Identity

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
    Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
    And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
    When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
    Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
    And dreamed and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot
    And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
    That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
    And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
    Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
    Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace,
    And eyed a kha...

Ask me why I do not sing
To the tension of the string
As I did not long ago,
When my numbers full did flow?
Grief, ay, me! hath struck my lute
And my tongue, at one time, mute.

About the land I wander, all forlorn,
About the land, with sorrow-quenchèd eyes;
Seeking my love among the silent woods;
Seeking her by the fountains and the streams;
Calling her name unto lone mountain tops;
Sending it flying on the clouds to heaven.
I drop my tears amid the dews at morn;
I trouble all the night with prayers and sighs,
That, like a veil thick set with golden stars,
Hideth my woe, but cannot silence it;
Yet never more at morning, noon, or night,
Cometh there answer back, Eurydice,
Thy voice speaks never more, Eurydice;
O far, death-stricken, lost Eurydice!

Hear'st thou my weary cries, Eurydice?
Hearing, but answering not from out the past,
Wrapp'd in thy robe of everlasting light,
Round which the accents flutter faintingly,
Lik...

I.

Death's Eloquence.


When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope til...

I.

In the far off sea there is many a sprite,
Who rests by day, but awakes at night.
In hidden caves where monsters creep,
When the sun is high, these spectres sleep:
From the glance of noon, they shrink with dread,
And hide 'mid the bones of the ghastly dead.
Where the surf is hushed, and the light is dull,
In the hollow tube and the whitened skull,
They crouch in fear or in whispers wail,
For the lingering night, and the coming gale.
But at even-tide, when the shore is dim,
And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim,
They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze,
And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas.


II.

At summer eve, as I sat on the cliff,
I marked a shape like a dusky skiff,
That skimmed the brine, toward the rock...

Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College. A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following lines.

It was not many centuries since,
When, gathered on the moonlit green,
Beneath the Tree of Liberty,
A ring of weeping sprites was seen.

The freshman's lamp had long been dim,
The voice of busy day was mute,
And tortured Melody had ceased
Her sufferings on the evening flute.

They met not as they once had met,
To laugh o'er many a jocund tale
But every pulse was beating low,
And every cheek was cold and pale.

There rose a fair but faded one,
Who oft had cheered th...

Across the room my silent love I throw,
    Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,
        Your young stern profile and industrious fingers
Displayed against the blind in a shadow-show,
    To Dinda's grave delight.

The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread
    Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam:
        The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,
O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head,
    Fulfilment of their dream.

Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten,
    With camphor on a top shelf, hard to find,
        Now wake to this most happy resurrection,
To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cotton
    And staring at the blind.

Dinda in sing-song stretching out one hand
    Calls for the playthings; mother does not hear:

i.

Arise, fair Phoebus! and with looks serene
    Survey the world which late the orbèd Queen
Did pave with pearl to please enamour'd swains.
Arise! Arise! The Dark is bound in chains,
And thou'rt immortal, and thy throne is here
To sway the seasons, and to make it clear
    How much we need thee, O thou silent god!
That art the crown'd controller of the year.


ii.

And while the breezes re-construct for thee
    The shimmering clouds; and while, from lea to lea,
The great earth reddens with a maid's delight,
Behold! I bring to thee, as yesternight,
My subject song. Do thou protect apace
My peerless one, my Peri with the face
    That is a marvel to the minds of men,
And like a flower for humbleness of grace.


iii.

My cot was down by a cypress grove,
And I sat by my window the whole night long,
And heard well up from the deep dark wood
A mocking-bird's passionate song.

And I thought of myself so sad and lone,
And my life's cold winter that knew no spring;
Of my mind so weary and sick and wild,
Of my heart too sad to sing.

But e'en as I listened the mock-bird's song,
A thought stole into my saddened heart,
And I said, "I can cheer some other soul
By a carol's simple art."

For oft from the darkness of hearts and lives
Come songs that brim with joy and light,
As out of the gloom of the cypress grove
The mocking-bird sings at night.

So I sang a lay for a brother's ear
In a strain to soothe his bleeding heart,
And he smiled at the sound of my...

The thoughts of all the maples who shall name,
When the sad landscape turns to cold and grey?
Yet some for very ruth and sheer dismay,
Hearing the northwind pipe the winter's name,
Have fired the hills with beaconing clouds of flame;
And some with softer woe that day by day,
So sweet and brief, should go the westward way,
Have yearned upon the sunset with such shame,

That all their cheeks have turned to tremulous rose;
Others for wrath have turned a rusty red,
And some that knew not either grief or dread,
Ere the old year should find its iron close,
Have gathered down the sun's last smiles acold,
Deep, deep, into their luminous hearts of gold.

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that ...

Fair charmer, cease! nor make your voice's prize,
A heart resign'd, the conquest of your eyes:
Well might, alas! that threaten'd vessel fail,
Which winds and lightning both at once assail.
We were too blest with these enchanting lays,
Which must be heavenly when an angel plays:
But killing charms your lover's death contrive,
Lest heavenly music should be heard alive.
Orpheus could charm the trees, but thus a tree,
Taught by your hand, can charm no less than he:
A poet made the silent wood pursue,
This vocal wood had drawn the poet too.

ON A FAN OF THE AUTHOR'S DESIGN,

IN WHICH WAS PAINTED THE STORY OF CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS, WITH THE MOTTO, 'AURA VENI.'

'Come, gentle Air!' the Aeolian shepherd said,
While Procris panted in the secret shade;
'Co...

We may raise our voices even in this still glade:
    Though the colours and shadows and sounds so fleeting seem,
We shall not dispel them. They are not made
    Frailly by earth or hands, but immortal in our dream.

We may touch the faint violets with the hands of thought,
    Or lay the pale core of the wild arum bare;
And for ever in our minds the white wild cherry is caught,
    Cloudy against the sky and melting into air.

This which we have seen is eternally ours,
    No others shall tread in the glade which now we see;
Their hands shall not touch the frail tranquil flowers,
    Nor their hearts faint in wonder at the wild white tree.

Ye injur'd fields, ye once were gay,
When nature's hand display'd
Long waving rows of willows grey,
And clumps of hawthorn shade;
But now, alas! your hawthorn bowers
All desolate we see,
The spoilers' axe their shade devours,
And cuts down every tree.

Not trees alone have own'd their force,
Whole woods beneath them bow'd;
They turn'd the winding rivulet's course,
And all thy pastures plough'd;
To shrub or tree throughout thy fields
They no compassion show;
The uplifted axe no mercy yields,
But strikes a fatal blow.

Whene'er I muse along the plain,
And mark where once they grew,
Remembrance wakes her busy train
And brings past scenes to view:
The well-known brook, the favourite tree,
In fancy's eye appear,
And next, tha...

Into the darkness and the deeps
    My thoughts have strayed, where silence dwells,
Where the old world encrypted sleeps,--
    Myriads of forms, in myriad cells,
Of dead and inorganic things,
    That neither live, nor move, nor grow,
    Nor any change of atoms know;
That have neither legs, nor arms, nor wings,
That have neither heads, nor mouths, nor stings,
That have neither roots, nor leaves, nor stems,
To hold up flowers like diadems,
    Growing out of the ground below:
    But which hold instead
    The cycles dead,
And out of their stony and gloomy folds
Shape out new moulds
    For a new race begun;
Shutting within dark pages, furled
    As in a vast herbarium,
    The flowers and balms,
    The pines and palms,
    The ferns...

There are some things that entertain me more
Than men or books; and to my knowledge seem
A key of Poetry, made of magic lore
Of childhood, opening many a fabled door
Of superstition, mystery, and dream
        Enchantment locked of yore.

For, when through dusking woods my pathway lies,
Often I feel old spells, as o'er me flits
The bat, like some black thought that, troubled, flies
Round some dark purpose; or before me cries
The owl that, like an evil conscience, sits
        A shadowy voice and eyes.

Then, when down blue canals of cloudy snow
The white moon oars her boat, and woods vibrate
With crickets, lo, I hear the hautboys blow
Of Elf-land; and when green the fireflies glow,
See where the goblins hold a Fairy Fête
        With lanthorn ro...

Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped
The crystal silence into sound;
And where the branches dreamed and dripped
A grasshopper its dagger stripped
And on the humming darkness ground.

A bat, against the gibbous moon,
Danced, implike, with its lone delight;
The glowworm scrawled a golden rune
Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn,
The firefly hung with lamps the night.

The flowers said their beads in prayer,
Dew-syllables of sighed perfume;
Or talked of two, soft-standing there,
One like a gladiole, straight and fair,
And one like some rich poppy-bloom.

The mignonette and feverfew
Laid their pale brows together: - "See!"
One whispered: "Did their step thrill through
Your roots?" - "Like rain." - "I touched the two
And a new bud was bo...

A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald,
A rush of cochineal;
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head, --
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy morning's ride.