Identity

        As the ambitious sculptor, tireless, lifts
    Chisel and hammer to the block at hand,
    Before my half-formed character I stand
        And ply the shining tools of mental gifts.
    I'll cut away a huge, unsightly side
        Of selfishness, and smooth to curves of grace
        The angles of ill-temper.

    And no trace
    Shall my sure hammer leave of silly pride.
        Chip after chip must fall from vain desires,
    And the sharp corners of my discontent
    Be rounded into symmetry, and lent
        Great harmony by faith that never tires.
    Unfinished still, I must toil on and on,
    Till the pale critic, Death, shall say, "'Tis done."

Such as the youth, who came to Clymene
To certify himself of that reproach,
Which had been fasten'd on him, (he whose end
Still makes the fathers chary to their sons),
E'en such was I; nor unobserv'd was such
Of Beatrice, and that saintly lamp,
Who had erewhile for me his station mov'd;
When thus by lady: "Give thy wish free vent,
That it may issue, bearing true report
Of the mind's impress; not that aught thy words
May to our knowledge add, but to the end,
That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst
And men may mingle for thee when they hear."

"O plant! from whence I spring! rever'd and lov'd!
Who soar'st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear,
As earthly thought determines two obtuse
In one triangle not contain'd, so clear
Dost see contingencies, ...

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago!
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.
Ah, time will change us; yea, I hear it saying,
"She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snow
Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow
Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.
The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,
Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:
And all the gladness that her blue eyes held
Tears and the world have hardened with distress."
"True! true!" I answer,"O ye years that part!
These things are changed, but is her heart, her heart?"

[The poet dramatises his Lady's loneliness]

Alone! once more alone! how like a tomb
My little parlour sounds which only now
Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice.
So still! so empty! Surely one might fear
The walls should meet in ruinous collapse
That held no more his music. Yet they stand
Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless
As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built
But never came to sleep in; built, indeed,
For - that grey moth to flit in like a ghost!

Alone! another feast-day come and gone,
Watched through the weeks as in my garden there
I watch a seedling grow from blade to bud
Impatient for its blossom. So this day
Has bloomed at last, and we have plucked its flower
And shared its sweetness, and once more the time
Is as t...

"I know where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,
Where the leaves are broad and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.

"I know where the young May violet grows,
In its lone and lowly nook,
On the mossy bank, where the larch-tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,
Far over the silent brook.

"And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower;
And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,
To look on the lovely flower."

Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks
To the hunting-ground on the hills;
'Tis a song of his maid of the woods and rocks,
With her bright black eyes and long black locks,

[Written for a picture]


    The Youth speaks: -
    "Why do you seek the sun
    In your bubble-crown ascending?
    Your chariot will melt to mist.
    Your crown will have an ending."

    The Goddess replies: -
    "Nay, sun is but a bubble,
    Earth is a whiff of foam -
    To my caves on the coast of Thule
    Each night I call them home.
    Thence Faiths blow forth to angels
    And loves blow forth to men -
    They break and turn to nothing
    And I make them whole again.
    On the crested waves of chaos
    I ride them back reborn:
    New stars I bring at evening
    For those that burst at morn:
    My soul is the wind of Thule
    And evening is the sign -
    The sun is but a bubble,
    A fragile...

In my mind's eye a Temple, like a cloud
Slowly surmounting some invidious hill,
Rose out of darkness: the bright Work stood still:
And might of its own beauty have been proud,
But it was fashioned and to God was vowed
By Virtues that diffused, in every part,
Spirit divine through forms of human art:
Faith had her arch, her arch, when winds blow loud,
Into the consciousness of safety thrilled;
And Love her towers of dread foundation laid
Under the grave of things; Hope had her spire
Star-high, and pointing still to something higher
Trembling I gazed, but heard a voice it said,
"Hell-gates are powerless Phantoms when 'we' build."

"He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life a heroic poem."--MILTON.


There came a voice from the realm of thought,
And my spirit bowed to hear,--
A voice with majestic sadness fraught,
By the grace of God most clear.

A mighty tone from the solemn Past,
Outliving the Poet-lyre,
Borne down on the rush of Time's fitful blast.
Like the cloven tongues of fire.

Wouldst thou fashion the song, O! Poet-heart,
For a mission high and free?
The drama of Life, in its every part,
Must a living poem be.

Wouldst thou speed the knight to the battle-field,
In a proven suit of mail?
On the world's highway, with Faith's broad shield,
The peril go forth to hail.

For the noble soul, there is noble strife,
And the sons of ...

All the night through I drank
Sleep like water or cool cider;
Life flowed over and I sank
Down below the night of clouds....
Then on a pale horse was rider
Through long brushing woods
Where the owl in silence broods,
Quavers, and is quiet again;
Where the grass dark and rank
Breathes on the still air its rain.
Rain and dark and green and sound
Closing slowly round
Swept me as I rode,
And rode on until I came
Where a white cold river flowed
Under woods thin and bare
In the moon's long candle flame.
Through the woods the wind crawled
Leviathan, and here and there
Branches creaked and old winds howled
Sick for home.
All the night I saw the river,
As a girl that sees beside her
Love, between fear and fear
Riding, and is dumb...

The vat-like cups of the fungus, filled
With the rain that fell last night,
Are casks of wine that the elves distilled
For revels the moon did light.

The owlet there with her "Who-oh-who,"
And the frog with his "All is right,"
Could tell a tale if they wanted to
Of what took place last night.

In that hollow beech, where the wood decays,
Their toadstool houses stand;
A little village of drabs and grays,
Cone-roofed, of Faeryland.

That moth, which gleams like a lichen there,
Is one of an elfin band,
That whisks away if you merely dare
To try to understand.

The snail, that slides on that mushroom's top,
And the slug on its sleepy trail,
Wax fat on the things the elves let drop
At feast in the moonlight pale.

The w...

All my mind has sat in state,
Pond'ring on the deathless Soul:
What must be the Perfect Whole,
When the atom is so great!

God!    I fall in spirit down,
Low as Persian to the sun;
All my senses, one by one,
In the stream of Thought must drown.

On the tide of mystery,
Like a waif, I'm seaward borne,
Ever looking for the morn
That will yet interpret Thee,

Opening my blinded eyes,
That have strove to look within,
'Whelmed in clouds of doubt and sin,
Sinking where I dared to rise:

Could I trace one Spirit's flight,
Track it to its final goal,
Know that 'Spirit' meant 'the Soul,'
I must perish in the light.

All in vain I search, and cry:
"What, O Soul, and whence art thou?"
Lower than the earth I bow,

There's nothing here sublime,
But just a roving rhyme,
Run off to pass the time,
With nought titanic in.
The theme that it supports,
And, though it treats of quarts,
It's bare of golden thoughts,
It's just a pannikin.

I think it's rather hard
That each Australian bard,
Each wan, poetic card,
With thoughts galvanic in
His fiery thought alight,
In wild aerial flight,
Will sit him down and write
About a pannikin.

He makes some new-chum fare
From out his English lair
To hunt the native bear,
That curious mannikin;
And then the times get bad
That wandering English lad
Writes out a message sad
Upon his pannikin:

"O mother, think of me
Beneath the wattle tree"
(For you may bet that he
Will drag ...

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol...

        God had called us, and we came;
            Our loved Earth to ashes left;
        Heaven was a neighbor's house,
            Open to us, bereft.

        Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
            And 'twas God who walked ahead;
        Yet I wept along the road,
            Wanting my own house instead.

        Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
            "All you things my eyes have kissed,
        Fare you well!    We meet no more,
            Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

        Weary wings that rise and fall
            All day long above the fire!"--
        Red with heat was every wall,
            Rough with heat was every wire--

        "Fare you well, you little winds
            That the flying embers chase!
...

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
    Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow
    Dark dungeons of Rome he descended,
    Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
    Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,
As the vision, that lured him to follow,
    With the mist and the darkness blended,
    And the dream of his life was ended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

Another hand is beckoning us,
Another call is given;
And glows once more with Angel-steps
The path which reaches Heaven.

Our young and gentle friend, whose smile
Made brighter summer hours,
Amid the frosts of autumn time
Has left us with the flowers.

No paling of the cheek of bloom
Forewarned us of decay;
No shadow from the Silent Land
Fell round our sister's way.

The light of her young life went down,
As sinks behind the hill
The glory of a setting star,
Clear, suddenly, and still.

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
Eternal as the sky;
And like the brook's low song, her voice,
A sound which could not die.

And half we deemed she needed not
The changing of her sphere,
To give to Heaven a Shining O...

Over the western sea, hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride to-day through Manhattan.

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-
bearers,
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks
marching;
But I will sing you a song of what I behold, Libertad.


When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to her pavements;
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love;
When the round-mouth'd guns, out of the smoke and smell I love, spit
their salutes;
When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me--when heaven-clouds
canopy my city ...

E questo 'l nido in che la mia Fenice.

THE SIGHT OF LAURA'S HOUSE REMINDS HIM OF HIS MISERY.


    Is this the nest in which my phoenix first
Her plumage donn'd of purple and of gold,
Beneath her wings who knew my heart to hold,
For whom e'en yet its sighs and wishes burst?
Prime root in which my cherish'd ill had birth,
Where is the fair face whence that bright light came.
Alive and glad which kept me in my flame?
Now bless'd in heaven as then alone on earth;
Wretched and lonely thou hast left me here,
Fond lingering by the scenes, with sorrows drown'd,
To thee which consecrate I still revere.
Watching the hills as dark night gathers round,
Whence its last flight to heaven thy soul did take,
And where my day those bright eyes wont to make.