Identity

Though o'er the darksome northern hill
Old ambush'd winter frowning flies,
And faintly drifts his threatenings still
In snowy sweet and blackening skies;
Yet here the willow leaning lies
And shields beneath the budding flower,
Where banks to break the wind arise,
'Tis sweet to sit and spend an hour.

Though floods of winter bustling fall
Adown the arches bleak and blea,
Though snow-storms clothe the mossy wall,
And hourly whiten o'er the lea;
Yet when from clouds the sun is free
And warms the learning bird to sing,
'Neath sloping bank and sheltering tree
'Tis sweet to watch the creeping spring.

Though still so early, one may spy
And track her footsteps every hour;
The daisy with its golden eye,
And primrose bursting into flower;
...

I' pur ascolto, e non odo novella.

HEARING NO TIDINGS OF HER, HE BEGINS TO DESPAIR.


    Still do I wait to hear, in vain still wait,
Of that sweet enemy I love so well:
What now to think or say I cannot tell,
'Twixt hope and fear my feelings fluctuate:
The beautiful are still the marks of fate;
And sure her worth and beauty most excel:
What if her God have call'd her hence, to dwell
Where virtue finds a more congenial state?
If so, she will illuminate that sphere
Even as a sun: but I--'tis done with me!
I then am nothing, have no business here!
O cruel absence! why not let me see
The worst? my little tale is told, I fear,
My scene is closed ere it accomplish'd be.

MOREHEAD.


    No tidings yet--I listen, but in va...

I wonder what they are,
    These pretty, wayward things,
That o'er the gloomy earth
    The wind of heaven flings.

Each one a tiny star,
    And each a perfect gem;
What magic in the art
    That thus has fashioned them.

What beauty in the flake
    That falls upon my hand;
And yet this tiny thing
    My will cannot command.

No two are just alike,
    And yet they are the same;
I wonder if my thought
    Could give to each a name.

Unlike the fragile flowers
    That love the sun's warm rays,
These snow-flakes love the cold,
    And die on sunny days!

So dainty and so pure,
    How beautiful they are;
And yet the slightest touch
    Their purity may mar.

They must be gazed upon,
 ...

From this bizarre and livid sky
Tormented by your destiny,
Into your vacant spirit fly
What tho~ghts? respond, you libertine.

Voracious in my appetite
For the uncertain and unknown,
I do not whine for paradise
As Ovid did, expelled from Rome.

Skies tom apart like wind-swept sands,
You are the mirrors of my pride;
Your mourning clouds, so black and wide,

Are hearses that my dreams command,
And you reflect in flashing light
The Hell in which my heart delights.

Men make them fires on the hearth
Each under his roof-tree,
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
They blow the smoke to me.

Across the high hills and the sea
And all the changeful skies,
The Four Winds blow the smoke to me
Till the tears are in my eyes.

Until the tears are in my eyes
And my heart is well nigh broke
For thinking on old memories
That gather in the smoke.

With every shift of every wind
The homesick memories come,
From every quarter of mankind
Where I have made me a home.

Four times a fire against the cold
And a roof against the rain,
Sorrow fourfold and joy fourfold
The Four Winds bring again!

How can I answer which is best
Of all the fires that burn?
I have been too often host or gues...

When night was lifting,
And dawn had crept under its shade,
Amid cold clouds drifting
Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,
With a sudden scare
I seemed to behold
My Love in bare
Hard lines unfold.

Yea, in a moment,
An insight that would not die
Killed her old endowment
Of charm that had capped all nigh,
Which vanished to none
Like the gilt of a cloud,
And showed her but one
Of the common crowd.

She seemed but a sample
Of earth's poor average kind,
Lit up by no ample
Enrichments of mien or mind.
I covered my eyes
As to cover the thought,
And unrecognize
What the morn had taught.

O vision appalling
When the one believed-in thing
Is seen falling, falling,
With all to which hope can cling.
Of...

I have laid my cheek to Nature's, placed my puny hand in hers,
Felt a kindred spirit warming all the life-blood of my face,
Moved amid the very foremost of her truest worshippers,
Studying each curve of beauty, marking every minute grace;
Loved not less the mountain cedar than the flowers at its feet,
Looking skyward from the valley, open-lipped as if in prayer,
Felt a pleasure in the brooklet singing of its wild retreat,
But I knelt before the splendour of the thunderous Chaudière.

All my manhood waked within me, every nerve had tenfold force,
And my soul stood up rejoicing, looking on with cheerful eyes,
Watching the resistless waters speeding on their downward course,
Titan strength and queenly beauty diademed with rainbow dyes.
Eye and ear, with spirit quickened, mingle...

Mid-noon is past; upon the sultry mead
No zephyr breathes, no cloud its shadow throws:
If we advance unstrengthened by repose,
Farewell the solace of the vagrant reed!
This Nook with woodbine hung and straggling weed
Tempting recess as ever pilgrim chose,
Half grot, half arbour, proffers to enclose
Body and mind, from molestation freed,
In narrow compass, narrow as itself:
Or if the Fancy, too industrious Elf,
Be loth that we should breathe awhile exempt
From new incitements friendly to our task,
Here wants not stealthy prospect, that may tempt
Loose Idless to forego her wily mask.

'T is not alone that black and yawning void
    That makes her heart ache with this hungry pain,
But the glad sense of life hath been destroyed,
    The lost delight may never come again.
Yet myriad serious blessings with grave grace
Arise on every side to fill their place.


For much abides in her so lonely life, -
    The dear companionship of her own kind,
Love where least looked for, quiet after strife,
    Whispers of promise upon every wind,
A quickened insight, in awakened eyes,
For the new meaning of the earth and skies.


The nameless charm about all things hath died,
    Subtle as aureole round a shadow's head,
Cast on the dewy grass at morning-tide;
    Yet though the glory and the joy be fled,
'T is much her own endurance to hav...

To me the world's an open book
Of sweet and pleasant poetry;
I read it in the running brook
That sings its way toward the sea.
It whispers in the leaves of trees,
The swelling grain, the waving grass,
And in the cool, fresh evening breeze
That crisps the wavelets as they pass.

The flowers below, the stars above,
In all their bloom and brightness given,
Are, like the attributes of love,
The poetry of earth and heaven.
Thus Nature's volume, read aright,
Attunes the soul to minstrelsy,
Tinging life's clouds with rosy light,
And all the world with poetry.

I

Grandfather sang it under the gallows:
" Hear, gentlemen, ladies, and all mankind:
Money is good and a girl might be better.
But good strong blows are delights to the mind."
There, standing on the cart,
He sang it from his heart.
i(Those fanatics all that we do would undo;)
i(Down the fanatic, down the clown;)
i(Down, down, hammer them down,)
i(Down to the tune of O'Donnell Abu.)
"A girl I had, but she followed another,
Money I had, and it went in the night,
Strong drink I had, and it brought me to sorrow,
But a good strong cause and blows are delight."
All there caught up the tune:
"On, on, my darling man".
i(Those fanatics all that we do would undo;)
i(Down the fanatic, down the clown;)
i(Down, down, hammer them down,)
i(Down to t...

I

"Dying of hunger and sorrow:
I die for my youth I fear!"
Murmured the midnight-haunting
Voice of the stricken Year.

There like a child it perished
In the stormy thoroughfare:
The snow with cruel whiteness
Had aged its flowing hair.

Ah, little Year so fruitful,
Ah, child that brought us bliss,
Must we so early lose you -
Our dear hopes end in this?

II

"Too young am I, too tender,
To bear earth's avalanche
Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope,
And makes my heart's-blood blanch.

"Tell him who soon shall follow
Where my tired feet have bled,
He must be older, shrewder,
Hard, cold, and selfish-bred -

"Or else like me be trampled
Under the harsh world's heel.
'Tis weakness to be yout...

    About the country they may talk who will,
        Who praise it ever to the town's despite.
    Let him extol the charms of wood and hill
        Who finds them peerless. None disputes his right.

    For me the town! Each well-worn footway old
        To me is dearer than your grass-grown lane.
    Not all who struggle here contend for gold;
        Green-growing things quit not the soul of pain.

    "God made the country." Ay, and God made man.
        Working through man His power He displays,
    And in the city's mazes His great plan
        Is writ as clear as in calm country ways.

(FROM TYLNEY HALL.)

Still glides the gentle streamlet on,
With shifting current new and strange;
The water that was here is gone,
But those green shadows do not change.

Serene, or ruffled by the storm,
On present waves as on the past,
The mirrored grave retains its form,
The self-same trees their semblance cast.

The hue each fleeting globule wears,
That drop bequeaths it to the next,
One picture still the surface bears,
To illustrate the murmured text.

So, love, however time may flow,
Fresh hours pursuing those that flee
One constant image still shall show
My tide of life is true to thee!

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths, and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand
Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand
To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due;
It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true
Thy comic muse, from the exalted line
Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline
From that her zenith, and foretells a red
And blushing evening, when she goes to bed;
Yet such as shall outshine the glimmering light
With which all stars shall gild the following night.
Nor think it much, since all thy eaglets may
Endure the sunny trial, if we say
This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine
Trick'd up in fairer plumes, since all are thine.
Who hath his flock of cackling geese compar'd
With thy tun'd choir of swans? or else who dar'd
To call thy births deform'd? But if thou bind

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them,
The summer flowers depart,
Sit still, as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,

I was born for deep-sea faring;
I was bred to put to sea;
Stories of my father's daring
Filled me at my mother's knee.

I was sired among the surges;
I was cubbed beside the foam;
All my heart is in its verges,
And the sea wind is my home.

All my boyhood, from far vernal
Bourns of being, came to me
Dream-like, plangent, and eternal
Memories of the plunging sea.