Identity

I

My life has been like a bee that roves
Through a scented garden close,
And 'tis I who have kept the honey of love,
The hoarded sweetness and scent thereof,
For all I forget the rose.

Oh, exquisite gardens long forgot
That have made my store complete,
Though winter fall upon blossom and bee,
Yet the kisses I garnered remain with me
Forever and ever sweet.


II

The Priest hath had his word and said his say--
A word i' faith more honest than beguiling--
But now he turns upon his gloomy way--
Good soul, he leaves me smiling.

I may not ponder much on future wrath;
Of all those loves of mine, some six or seven,
Surely ere this have climbed that thorny path
That leads at last to Heaven.

My bold, brown beau...

        I said this morning, as I leaned and threw
    My shutters open to the Spring's surprise,
        "Tell me, O Earth, how is it that in you
    Year after year the same fresh feelings rise?
        How do you keep your young exultant glee?
        No more those sweet emotions come to me.

        "I note through all your fissures how the tide
    Of healthful life goes leaping as of old;
        Your royal dawns retain their pomp and pride;
    Your sunsets lose no atom of their gold.
        How can this wonder be?" My soul's fine ear
        Leaned, listening, till a small voice answered near:

        "My days lapse never over into night;
    My nights encroach not on the rights of dawn.
        I rush not breathless after some delight;
    I wa...

As when the old moon lighted by the tender
    And radiant crescent of the new is seen,
And for a moment's space suggests the splendor
    Of what in its full prime it once has been,
So on my waning years you cast the glory
    Of youth and pleasure, for a little hour;
And life again seems like an unread story,
    And joy and hope both stir me with their power.

Can blooming June be fond of bleak December?
    I dare not wait to hear my heart reply.
I will forget the question -and remember
    Alone the priceless feast spread for mine eye,
That radiant hair that flows across the pillows,
    Like shimmering sunbeams over drifts of snow;
Those heaving breasts, like undulating billows,
    Whose dangers or delights but Love can know.

That crimson mou...

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Mille piagge in un giorno e mille rivi.

TO BE NEAR HER RECOMPENSES HIM FOR ALL THE PERILS OF THE WAY.


    Love, who his votary wings in heart and feet,
To the third heaven that lightly he may soar,
In one short day has many a stream and shore
Given to me, in famed Ardennes, to meet.
Unarm'd and single to have pass'd is sweet
Where war in earnest strikes, nor tells before--
A helmless, sail-less ship 'mid ocean's roar--
My breast with dark and fearful thoughts replete;
But reach'd my dangerous journey's far extreme,
Remembering whence I came, and with whose wings,
From too great courage conscious terror springs.
But this fair country and belovèd stream
With smiling welcome reassures my heart,
Where dwells its sole light ready to depart.

Day was a full-blown flower in heaven, alive
With murmuring joy of bees and birds aswarm,
When in the skies of song yet flushed and warm
With music where all passion seems to strive
For utterance, all things bright and fierce to drive
Struggling along the splendour of the storm,
Day for an hour put off his fiery form,
And golden murmurs from a golden hive
Across the strong bright summer wind were heard,
And laughter soft as smiles from girls at play
And loud from lips of boys brow-bound with May.
Our mightiest age let fall its gentlest word,
When Song, in semblance of a sweet small bird,
Lit fluttering on the light swift hand of Day.

Arbor vittoriosa e trionfale.

HE EXTOLS THE VIRTUE OF LAURA.


    Tree, victory's bright guerdon, wont to crown
Heroes and bards with thy triumphal leaf,
How many days of mingled joy and grief
Have I from thee through life's short passage known.
Lady, who, reckless of the world's renown,
Reapest in virtue's field fair honour's sheaf;
Nor fear'st Love's limed snares, "that subtle thief,"
While calm discretion on his wiles looks down.
The pride of birth, with all that here we deem
Most precious, gems and gold's resplendent grace.
Abject alike in thy regard appear:
Nay, even thine own unrivall'd beauties beam
No charm to thee--save as their circling blaze
Clasps fitly that chaste soul, which still thou hold'st most dear.

WRANGHAM.

'Tis not in youth, when life is new, when but to live is sweet,
When Pleasure strews her starlike flow'rs beneath our careless feet,
When Hope, that has not been deferred, first waves its golden wings,
And crowds the distant future with a thousand lovely things; -

When if a transient grief o'ershades the spirit for a while,
The momentary tear that falls is followed by a smile;
Or if a pensive mood, at times, across the bosom steals,
It scarcely sighs, so gentle is the pensiveness it feels

It is not then the, restless soul will seek for one with whom
To share whatever lot it bears, its gladness or its gloom, -
Some trusting, tried, and gentle heart, some true and faithful breast,
Whereon its pinions it may fold, and claim a place of rest.

But oh! when comes the i...

Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
With lively greenness the new-springing day
Attemper'd, eager now to roam, and search
Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank,
Along the champain leisurely my way
Pursuing, o'er the ground, that on all sides
Delicious odour breath'd. A pleasant air,
That intermitted never, never veer'd,
Smote on my temples, gently, as a wind
Of softest influence: at which the sprays,
Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part
Where first the holy mountain casts his shade,
Yet were not so disorder'd, but that still
Upon their top the feather'd quiristers
Applied their wonted art, and with full joy
Welcom'd those hours of prime, and warbled shrill
Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays
inept tenor; even as from branc...

Sing the song of the reckless, who care not what they do;
Sing the song of a sinner and the song of a writer, too,
Down in a pub in the alleys, in a dark and dirty hole,
With every soul a drunkard and the boss with never a soul.

Uncollared, unkempt, unshaven, sat the writer whose fame was fair,
And the girls of the streets were round him, and the bullies and bludgers there;
He was one of themselves and they told him the things that they had to tell,
He was studying human nature with his brothers and sisters in hell.

He was neither poor nor lonely, for a place in the world he’d won,
And up in the heights of the city he’d a thousand friends or none;
But he knew that his chums could wait awhile, that he’d reckon with foes at last,
For he lived far into a future that he knew b...

A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile,
Alike, while I have holiday.

Why wilt thou go, my harassed heart,
What thought, what scene invites thee now?
What spot, or near or far,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?

There is a spot, mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.

The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome;
But what on earth is half so dear,
So longed for, as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them, how I love them all!

Still, as I mus...

At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things -
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, -
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And muse in that gaunt place, - 'twas then my heart,
Deep in the meditative dark, cried out:

"Ye companies of governor-spirits grave,
Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news
From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents,
Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all
That brood about the skies of poesy,
Full bright ye shine, i...

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover’s ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved look’d every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fix’d my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reach’d the orchard-plot;
And, as we climb’d the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot
Came near and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopp’d:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At on...

Not vainly did old poets tell,
Nor vainly did old genius paint
God's great and crowning miracle,
The hero and the saint!

For even in a faithless day
Can we our sainted ones discern;
And feel, while with them on the way,
Our hearts within us burn.

And thus the common tongue and pen
Which, world-wide, echo Channing's fame,
As one of Heaven's anointed men,
Have sanctified his name.

In vain shall Rome her portals bar,
And shut from him her saintly prize,
Whom, in the world's great calendar,
All men shall canonize.

By Narragansett's sunny bay,
Beneath his green embowering wood,
To me it seems but yesterday
Since at his side I stood.

The slopes lay green with summer rains,
The western wind blew fresh and free,

O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge!
He bare her to the horrid gulfs below,
And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades,
Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms
Of grating iron and the clank of chains.

On blossomed plains in far Trinacria
A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair
Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars,
Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon,
She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids
Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale,
'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake,
Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen,
E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes.
A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds
'Mid sallow fume of ...

The bird flies home to its young;
The flower folds its leaves about an opening bud;
And in my neighbour's house there is the cry of a child.
I close my window that I need not hear.

She is mine, and she is very beautiful:
And in her heart there is no evil thought.
There is even love in her heart -
Love of life, love of joy, love of this fair world,
And love of me (or love of my love for her);
Yet she will never consent to bear me a child.
And when I speak of it she weeps,
Always she weeps, saying:
'Do I not bring joy enough into your life?
Are you not satisfied with me and my love,
As I am satisfied with you?
Never would I urge you to some great peril
To please my whim; yet ever so you urge me,
Urge me to risk my happiness - yea, life itself -
S...

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

I

Dear Love, you ask if I be true,
If other women move
The heart that only beats for you
With pulses all of love.

Out in the chilly dew one morn
I plucked a wild sweet rose,
A little silver bud new-born
And longing to unclose.

I took it, loving new-born things,
I knew my heart was warm,
'O little silver rose, come in
And shelter from the storm.'

And soon, against my body pressed,
I felt its petals part,
And, looking down within my breast
I saw its golden heart.

O such a golden heart it has,
Your eyes may never see,
To others it is always shut,
It opens but for me.

But that is why you see me pass
The honeysuckle there,
And leave the lilies in the grass,
Although they be so fair;