Identity

i(Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!)
i(Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:)
i(Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;)
i(The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,)
i(Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;)
i(And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old)
i(In dancing silver-sandaled on the sea,)
i(Sing in their high and lonely melody.)
i(Come near, that no more blinded hy man's fate,)
i(I find under the boughs of love and hate,)
i(In all poor foolish things that live a day,)
i(Eternal beauty wandering on her way.)
i(Come near, come near, come near -- Ah, leave me still)
i(A little space for the rose-breath to fill!)
i(Lest I no more bear common things that crave;)
i(The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,)
i(The field-m...

(AFTER SIR L. M.)

                        Next I saw
A pensive gentleman of middle age,
That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe
Pendent beneath his chin, a double one,
(Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath,
For he had mingled in the Morris dance
And rested blown; but damsels in their teens,
All decorous and decorously clad,
Their very ankles hardly visible,
Recalled his motions; while, for chaperon,
Good Mrs. Grundy up against the wall
Beamed approbation.

                On his face I read
Signs of high sadness such as poets wear,
Being divinely discontented with
The praise of jeunes filles. Even as I looked,
He touched the portion of his pipe reserved
For minor poetry of solemn tone,
Checking the humorous stops inten...

The mushroom is the elf of plants,
At evening it is not;
At morning in a truffled hut
It stops upon a spot

As if it tarried always;
And yet its whole career
Is shorter than a snake's delay,
And fleeter than a tare.

'T is vegetation's juggler,
The germ of alibi;
Doth like a bubble antedate,
And like a bubble hie.

I feel as if the grass were pleased
To have it intermit;
The surreptitious scion
Of summer's circumspect.

Had nature any outcast face,
Could she a son contemn,
Had nature an Iscariot,
That mushroom, -- it is him.

So were mine eyes inebriate with view
Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds
Disfigur'd, that they long'd to stay and weep.

But Virgil rous'd me: "What yet gazest on?
Wherefore doth fasten yet thy sight below
Among the maim'd and miserable shades?
Thou hast not shewn in any chasm beside
This weakness. Know, if thou wouldst number them
That two and twenty miles the valley winds
Its circuit, and already is the moon
Beneath our feet: the time permitted now
Is short, and more not seen remains to see."

"If thou," I straight replied, "hadst weigh'd the cause
For which I look'd, thou hadst perchance excus'd
The tarrying still." My leader part pursu'd
His way, the while I follow'd, answering him,
And adding thus: "Within that cave I deem,
Whereon ...

Dark days have passed, but you who taught me then
To look upon the world with trustful eyes,
Are not forgotten! Quick to sympathise
With noble thoughts, I’ve dreamt of moments when
Your low voice filled with strains of fairer skies!
Stray breaths of Grecian song that went and came,
Like floating fragrance from some quiet glen
In those far hills which shine with classic fame
Of passioned nymphs and grand-browed god-like men!
I sometimes fear my heart hath lost the same
Sweet sense of harmony; but this I know
That Beauty waits on you where’er you go,
Because she loveth child-like Faith! Her bowers
Are rich for it with glad perennial flowers.

I am not poor, but I am proud,
Of one inalienable right,
Above the envy of the crowd,--
Thought's holy light.

Better it is than gems or gold,
And oh! it cannot die,
But thought will glow when the sun grows cold,
And mix with Deity.

BOSTON, 1823.

Here far away from the city, here by the yellow dunes
I will lie and soothe my heart where the sea croons.
For what can I do with strife, or what can I do with hate?
Or the city, or life, or fame, or love or fate?

Or the struggle since time began of the rich and poor?
Or the law that drives the weak from the temple's door?
Bury me under the sand so that my sorrow shall lie
Hidden under the dunes from the world's eye.

I have learned the secret of silence, silence long and deep:
The dead knew all that I know, that is why they sleep.
They could do nothing with fate, or love, or fame, or strife -
When life fills full the soul then life kills life.

I would glide under the earth as a shadow over a dune,
Into the soul of silence, under the sun and moon.
And f...

        A monkey, to reform the times,
        Resolved to visit foreign climes;
        For therefore toilsomely we roam
        To bring politer manners home.
        Misfortunes serve to make us wise:
        Poor pug was caught, and made a prize;
        Sold was he, and by happy doom
        Bought to cheer up a lady's gloom.
        Proud as a lover of his chains
        His way he wins, his post maintains -
        He twirled her knots and cracked her fan,
        Like any other gentleman.
        When jests grew dull he showed his wit,
        And many a lounger hit with it.
        When he had fully stored his mind -
        As Orpheus once for human kind, -
        So he away would homewards steal,
        To civilize the monkey weal.

1.1    "What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song?
1.2    Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
1.3    Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
1.4    Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
1.5    And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.

1.6    It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
1.7    And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
1.8    It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
1.9    To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
1.10    To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
1.11    When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs.

1.12    It is an easy thing to laug...

She. Yet womanhood you reverence,
So you profess!

He. With heart and soul.

She. Of which fact this is evidence!
To help Art-study, for some dole
Of certain wretched shillings, you
Induce a woman, virgin too
To strip and stand stark-naked?

He. True.

She. Nor feel you so degrade her?

He. What
(Excuse the interruption), clings
Half-savage-like around your hat?

She. Ah, do they please you? Wild-bird-wings!
Next season, Paris-prints assert,
We must go feathered to the skirt:
My modiste keeps on the alert.
Owls, hawks, jays, swallows most approve.

He. Dare I speak plainly?

She. Oh, I trust!

He. Then, Lady Blanche, it less wo...

Where the bridge out at Woodley did stride,
Wi' his wide arches' cool sheäded bow,
Up above the clear brook that did slide
By the poppies, befoam'd white as snow;
As the gilcups did quiver among
The white deäsies, a-spread in a sheet.
There a quick-trippèn maïd come along,
Aye, a girl wi' her light-steppèn veet.


An' she cried "I do praÿ, is the road
Out to Lincham on here, by the meäd?"
An' "oh! ees," I meäde answer, an' show'd
Her the way it would turn an' would leäd:
"Goo along by the beech in the nook,
Where the children do plaÿ in the cool,
To the steppèn stwones over the brook,
Aye, the grey blocks o' rock at the pool."


"Then you don't seem a-born an' a-bred,"
I spoke up, "at a place here about;"
And she answer'd wi' cheä...

Each heart has its haunted chamber,
    Where the silent moonlight falls!
On the floor are mysterious footsteps,
    There are whispers along the walls!

And mine at times is haunted
    By phantoms of the Past
As motionless as shadows
    By the silent moonlight cast.

A form sits by the window,
    That is not seen by day,
For as soon as the dawn approaches
    It vanishes away.

It sits there in the moonlight
    Itself as pale and still,
And points with its airy finger
    Across the window-sill.

Without before the window,
    There stands a gloomy pine,
Whose boughs wave upward and downward
    As wave these thoughts of mine.

And underneath its branches
    Is the grave of a little child,
Who died u...

    Somehow, someway, I can not see the light;
        The giant hills of doubting reach the skies,
    Abiding shadows bring eternal night,
        And on my ways no suns of morning rise;
    Dark mysteries across the years of might
        Crush down my hopes, until each yearning dies,
    Until my soul is weary, dim my sight,
        And ghostly echoes mock my fainting cries.

    Ah, I shall know beyond these narrow years,
        The glorious mornings of eternal day,
        Where perfect love and tender trust shall play,
    And smiles and laughter banish all the tears,
    And all the heavy mists of doubts and fears
        Shall leave my longing soul somehow, someway!

    They will find in this life who are grieved with its gladness
        No songs for the heart and no hopes for the soul,
    But will faint in the glooms where the dirges of sadness
        In tremulous murmurs of wretchedness roll;
    For the sweets of this earth never lavish their kisses
        Where lives in the valleys of rapture repine;
    In the tortures they mourn who denounce all the blisses,--
        They weep in the shadow that rail at the shine.

    In the fields that are fair with the blooms of the clover,
        No garlands are grown for the arbors of shade
    Where the woes of the wood in their darkness hang over
        The grasses that wave with the winds of the glade;
    From the chimes of the breezes there echo no measures
        That gladd...

Now had the sun to that horizon reach'd,
That covers, with the most exalted point
Of its meridian circle, Salem's walls,
And night, that opposite to him her orb
Sounds, from the stream of Ganges issued forth,
Holding the scales, that from her hands are dropp'd
When she reigns highest: so that where I was,
Aurora's white and vermeil-tinctur'd cheek
To orange turn'd as she in age increas'd.

Meanwhile we linger'd by the water's brink,
Like men, who, musing on their road, in thought
Journey, while motionless the body rests.
When lo! as near upon the hour of dawn,
Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam
Glares down in west, over the ocean floor;
So seem'd, what once again I hope to view,
A light so swiftly coming through the sea,
No winged course ...

A white star born in the evening glow
Looked to the round green world below,
And saw a pool in a wooded place
That held like a jewel her mirrored face.
She said to the pool: "Oh, wondrous deep,
I love you, I give you my light to keep.
Oh, more profound than the moving sea
That never has shown myself to me!
Oh, fathomless as the sky is far,
Hold forever your tremulous star!"
But out of the woods as night grew cool
A brown pig came to the little pool;
It grunted and splashed and waded in
And the deepest place but reached its chin.
The water gurgled with tender glee
And the mud churned up in it turbidly.
The star grew pale and hid her face
In a bit of floating cloud like lace.

When God's wrath-cloud is o'er me,
Affrighting heart and mind;
When days seem dark before me,
And days seem black behind;
Those friends who think they know me,
Who deem their insight keen,
They ne'er forget to show me
The man I might have been.

He's rich and independent,
Or rising fast to fame;
His bright star is ascendant,
The country knows his name;
His houses and his gardens
Are splendid to be seen;
His fault the wise world pardons,
The man I might have been.

His fame and fortune haunt me;
His virtues wave me back;
His name and prestige daunt me
When I would take the track;
But you, my friend true-hearted,
God keep our friendship green!,
You know how I was parted
From all I might have been.

But what ...

Up at his attic sill the South wind came
And days of sun and storm but never peace.
Along the town's tumultuous arteries
He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame:
Each night the whistles in the bay, the same
Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars:
For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars
Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame.
Up to his attic came the city cries -
The throes with which her iron sinews heave -
And yet forever behind prison doors
Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes
The light that hangs on desert hills at eve
And tints the sea on solitary shores. . . .