Identity

One hundred years have come and gone,
Since thy brave spirit came to earth,
Since Scotland saw thy genius dawn,
And had the joy to give thee birth.

There was no proud and brilliant throng,
To celebrate thine advent here,
And but the humble heard the song,
Which first proclaim'd a poet near.

But genius will assert its right
To speak a word, or chant a lay,
And thou, with independent might,
Asserted it from day to day.

No fawning, sycophantic whine,
Marr'd the clear note thy spirit blew,
Thy stirring words, thy gift divine,
Were to thyself and country true.

Tho' heir to naught of wealth, or land,
Thy soaring mind, with fancy fir'd,
Saw, in Creation's lavish hand,
The gifts display'd, thy soul desir'd.

The field, ...

A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
His path into our waiting hearts
Already paved by song.

Full well we knew his choristers,
Whose plaintive voices haunt our rest,
Those sable-vested harbingers
Of melancholy guest.

We smiled on him for love of these,
With eyes that swift grew dim to scan
Beneath the veil of courteous ease
The faith-forsaken man.

To his wan gaze the weary shows
And fashions of our vain estate,
Our shallow pain and false repose,
Our barren love and hate,

Are shadows in a land of graves,
Where creeds, the bubbles of a dream,
Flash each and fade, like melting waves
Upon a moonlight stream.

Yet loyal to his own despair,
Erect beneath a darkened sky,
He...

        In the sleep-haunted gloom
Born of the slumbrous twilight in these shades,
These vast and venerable collonades,
        I welcome thee, dear June!

        And while with head reclined,
And limbs aweary with my woodland walk,
I listen to the low melodious talk
        Of leaves and singing wind,

        The merry roundelay
Of the swart ploughman, sowing summer grain,
And tinkling sheep-bell on the distant plain,
        And pastures far away,

        Come with a soft refrain,
Like a faint echo from the outer world,
While Peace sits by me with her white wings furled,
        Within my green domain.

        This is my palace, where
Great trunks are amber pillars to support
The blue roof of the vast and silent court,
...

Out of the depths of darkling life where sin
Laughs piteously that sorrow should not know
Her own ill name, nor woe be counted woe;
Where hate and craft and lust make drearier din
Than sounds through dreams that grief holds revel in;
What charm of joy-bells ringing, streams that flow,
Winds that blow healing in each note they blow,
Is this that the outer darkness hears begin?
O sweetest heart of all thy time save one,
Star seen for love’s sake nearest to the sun,
Hung lamplike o’er a dense and doleful city,
Not Shakespeare’s very spirit, howe’er more great,
Than thine toward man was more compassionate,
Nor gave Christ praise from lips more sweet with pity.

Joy came in youth as a humming-bird,
    (Sing hey! for the honey and bloom of life!)
And it made a home in my summer bower
With the honeysuckle and the sweet-pea flower.
    (Sing hey! for the blossoms and sweets of life!)

Joy came as a lark when the years had gone,
    (Ah! hush, hush still, for the dream is short!)
And I gazed far up to the melting blue
Where the rare song dropped like a golden dew.
    (Ah! sweet is the song tho' the dream be short!)

Joy hovers now in a far-off mist,
    (The night draws on and the air breathes snow!)
And I reach, sometimes, with a trembling hand
To the red-tipped cloud of the joy-bird's land.
    (Alas! for the days of the storm and the snow!)

A fat young man plays with a pond.
The wind has caught itself in a tree.
The pale sky seems to be rumpled,
As though it had run out of makeup.
On long crutches, bent nearly in half
And chatting, two cripples creep across the field.
A blond poet perhaps goes mad.
A little horse stumbles over a lady.
A fat man is stuck to a window.
A boy wants to visit a soft woman.
A gray clown puts on his boots.
A baby carriage shrieks and dogs curse.

Under a daisied bank
There stands a rich red ruminating cow,
And hard against her flank
A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow.

The flowery river-ooze
Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail;
Few pilgrims but would choose
The peace of such a life in such a vale.

The maid breathes words - to vent,
It seems, her sense of Nature's scenery,
Of whose life, sentiment,
And essence, very part itself is she.

She bends a glance of pain,
And, at a moment, lets escape a tear;
Is it that passing train,
Whose alien whirr offends her country ear? -

Nay! Phyllis does not dwell
On visual and familiar things like these;
What moves her is the spell
Of inner themes and inner poetries:

Could but by Sunday morn
Her gay ...

Who of all statesmen is his country's pride,
Her councils' prompter and her leaders' guide?
He speaks; the nation holds its breath to hear;
He nods, and shakes the sunset hemisphere.
Born where the primal fount of Nature springs
By the rude cradles of her throneless kings,
In his proud eye her royal signet flames,
By his own lips her Monarch she proclaims.
Why name his countless triumphs, whom to meet
Is to be famous, envied in defeat?
The keen debaters, trained to brawls and strife,
Who fire one shot, and finish with the knife,
Tried him but once, and, cowering in their shame,
Ground their hacked blades to strike at meaner game.
The lordly chief, his party's central stay,
Whose lightest word a hundred votes obey,
Found a new listener seated at his side,
...

And only where the forest fires have sped,
    Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
    It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief,
    Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
    And life revives, and blossoms once again.

I

You have heard "a Spanish Lady
How she wooed an English man;"
Hear now of a fair Armenian,
Daughter of the proud Soldan;
How she loved a Christian slave, and told her pain
By word, look, deed, with hope that he might love again.

II

"Pluck that rose, it moves my liking,"
Said she, lifting up her veil;
"Pluck it for me, gentle gardener,
Ere it wither and grow pale."
"Princess fair, I till the ground, but may not take
From twig or bed an humbler flower, even for your sake!"

III

"Grieved am I, submissive Christian!
To behold thy captive state;
Women, in your land, may pity
(May they not?) the unfortunate."
"Yes, kind Lady! otherwise man could not bear
Life, which to every one that breathes is full of care."
...

"O Thou!" her words she thus without delay
Resuming, turn'd their point on me, to whom
They but with lateral edge seem'd harsh before,
"Say thou, who stand'st beyond the holy stream,
If this be true. A charge so grievous needs
Thine own avowal." On my faculty
Such strange amazement hung, the voice expir'd
Imperfect, ere its organs gave it birth.

A little space refraining, then she spake:
"What dost thou muse on? Answer me. The wave
On thy remembrances of evil yet
Hath done no injury." A mingled sense
Of fear and of confusion, from my lips
Did such a "Yea" produce, as needed help
Of vision to interpret. As when breaks
In act to be discharg'd, a cross-bow bent
Beyond its pitch, both nerve and bow o'erstretch'd,
The flagging weapon feebly hits the mark...

Past life, past tears, far past the grave,
    The tryst is set for me,
Since, for our all, your all you gave
    On the slopes of Picardy.

On Angus, in the autumn nights,
    The ice-green light shall lie,
Beyond the trees the Northern Lights
    Slant on the belts of sky.

But miles on miles from Scottish soil
    You sleep, past war and scaith,
Your country's freedman, loosed from toil,
    In honour and in faith.

For Angus held you in her spell,
    Her Grampians, faint and blue,
Her ways, the speech you knew so well,
    Were half the world to you.

Yet rest, my son; our souls are those
    Nor time nor death can part,
And lie you proudly, folded close
    To France's deathless heart.

Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold,
And 'mid their sheaves, - where, like a daisy-bloom
Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom,
The star of twilight glows, - as Ruth, 'tis told,
Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,
The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume
From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume
Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.
Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill
Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily
Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot:
Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,
And in my heart her name, - like some sweet bee
Within a rose, - blowing a faery flute.

A drop of water risen from the ocean
Forgot its cause, and spake with deep emotion
Unto a passing breeze.    'How desolate
And all forlorn is my unhappy fate.
I know not whence I came, or where I go.
Scorched by the sun, or chilled by winds that blow,
I dwell in space a little time, then pass
Out into the night and nothingness - alas!'

'Nay,' quoth the breeze, 'my friend, that cannot be.
Thou dost reflect the Universe to me.
Look at thine own true self, and there behold
A world of light, all scintillant with gold.'
Just there the drop sank back into the wave
From whence it came.    Nay, that was not its GRAVE!

It lived, it moved, it was a joyous part
Of that strong palpitating ocean heart;
Its little dream of loneliness was done;
It woke to fi...

And what is Life?--An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?--A minute's pause, a moment's thought;
And happiness?-A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

What are vain Hopes?--The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each floweret of its gem,--and dies;
A cobweb hiding disappointment's thorn,
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise.

And thou, O Trouble?--Nothing can suppose,
(And sure the power of wisdom only knows,)
What need requireth thee:
So free and liberal as thy bounty flows,
Some necessary cause must surely be;
But disappointments, pains, and every woe
Devoted wretches feel,
The ...

In the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us,
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled in my hair....
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year’s blossoms, clinging to its coils?

All divine artists, humble, filial,
Turn therefore unto Thee, the poet's sun;
First-born of God's creation, only done
When from Thee, centre-form, the veil did fall,
And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal,
The highest Life with noblest Form made one,
To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun;
The living germ in this strange planet-ball,
Even as thy form in mind of striving saint.
So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint,
Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield,
In every splendour shadowy revealed:
But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint,
Power falls down straightway, speechless, dim-eyed, faint.

June, 1865

Armies he's seen--the herds of war,
But never such swarms of men
As now in the Nineveh of the North--
How mad the Rebellion then!

And yet but dimly he divines
The depth of that deceit,
And superstitution of vast pride
Humbled to such defeat.

Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms--
His steel the nearest magnet drew;
Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives--
'Tis Nature's wrong they rue.

His face is hidden in his beard,
But his heart peers out at eye--
And such a heart! like a mountain-pool
Where no man passes by.

He thinks of Hill--a brave soul gone;
And Ashby dead in pale disdain;
And Stuart with the Rupert-plume,
Whose blue eye never shall laugh again.

He hears the drum; he sees our boy...