grief
Wrings from our blighted hopes, that one by one
Drop from us in our wrestle with the strife
And natural passions of our stately youth.
And thus we fall beneath life's summer sun.
Each step conducts us through an opening door
Into new halls of being, hand in hand
With grave Experience, until we command
The open, wide-spread autumn fields, and store
The full ripe grain of Wisdom and of Truth.
As on life's tott'ring precipice we stand,
Our sins like withered leaves are blown about the land.

Kinsman beloved, and as a son, by me!
When I behold the fruit of thy regard,
The sculptured form of my old favourite bard,
I reverence feel for him, and love for thee:
Joy too and grief—much joy that there should be,
Wise men and learn’d, who grudge not to reward
With some applause my bold attempt and hard,
Which others scorn; critics by courtesy.
The grief is this, that, sunk in Homer’s mine,
I lose my precious years, now soon to fail,
Handling his gold, which, howsoe’er it shine,
Proves dross when balanced in the Christian scale.
Be wiser thou—like our forefather Donne,
Seek heavenly wealth, and work for God alone.

    Life as green illusion -
    the cool fronds of the fern
    are deep set in firmest soil
    and the grassy narrows
    brook a silent, liquid play.

    Red illusions under glass -
    quietly picking strawberries
    where a woman hums to
    the buzz of flies
    with the afternoon sun disappearing overhead.

    Each grasp of the berry
    a red stain, the darting of seeds,
    crimson tendrils do confuse the eye
    with a polka dot starling raucous
    in glee above.

I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

I knew by the smoke, that so gracefully curled
    Above the green elms, that a cottage was near.
And I said, "If there's peace to be found in the world,
    "A heart that was humble might hope for it here!"
It was noon, and on flowers that languished around
    In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound
    But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree.

And, "Here in this lone little wood," I exclaimed,
    "With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye,
"Who would blush when I praised her, and weep if I blamed,
    How blest could I live, and how calm could I die!

"By the shade of yon sumach, whose red berry dips
    "In the gush of the fountain, how sweet to recline,
"And to know that I sighed upon innocent l...

Dark flower of Cheshire garden,
Red evening duly dyes
Thy sombre head with rosy hues
To fix far-gazing eyes.
Well the Planter knew how strongly
Works thy form on human thought;
I muse what secret purpose had he
To draw all fancies to this spot.

("The Brushwood Boy", The Day's Work)


Over the edge of the purple down,
Where the single lamplight gleams,
Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
That is hard by the Sea of Dreams,
Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
And the sick may forget to weep?
But we, pity us! Oh, pity us!
We wakeful; ah, pity us!,
We must go back with Policeman Day,
Back from the City of Sleep!

Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
Fetter and prayer and plough,
They that go up to the Merciful Town,
For her gates are closing now.
It is their right in the Baths of Night
Body and soul to steep,
But we, pity us! ah, pity us!
We wakeful; ah, pity us!,
We must go back with Policeman Day,
Back from the City of Sleep!

Over the edge of t...

Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk;
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!

Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
With never a tree for Spring to waken,
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,

Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,

Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
The coast lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.

Dreary the land when gust and sleet
At its doors and windows howl and beat,
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!

But in summer time, when pool and pond,
Held in the laps of valleys fond,
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;

When the hills are sweet with the bri...