Identity

Mine was the woman to me, darkling I found her:
Haling her dumb from the camp, held her and bound her.
Hot rose her tribe on our track ere I had proved her;
Hearing her laugh in the gloom, greatly I loved her.

Swift through the forest we ran, none stood to guard us,
Few were my people and far; then the flood barred us,
Him we call Son of the Sea, sullen and swollen.
Panting we waited the death, stealer and stolen.

Yet ere they came to my lance laid for the slaughter,
Lightly she leaped to a log lapped in the water;
Holding on high and apart skins that arrayed her,
Called she the God of the Wind that He should aid her.

Life had the tree at that word (Praise we the Giver!)
Otter-like left he the bank for the full river.
Far fell their axes behind, flashi...

When all works that have
From cradle run to grave
From grave to cradle run instead;
When thoughts that a fool
Has wound upon a spool
Are but loose thread, are but loose thread;
When cradle and spool are past
And I mere shade at last
Coagulate of stuff
Transparent like the wind,
I think that I may find
A faithful love, a faithful love.

Friend of my peaceful days! substantial friend,
Whom wealth can never change, nor int'rest bend,
I love thee like a child. Thou wert to me
The dumb companion of my misery,
And oftner of my joys; - then as I spoke,
I shar'd thy sympathy, Old Heart of Oak!
For surely when my labour ceas'd at night,
With trembling, feverish hands, and aching sight,
The draught that cheer'd me and subdu'd my care,
On thy broad shoulders thou wert proud to bear
O'er thee, with expectation's fire elate,
I've sat and ponder'd on my future fate:
On thee, with winter muffins for thy store,
I've lean'd, and quite forgot that I was poor.

Where dropp'd the acorn that gave birth to thee?
Can'st thou trace back thy line of ancestry?
We're match'd, old friend, and let us not repine,

From Heaven's Gate to Hampstead Heath
Young Bacchus and his crew
Came tumbling down, and o'er the town
Their bursting trumpets blew.

The silver night was wildly bright,
And madly shone the Moon
To hear a song so clear and strong,
With such a lovely tune.

From London's houses, huts and flats,
Came busmen, snobs, and Earls,
And ugly men in bowler hats
With charming little girls.

Sir Moses came with eyes of flame,
Judd, who is like a bloater,
The brave Lord Mayor in coach and pair,
King Edward, in his motor.

Far in a rosy mist withdrawn
The God and all his crew,
Silenus pulled by nymphs, a faun,
A satyr drenched in dew,

Smiled as they wept those shining tears
Only Immortals know,
Whose feet are set among...

Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fix d, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly.
Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise
May we together pass, and calmly try
What are this world s true joys, ere the great voice,
From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly.

To this city joy reveal it!

Peace as its first signal peal it!

(Song of the Bell concluding lines.)

And so it proved! The nation felt, ere long,

That peaceful signal, and, with blessings fraught,
A new-born joy appear'd; in gladsome song

To hail the youthful princely pair we sought;
While in a living, ever-swelling throng

Mingled the crowds from ev'ry region brought,
And on the stage, in festal pomp array'd
The HOMAGE OF THE ARTS * we saw displayed.

(* The title of a lyric piece composed by Schiller in honour of
the marriage of the hereditary Prince of Weimar to the Princess
Maria of Russia, and performed in 1804.)

When, lo! a fearful midnight sound I hear,

That with a dull and mournful echo rings.
And can ...

Oh, take this shell, this pretty thing
    With tinted waves of pearly red;
Hold close your ear and hear it sing,
    Then tell me what its voice hath said.
    A song of surges deep and strong,
    A song of summer sweet and long,
    A sound of storm and wind and rain,
    A sound of joy--a glad refrain.

O plaything of the idle sea,
    Whence come these changing tints of thine?
Have sunset clouds looked down on thee
    And stained thee with their hues divine?
    Oh, tell the secrets thou must know
    Of clouds above and waves below;
    Oh, whisper of the bending sky
    And ocean caves where jewels lie.

O beauteous sea-shell, tinged with red,
    What dost thou know; what canst thou tell?
Unto what mysteries are thou wed,
    ...

The heart that once was rich with light,
And happy in your grace,
Now lieth cold beneath the scorn
That gathers on your face;
And every joy it knew before,
And every templed dream,
Is paler than the dying flash
On yonder mountain stream.
The soul, regretting foundered bliss
Amid the wreck of years,
Hath mourned it with intensity
Too deep for human tears!

The forest fadeth underneath
The blast that rushes by
The dripping leaves are white with death,
But Love will never die!
We both have seen the starry moss
That clings where Ruin reigns,
And one must know his lonely breast
Affection still retains;
Through all the sweetest hopes of life,
That clustered round and round,
Are lying now, like withered things,
Forsaken on the ...

Into the world you came, and I was dumb,
Because "God did it," so the wise ones said;
I wonder sometimes "Did you really come?"
And "Are you truly . . . DEAD?"

Thus you went out -- alone and uncaressed;
O sweet, soft thing, in all your infant grace,
I never held you in my arms, nor pressed
Warm kisses on your face!

But, in the Garden of the Undefiled,
My soul will claim you . . . you, and not another;
I shall hold out my arms, and say "MY CHILD!"
And you will call me "MOTHER!"

She has put on her green robe, she has put on her double veil, my idol;
My idol has come to me.
She has put on her green robe, my love is a laughing flower;
Gently, gently she comes, she is a young rose, she has come out of the garden.

Gently she has shown her face, parting her veil, my idol;
My idol has come to me.
She has put on her green robe, my love is a young rose for me to break.
Her chin has the smooth colour of peaches and she guards it well;
She is the daughter of a Moghol house and well they guard her.

She put on her red jewels when she came with a noise of rings, my idol;
My idol has come to me.
She has put on her green robe, my love is the stem of a rose;
She breaks not, she is strong.
She has a throne, but comes into the woods for love.

I...

Apollo, god of light and wit,
Could verse inspire, but seldom writ,
Refined all metals with his looks,
As well as chemists by their books;
As handsome as my lady's page;
Sweet five-and-twenty was his age.
His wig was made of sunny rays,
He crown'd his youthful head with bays;
Not all the court of Heaven could show
So nice and so complete a beau.
No heir upon his first appearance,
With twenty thousand pounds a-year rents,
E'er drove, before he sold his land,
So fine a coach along the Strand;
The spokes, we are by Ovid told,
Were silver, and the axle gold:
I own, 'twas but a coach-and-four,
For Jupiter allows no more.
    Yet, with his beauty, wealth, and parts,
Enough to win ten thousand hearts,
No vulgar deity above
Was so unfortunate ...

Elizabeth, it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet, if a poet, in pursuing
The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing, written less, in short's a fool
Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
Being ignorant of one important rule,
Employed in even the theses of the school,
Called, I forget the heathenish Greek name
[Called anything, its meaning is the same]
"Always write first things uppermost in the heart."

I had a daily bliss
I half indifferent viewed,
Till sudden I perceived it stir, --
It grew as I pursued,

Till when, around a crag,
It wasted from my sight,
Enlarged beyond my utmost scope,
I learned its sweetness right.

    I

First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .

Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means to conquer and the ways,

And coming where the crossroads separate
And down each vista glories and wonders wait,
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair
You know not which to choose, and hesitate -

Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom
Of some old quarter take a little room
That looks off over Paris and its towers
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, -

So high that you ...

If Thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks,
What shining of pent glories, what new grace
Had burst upon us from the great Earth's face!
How had we read, as in new-languaged books,
Clear love of God in lone retreating nooks!
A lily, as thy hand its form would trace,
Were plainly seen God's child, of lower race;
And, O my heart, blue hills! and grassy brooks!
Thy soul lay to all undulations bare,
Answering in waves. Each morn the sun did rise,
And God's world woke beneath life-giving skies,
Thou sawest clear thy Father's meanings there;
'Mid Earth's Ideal, and expressions rare,
The ideal Man, with the eternal eyes.

    I'll keep a little tavern
        Below the high hill's crest,
    Wherein all grey-eyed people
        May set them down and rest.

    There shall be plates a-plenty,
        And mugs to melt the chill
    Of all the grey-eyed people
        Who happen up the hill.

    There sound will sleep the traveller,
        And dream his journey's end,
    But I will rouse at midnight
        The falling fire to tend.

    Aye, 'tis a curious fancy--
        But all the good I know
    Was taught me out of two grey eyes
        A long time ago.

Where is beauty?
    Gone, gone:
The cold winds have taken it
    With their faint moan;
The white stars have shaken it,
    Trembling down,
Into the pathless deeps of the sea.
    Gone, gone
    Is beauty from me.

The clear naked flower
    Is faded and dead;
The green-leafed willow,
    Drooping her head,
Whispers low to the shade
    Of her boughs in the stream,
    Sighing a beauty,
    Secret as dream.

I turn these leaves with thronging thoughts, and say,
Alas! how many friends of youth are dead;
How many visions of fair hope have fled,
Since first, my Muse, we met. So speeds away
Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing,
Stretched in the noontide bower, as if the day
Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay
Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing
That fans us; while aloft the gay clouds shine!
Oh, ere the coming of the long cold night,
Religion, may we bless thy purer light,
That still shall warm us, when the tints decline
O'er earth's dim hemisphere; and sad we gaze
On the vain visions of our passing days!