Identity

All the striving, all the failing,
To the silent Nothing sailing.
Swiftly, swiftly passing by!
For the land of shadows leaving,
Where a wistful hand is weaving
Thy still woof, Eternity!

Gloomy thoughts in me awaken,
And with fear my breast is shaken,
Thinking: O thou black abyss;
All the toil and thrift of life,
All the struggle and the strife,
Shall it come at last to this?

With the grave shall be requited
Good and evil, and united
Ne'er to separate again?
What the light hath parted purely,
Shall the darkness join more surely?--
Was the vict'ry won in vain?

O mute and infinite extension,
O time beyond our comprehension,
Shall thought and deed ungarnered fall?
Ev'rything dost take and slay,
Ev'rything dost bear a...

We, the Fairies, blithe and antic,
Of dimensions not gigantic,
Though the moonshine mostly keep us,
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in chapels,
Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

When to bed the world are bobbing,
Then's the time for orchard-robbing;
Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
Were it not for stealing, stealing

O soft enchantress, let me tell the truth
Of all the beauties decking out your youth!
I'll paint the charms for you to see
Of childhood married with maturity.

When you step out, your broad skirt sweeps the breeze
As if you were a ship on easy seas
Under full sail, that rolls along
In rhythm with a slow and languid song.

On your plump shoulders and your rounded neck
Your head parades itself with rare effect;
In a composed, triumphant style
You go your stately way, majestic child.

O soft enchantress, let me tell the truth
Of all the beauties decking out your youth!
I'll paint the charms for you to see
Of childhood married with maturity.

Your jutting bosom stretching out the moire,
Triumphant bosom, is a fine armoire
Whose bright...

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

I am the word that lovers leave unsaid,
    The eloquence of ardent lips grown mute,
The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead,
    The flower of faith that grows to unseen fruit.

I am the speech of prophets when their eyes
    Behold some splendid vision of the soul;
The song of morning stars, the hills' replies,
    The far call of the immaterial pole.

And, since I must be mateless, I shall win
    One boon beyond the meed of common clay:
My life shall end where other lives begin,
    And live when other lives have passed away.

Dear Dean, I'm in a sad condition,
    I cannot see to read or write;
Pity the darkness of thy Priscian,
    Whose days are all transform'd to night.

My head, though light, 's a dungeon grown,
    The windows of my soul are closed;
Therefore to sleep I lay me down,
    My verse and I are both composed.

Sleep, did I say? that cannot be;
    For who can sleep, that wants his eyes?
My bed is useless then to me,
    Therefore I lay me down to rise.

Unnumber'd thoughts pass to and fro
    Upon the surface of my brain;
In various maze they come and go,
    And come and go again.

So have you seen in sheet burnt black,
    The fiery sparks at random run;
Now here, now there, some turning back
    Some ending where they just begun...

I drink fresh nourishment, new blood

From out this world more free;
The Nature is so kind and good

That to her breast clasps me!
The billows toss our bark on high,

And with our oars keep time,
While cloudy mountains tow'rd the sky

Before our progress climb.

Say, mine eye, why sink'st thou down?
Golden visions, are ye flown?

Hence, thou dream, tho' golden-twin'd;

Here, too, love and life I find.

Over the waters are blinking

Many a thousand fair star;
Gentle mists are drinking

Round the horizon afar.
Round the shady creek lightly

Morning zephyrs awake,
And the ripen'd fruit brightly

Mirrors itself in the lake.

Tune - "Lumps o' Pudding."


I.

    Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair,
    Whene'er I forgather wi' sorrow end care,
    I gie them a skelp, as they're creepin alang,
    Wi' a cog o' guid swats, and an auld Scottish sang.

II.

    I whyles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought;
    But man is a sodger, and life is a faught:
    My mirth and guid humour are coin in my pouch,
    And my freedom's my lairdship nae monarch dare touch.

III.

    A towmond o' trouble, should that be my fa',
    A night o' guid fellowship sowthers it a':
    When at the blithe end o' our journey at last,
    Wha the deil ever thinks o' the road he has past?

IV.

    Blind chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her w...

Hence a while, severer Muses;
Spare your slaves till drear October.
Hence; for Alma Mater chooses
Not to be for ever sober:
But, like stately matron gray,
Calling child and grandchild round her,
Will for them at least be gay;
Share for once their holiday;
And, knowing she will sleep the sounder,
Cheerier-hearted on the morrow
Rise to grapple care and sorrow,
Grandly leads the dance adown, and joins the children's play.
    So go, for in your places
    Already, as you see,
(Her tears for some deep sorrow scarcely dried),
Venus holds court among her sinless graces,
With many a nymph from many a park and lea.
She, pensive, waits the merrier faces
Of those your wittier sisters three,
O'er jest and dance and song who still preside,
To cheer her...

Cold, my dear, - cold and quiet.
    In their cups on yonder lea,
Cowslips fold the brown bee's diet;
    So the moss enfoldeth thee.
"Plant me, plant me, O love, a lily flower -
    Plant at my head, I pray you, a green tree;
And when our children sleep," she sighed, "at the dusk hour,
    And when the lily blossoms, O come out to me!"

        Lost, my dear? Lost! nay deepest
    Love is that which loseth least;
        Through the night-time while thou sleepest,
    Still I watch the shrouded east.
Near thee, near thee, my wife that aye liveth,
    "Lost" is no word for such a love as mine;
Love from her past to me a present giveth,
    And love itself doth comfort, making pain divine.
        Rest, my dear, rest. Fair showeth
    That which was, ...

    Oh, saucy gold circle of fairyland silk -
    Impudent, intimate, delicate treasure:
    A noose for my heart and a ring for my finger: -
    Here in my study you sing me a measure.

    Whimsy and song in my little gray study!
    Words out of wonderland, praising her fineness,
    Touched with her pulsating, delicate laughter,
    Saying, "The girl is all daring and kindness!"

    Saying, "Her soul is all feminine gameness,
    Trusting her insights, ardent for living;
    She would be weeping with me and be laughing,
    A thoroughbred, joyous receiving and giving!"

Dead! and all the haughty fate
Fair on throat and face of wax,
White, calm hands crossed still and lax,
Cold, impassionate!

Dead! and no word whispered low
At the dull ear now could wake
One responsive chord or make
One wan temple glow.

Dead! and no hot tear would stir
All that woman sweet and fair,
Woman soul from feet to hair
Which was once of her.

God! and thus to die! and I -
I must live though life be but
One long, hard, monotonous rut,
There to plod and - die!

Creeds are well in such a case;
But no sermon could have wrought
More of faith than you have taught
With your pale, dead face.

And I see it as you see -
One mistake, so very small!
Yet so great it mangled all,
Left you this and me!

Many the wonders I this day have seen:
The sun, when first he kissed away the tears
That filled the eyes of Morn; the laurelled peers
Who from the feathery gold of evening lean;
The ocean with its vastness, its blue green,
Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,
Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears
Must think on what will be, and what has been.
E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write,
Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping
So scantly, that it seems her bridal night,
And she her half-discovered revels keeping.
But what, without the social thought of thee,
Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?

Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn that rims
With wet the moonflow'r's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fire,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake her ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

I niver thowt when I grew owd
    I'd tak to leetin' lamps;
I sud have said, I'd rayther pad
    My hoof on t' road wi' tramps.
But sin I gate that skelp(1) i' t' mine,
    I'm wankle(2) i' my heead;
So gaffer said, I'd give ower wark
    An' leet town lamps atsteead.

At first, when I were liggin' snug
    I' bed, warm as a bee,
'T were hard to rise and get agate
    As sooin as t' clock strake three.
An' I were flaid to hear my steps
    Echoin' on ivery wall;
An' flaider yet when down by t' church
    Ullets would skreek and call.

But now I'm flaid o' nowt; I love
    All unkerd(3) sounds o' t' neet,
Frae childer talkin' i' their dreams
    To t' tramp o' p'licemen' feet.
But most of all I love to hark
    To t' song o' t...

Who was it swept against my door just now,
With rustling robes like Autumn's - was it thou?
Ah! would it were thy gown against my door -
Only thy gown once more.

Sometimes the snow, sometimes the fluttering breath
Of April, as toward May she wandereth,
Make me a moment think that it is thou -
But yet it is not thou!

Here, where precipitate Spring with one light bound
Into hot Summer's lusty arms expires;
And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night,
Soft airs, that want the lute to play with them,
And softer sighs, that know not what they want;
Under a wall, beneath an orange-tree
Whose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier ones
Of sights in Fiesole right up above,
While I was gazing a few paces off
At what they seemed to show me with their nods,
Their frequent whispers and their pointing shoots,
A gentle maid came down the garden-steps
And gathered the pure treasure in her lap.
I heard the branches rustle, and stept forth
To drive the ox away, or mule, or goat,
(Such I believed it must be); for sweet scents
Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
And nurs...

Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mus'd the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But, ah! without the thoughts which then were mine:
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,
And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,
"Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"

When Fate shall chill, at length,...