Identity

This is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison-bars would hold:
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock:
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet;
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o'er him an honoring vault.
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call'st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another's eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line
Severing rightly ...

Come list, while I tell of the heart-wounded Stranger
    Who sleeps her last slumber in this haunted ground;
Where often, at midnight, the lonely wood-ranger
    Hears soft fairy music re-echo around.

None e'er knew the name of that heart-stricken lady,
    Her language, tho' sweet, none could e'er understand;
But her features so sunned, and her eyelash so shady,
    Bespoke her a child of some far Eastern land.

'Twas one summer night, when the village lay sleeping,
    A soft strain of melody came o'er our ears;
So sweet, but so mournful, half song and half weeping,
    Like music that Sorrow had steeped in her tears.

We thought 'twas an anthem some angel had sung us;--
    But, soon as the day-beams had gushed from on high,
With wonder we saw this b...

    I asked Aunt Persis yester-eve, as twilight fell,
    If she had things of value hidden safe away -
    Treasures that were her very own? And did she love
    To bring them forth, and feast her eyes upon their worth,
    And finger them with all a miser's greed of touch?

    She smiled that slow, warm smile of hers, and drew me down
    Beside her in the inglenook. The rain beat hard
    Against the panes, without the world was doubly gray
    With twilight and with cloud. The room was full of shade
    Till Persis stirred the slumbering grate fire wide awake,
    And made it send its flickering shafts of light into
    Each corner dim - gay shafts that chased the shadows forth
    And took their place, then stole away and let
    The shadow back, and then gave cha...

"I love the Lady of Merle," he said.
"She is not for thee!" her suitor cried.
And in the valley the lovers fought
By the salt river's tide.

The braver fell on the dewy sward:
The unloved lover returned once more;
In yellow satin the lady came
And met him at the door.

"Hast thou heard, dark Edith," laughed he grim,
"Poor Hugh hath craved thee many a day?
Soon would it have been too late for him
His low-born will to say.

"I struck a blade where lay his heart's love,
And voice for thee have I left him none,
To brag he still seeks thee over the hills
When thou and I are one!"

Fearless across the wide country
Rode the dark Lady Edith of Merle;
She looked at the headlands soft with haze,
And the moor's mists of pearl.

Betimes, I seem to see in dreams
What when awake I may not see;
Can night be God's more than the day?
Do stars, not suns, best light his way?
Who knoweth? Blended lights and shades
Arch aisles down which He walks to me.

I hear him coming in the night
Afar, and yet I know not how;
His steps make music low and sweet;
Sometimes the nails are in his feet;
Does darkness give God better light
Than day, to find a weary brow?

Does darkness give man brighter rays
To find the God, in sunshine lost?
Must shadows wrap the trysting-place
Where God meets hearts with gentlest grace?
Who knoweth it? God hath His ways
For every soul here sorrow-tossed.

The hours of day are like the waves
That fret against the shores of sin:
They touch the ...

    Are you my songs, importunate of praise?
    Be still, remember for your comforting
    That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing
    Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

    Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring
    Rubies far redder thrust their eager rays
    Into the blindfold dark for many days
    Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

    Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not
    The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due -
    Men's summer-sweet unrecognition - grieve not:
    Oh, stoop not to them!    Better far that you
    Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,
    Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.

I.

Oh for a field, my friend; oh for a field!
    I ask no more
    Than one plain field, shut in by hedgerows four,
Contentment sweet to yield.
For I am not fastidious,
    And, with a proud demeanour, I
Will not affect invidious
    Distinctions about scenery.
I sigh not for the fir trees where they rise
Against Italian skies,
    Swiss lakes, or Scottish heather,
    Set off with glorious weather;
            Such sights as these
            The most exacting please;
But I, lone wanderer in London streets,
Where every face one meets
            Is full of care,
            And seems to wear
            A troubled air,
            Of being late for some affair
    Of life or death:--thus I, ev'n I,
Long for a field of gras...

    The moon is but a golden skull,
    She mounts the heavens now,
    And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms
    Are wreathed around her brow.

    The Moon-Worms are a doughty race:
    They eat her gray and golden face.
    Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head:
    These caverns are their dwelling-place.

    The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies,
    From the great hollows of her eyes
    Behold all souls, and they are wise:
    With tiny, keen and icy eyes,
    Behold how each man sins and dies.

    When Earth in gold-corruption lies
    Long dead, the moon-worm butterflies
    On cyclone wings will reach this place -
    Yea, rear their brood on earth's dead face.

In the deepest nights of Winter
To the Muses kind oft cried I:
"Not a ray of morn is gleaming,
Not a sign of daylight breaking;
Bring, then, at the fitting moment,
Bring the lamp's soft glimm'ring lustre,
'Stead of Phoebus and Aurora,
To enliven my still labours!"
Yet they left me in my slumbers,
Dull and unrefreshing, lying,
And to each late-waken'd morning
Follow'd days devoid of profit.

When at length return'd the spring-time,
To the nightingales thus spake I:
"Darling nightingales, oh, beat ye
Early, early at my window,
Wake me from the heavy slumber
That chains down the youth so strongly!"
Yet the love-o'erflowing songsters
Their sweet melodies protracted
Through the night before my window,
Kept awake my loving spirit,
...

Within the dwindling glow of light from languid lamps,
Sunk in the softest cushions soaked with heady scent,
Hippolyta lay dreaming of the thrilling touch
That spread apart the veil of her young innocence.

She searched with troubled eye, afflicted by the storm,
For the once-distant sky of her naivety,
A voyager who turns and looks beyond the wake
To blue horizons which had once been overhead.

The heavy tears that fell from dull and weary eyes,
The broken look, the stupor, the voluptuousness,
Her conquered arms thrown down, surrendered in the field,
All strangely served her still, to show her fragile charm.

Stretched calmly at her feet, joyfully satisfied,
Delphine looked up at her with those compelling eyes
Like a strong animal that oversees her prey,<...

Shun the brush and shun the pen,
Shun the ways of clever men,
When they prove that black is white,
Whey they swear that wrong is right,
When they roast the singing stars
Like chestnuts, in between the bars,
    Children, let a wandering fool
    Stuff your ears with cotton-wool.

When you see a clever man
Run as quickly as you can.
You must never, never, never
Think that Socrates was clever.
The cleverest thing I ever knew
Now cracks walnuts at the Zoo.
    Children, let a wandering fool
    Stuff your ears with cotton-wool.

Homer could not scintillate.
Milton, too, was merely great.
That's a very different matter
From talking like a frantic hatter.
Keats and Shelley had no tricks.
Wordsworth never climbed up s...

        Old lady, put your glasses on,
            With polished lenses, mounting golden,
        And once again look slowly through
            The album olden.

        How the old portraits take you back
            To friends who once would 'round you gather
        All scattered now, like frosted leaves
            In blustering weather.

        Why, who is this, the bright coquette?
            Her eyes with Love's bright arrows laden
        "Poor Nell, she's living single yet,
            An ancient maiden."

        And this, the fragile poetess?
            Whose high soul-yearnings nought can smother
        "She's stouter far than I am now,
            A kind grandmother."

        Who is this girl with flowing curls,
    ...

The wind makes moan, the water runneth chill;
I hear the nymphs go crying through the brake;
And roaming mournfully from hill to hill
The maenads all are silent for his sake!

He loved thy pipe, O wreathed and piping Pan!
So play'st thou sadly, lone within thine hollow;
He was thy blood, if ever mortal man,
Therefore thou weepest - even thou, Apollo!

But O, the grieving of the Little Things,
Above the pipe and lyre, throughout the woods!
The beating of a thousand airy wings,
The cry of all the fragile multitudes!

The moth flits desolate, the tree-toad calls,
Telling the sorrow of the elf and fay;
The cricket, little harper of the walls,
Puts up his harp - hath quite forgot to play!

And risen on these winter paths anew,
The wilding b...

Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men,
Some have lov'd as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace;
Or the feature, or the youth.
But the language and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then will read the story,
First prepare you to be sorry
That you never knew till now
Either whom to love or how;
But be glad, as soon with me,
When you know that this is she
Of whose beauty it was sung;
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing high decay,
Till she be the reason why
All the world for love m...

My heart is an old house, and in that forlorn old house,
In the very centre, dark and forgotten,
Is a locked room where an enchanted princess
Lies sleeping.
But sometimes, in that dark house,
As if almost from the stars, far away,
Sounds whisper in that secret room
Faint voices, music, a dying trill of laughter?
And suddenly, from her long sleep,
The beautiful princess awakes and dances.
Who is she? I do not know.
Why does she dance? Do not ask me!
Yet to-day, when I saw you,
When I saw your eyes troubled with the trouble of happiness,
And your mouth trembling into a smile,
And your fingers pull shyly forward,
Softly, in that room,
The little princess arose
And danced;
And as she danced the old house gravely trembled
With its vague and deli...

[VOICES SINGING.]


FIRST CHORUS.

Ere the birth of Death and of Time,
Ere the birth of Hell and its torments,
Ere the orbs of heat and of rime
And the winds to the heavens were as garments,
Worm-like in the womb of Space,
Worm-like from her monster womb,
We sprung, a myriad race
Of thunder and tempest and gloom.


SECOND CHORUS.

As from the evil good
Springs like a fire,
As bland beatitude
Wells from the dire,
So was the Chaos brood
Of us the sire.


FIRST CHORUS.

We had lain for gaunt ages asleep
'Neath her breast in a bulk of torpor,
When down through the vasts of the deep
Clove a sound like the notes of a harper;
Clove a sound, and the horrors grew
Tumultuous with turbulent n...

A volant Tribe of Bards on earth are found,
Who, while the flattering Zephyrs round them play,
On "coignes of vantage" hang their nests of clay;
How quickly from that aery hold unbound,
Dust for oblivion! To the solid ground
Of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye;
Convinced that there, there only, she can lay
Secure foundations. As the year runs round,
Apart she toils within the chosen ring;
While the stars shine, or while day's purple eye
Is gently closing with the flowers of spring;
Where even the motion of an Angel's wing
Would interrupt the intense tranquility
Of silent hills, and more than silent sky.

I have been wandering where the daisies grow,
    Great fields of tall, white daisies, and I saw
    Them bend reluctantly, and seem to draw
Away in pride when the fresh breeze would blow
    From timothy and yellow buttercup,
    So by their fearless beauty lifted up.

Yet must they bend at the strong breeze's will,
    Bright, flawless things, whether in wrath he sweep
    Or, as oftimes, in mood caressing, creep
Over the meadows and adown the hill.
    So Love in sport or truth, as Fates allow,
    Blows over proud young hearts, and bids them bow.

So beautiful is it to live, so sweet
    To hear the ripple of the bobolink,
    To smell the clover blossoms white and pink,
To feel oneself far from the dusty street,
    From dusty souls, from all th...