Identity

Sweet Singer that I loe the maist
O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste
I smacket bairn-lips ower the taste
O' hinnied sang,
I hail thee, though a blessed ghaist
In Heaven lang!

For weel I ken, nae cantie phrase,
Nor courtly airs, nor lairdly ways,
Could gar me freer blame, or praise,
Or proffer hand,
Where "Rantin' Robbie" and his lays
Thegither stand.

And sae these hamely lines I send,
Wi' jinglin' words at ilka end,
In echo o' the sangs that wend
Frae thee to me
Like simmer-brooks, wi mony a bend
O' wimplin' glee.

In fancy, as wi' dewy een,
I part the clouds aboon the scene
Where thou wast born, and peer atween,
I see nae spot
In a' the Hielands half sae green
And unforgot?

I see nae storied castle-hall...

    What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
    Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
    Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
    You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne - what does your madness mean?

    Go home, go home to your clubs, Tom Thorne! home to your evening dress!
    Home to your place of power and pride, and the feast that waits for you!
    Why do you linger all alone in the splendid emptiness,
    Scouring the Land of the Little Sticks on the trail of the caribou?

    Why did you fall off the Earth, Tom Thorne, out of our social ken?
    What did your deep damnation prove? What was your dark despair?
    Oh with the width of a world between, and years to the count of ten,...

So far, and so far, and on toward the end,
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me;
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity,
Whether I shall dart forth the true rays, the ones that wait unfired,
(Did you think the sun was shining its brightest?
No it has not yet fully risen;)
Whether I shall complete what is here started,
Whether I shall attain my own height, to justify these, yet unfinished,
Whether I shall make The Poem Of The New World, transcending all others depends, rich persons, upon you,
Depends, whoever you are now filling the current Presidentiad, upon you,
Upon you, Governor, Mayor, Congressman,
And you, contemporary America.

Come take our boy, and we will go
Before our cabin door;
The winds shall bring us, as they blow,
The murmurs of the shore;
And we will kiss his young blue eyes,
And I will sing him, as he lies,
Songs that were made of yore:
I'll sing, in his delighted ear,
The island lays thou lov'st to hear.

And thou, while stammering I repeat,
Thy country's tongue shalt teach;
'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet
Than my own native speech:
For thou no other tongue didst know,
When, scarcely twenty moons ago,
Upon Tahete's beach,
Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine,
With many a speaking look and sign.

I knew thy meaning, thou didst praise
My eyes, my locks of jet;
Ah! well for me they won thy gaze,
But thine were fairer yet!
I'm glad to...

As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn -
How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return,
And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;

How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom that blows;

How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door of the light,
And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape must not fear to smite,
And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn from the gulf of the night;

How, when the great tree falls, with its empire of rustling leaves,
The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin receives,
And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves...

Here we go in a flung festoon,
Half-way up to the jealous moon!
Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
Don't you wish you had extra hands?
Would n't you like if your tails were, so,
Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
Now you're angry, but, never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!


Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two,
Something noble and grand and good,
Won by merely wishing we could.
Now we're going to, never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!


All the talk we ever have heard
Uttered by bat or beast or bird,
Hide or fin or scale or feather,
Jabber it quickly and all together!
Excellent! Wonderful! Once...

A scent of Esparto grass, and again I recall
That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill
Watching together the curving thunderous fall
Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until
My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that wound
On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning
In the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerning
By the stunning and dazzling oblivion of hill-waters drowned.

And my heart was empty of memory and hope and desire
Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed,
Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire
Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed,
Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill
With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling,
looked on your face, as a...

(Time Night. Scene the woods.)


Where shall I turn me? whither shall I bend
My weary way? thus worn with toil and faint
How thro' the thorny mazes of this wood
Attain my distant dwelling? that deep cry
That rings along the forest seems to sound
My parting knell: it is the midnight howl
Of hungry monsters prowling for their prey!
Again! oh save me--save me gracious Heaven!
I am not fit to die!
                Thou coward wretch
Why heaves thy trembling heart? why shake thy limbs
Beneath their palsied burden? is there ought
So lovely in existence? would'st thou drain
Even to its dregs the bitter draught of life?
Dash down the loathly bowl! poor outcast slave
Stamp'd with the brand of Vice and Infamy
Why should the villain Frederic shrink from Dea...

I.

The tripod flared with a purple spark,
And the mist hung emerald in the dark:
Now he stooped to the lilac flame
Over the glare of the amber embers,
Thrice to utter no earthly name;
Thrice, like a mind that half remembers;
Bathing his face in the magic mist
Where the brilliance burned like an amethyst.

II.

"Sylph, whose soul was born of mine,
Born of the love that made me thine,
Once more flash on my eyes! Again
Be the loved caresses taken!
Lip to lip let our forms remain!
Here in the circle sense, awaken!
Ere spirit meet spirit, the flesh laid by,
Let me touch thee, and let me die."

III.

Sunset heavens may burn, but never
Know such splendor! There bloomed an ever
Opaline orb, where the sylphid rose

    The same old sprint in the morning, boys, to the same old din and smut;
    Chained all day to the same old desk, down in the same old rut;
    Posting the same old greasy books, catching the same old train:
    Oh, how will I manage to stick it all, if I ever get back again?

We've bidden good-bye to life in a cage, we're finished with pushing a pen;
They're pumping us full of bellicose rage, they're showing us how to be men.
We're only beginning to find ourselves; we're wonders of brawn and thew;
But when we go back to our Sissy jobs, - oh, what are we going to do?

For shoulders curved with the counter stoop will be carried erect and square;
And faces white from the office light will be bronzed by the open air;
And we'll walk with the stride of a new-born pride, wit...

Early within his workshop here,
On Sundays stands our master dear;
His dirty apron he puts away,
And wears a cleanly doublet to-day;
Lets wax'd thread, hammer, and pincers rest,
And lays his awl within his chest;
The seventh day he takes repose
From many pulls and many blows.

Soon as the spring-sun meets his view,
Repose begets him labour anew;
He feels that he holds within his brain
A little world, that broods there amain,
And that begins to act and to live,
Which he to others would gladly give.

He had a skilful eye and true,
And was full kind and loving too.
For contemplation, clear and pure,
For making all his own again, sure;
He had a tongue that charm'd when 'twas heard,
And graceful and light flow'd ev'ry word;
Which made ...

Twilight no other thing is, poets say,
Than the last part of night and first of day.

Grown tired of mourning for my sins,
And brooding over merits,
The other night with bothered brow
I went amongst the spirits;
And I met one that I knew well:
‘Oh, Scotty’s Ghost, is that you?
‘And did you see the fearsome crowd
‘At Robbie Burns’s statue?
‘They hurried up in hansom cabs,
‘Tall-hatted and frock-coated;
‘They trained it in from all the towns,
‘The weird and hairy-throated;
‘They spoke in some outlandish tongue,
‘They cut some comic capers,
‘And ilka man was wild to get
‘His name in all the papers.

‘They showed no gleam of intellect,
‘Those frauds who rushed before us;
‘They knew one verse of “Auld Lang Syne, ”
‘The first one and the chorus:
‘They clacked the clack o’ Scotlan’s Bard,
‘They glibly talked of “Rabby;”

There are sounds of mirth in the night-air ringing,
    And lamps from every casement shown;
While voices blithe within are singing,
    That seem to say "Come," in every tone.
Ah! once how light, in Life's young season,
    My heart had leapt at that sweet lay;
Nor paused to ask of graybeard Reason
    Should I the syren call obey.

And, see--the lamps still livelier glitter,
    The syren lips more fondly sound;
No, seek, ye nymphs, some victim fitter
    To sink in your rosy bondage bound.
Shall a bard, whom not the world in arms
    Could bend to tyranny's rude control,
Thus quail at sight of woman's charms
    And yield to a smile his freeborn soul?

Thus sung the sage, while, slyly stealing,
    The nymphs their fetters around him cast,

    Enter JANUS.

    Janus. Chronos, Chronos, mend thy pace;
    An hundred times the rolling sun
    Around the radiant belt has run
    In his revolving race.
    Behold, behold the goal in sight,
    Spread thy fans, and wing thy flight.

    Enter CHRONOS, with a scythe in his hand, and a globe
    on his back; which he sets down at his entrance.

    Chronos. Weary, weary of my weight,
    Let me, let me drop my freight,
        And leave the world behind.
    I could not bear,
    Another year,
    The load of human kind.

            Enter MOMUS, laughing.

    Momus. Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! well hast thou done
            To lay down thy pack,
            And li...

It was a man of many parts,
    Who in his coffer mind
Had stored the Classics and the Arts
    And Sciences combined;
The purest gems of poesy
    Came flashing from his pen -
The wholesome truths of History
    He gave his fellow men.

He knew the stars from "Dog" to Mars;
    And he could tell you, too,
Their distances - as though the cars
    Had often checked him through -
And time 'twould take to reach the sun,
    Or by the "Milky Way,"
Drop in upon the moon, or run
    The homeward trip, or stay.

With Logic at his fingers' ends,
    Theology in mind,
He often entertained his friends
    Until they died resigned;
And with inquiring mind intent
    Upon Alchemic arts
A dynamite experiment -
    .    .    .   ...

Charles and I say it wond'ring thou must know
That I who once assum'd a scornful air,
And scoff'd at love, am fallen in his snare
(Full many an upright man has fallen so)
Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow
Of golden locks, or damask cheek; more rare
The heart-felt beauties of my foreign fair;
A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show
The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind;
Words exquisite, of idioms more than one,
And song, whose fascinating pow'r might bind,
And from her sphere draw down the lab'ring Moon,
With such fire-darting eyes, that should I fill
My ears with wax, she would enchant me still.

I'M now disposed to give a pretty tale;
Love laughs at what I've sworn and will prevail;
Men, gods, and all, his mighty influence know,
And full obedience to the urchin show.
In future when I celebrate his flame,
Expressions not so warm will be my aim;
I would not willingly abuses plant,
But rather let my writings spirit want.
If in these verses I around should twirl,
Some wily knave and easy simple girl,
'Tis with intention in the breast to place;
On such occasions, dread of dire disgrace;
The mind to open, and the sex to set
Upon their guard 'gainst snares so often met.
Gross ignorance a thousand has misled,
For one that has been hurt by what I've said.

I'VE read that once, an orator renowned
In Greece, where arts superior then were found,
By...