Identity

Between two pillared clouds of gold
The beautiful gates of evening swung --
And far and wide from flashing fold
The half-furled banners of light, that hung
O'er green of wood and gray of wold
And over the blue where the river rolled,
The fading gleams of their glory flung.

The sky wore not a frown all day
To mar the smile of the morning tide;
The soft-voiced winds sang joyous lay --
You never would think they had ever sighed;
The stream went on its sunlit way
In ripples of laughter; happy they
As the hearts that met at Riverside.

No cloudlet in the sky serene!
Not a silver speck in the golden hue!
But where the woods waved low and green,
And seldom would let the sunlight through,
Sweet shadows fell, and in their screen,
The faces of ...

There came a Thief one night to Robin's Castle,
He climbed up into a Tree;
And sitting with his head among the branches,
A wondrous Sight did see.

For there was Robin supping at his table,
With Candles of pure Wax,
His Dame and his two beauteous little Children,
With Velvet on their backs.

Platters for each there were shin-shining,
Of Silver many a pound,
And all of beaten Gold, three brimming Goblets,
Standing the table round.

The smell that rose up richly from the Baked Meats
Came thinning amid the boughs,
And much that greedy Thief who snuffed the night air-
His Hunger did arouse.

He watched them eating, drinking, laughing, talking,
Busy with finger and spoon,
While three most cunning Fiddlers, clad in crimson,
Played ...

        I.

Life has fled; she is dead,
Sleeping in the flow'ry vale
Where the fleeting shades are shed
Ghost-like o'er her features pale.
Lay her 'neath the violets wild,
Lay her like a dreaming child
'Neath the waving grass
Where the shadows pass.


        II.

Gone she has to happy rest
With white flowers for her pillow;
Moons look sadly on her breast
Thro' an ever-weeping willow.
Fold her hands, frail flakes of snow,
Waxen as white roses blow
Like herself so fair,
Free from world and care.


        III.

Twine this wreath of lilies wan
'Round her sculptured brow so white;
Let her rest here, white as dawn,
Like a lily quenched in night.
Wreath this rosebud wild and pale,
Wreath it ...

So if Thou hadst been scorned in human eyes,
Too bright and near to be a glory then;
If as Truth's artist, Thou hadst been to men
A setter forth of strange divinities;
To after times, Thou, born in midday skies,
A sun, high up, out-blazing sudden, when
Its light had had its centuries eight and ten
To travel through the wretched void that lies
'Twixt souls and truth, hadst been a Love and Fear,
Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest,
And all night long symbol'd by lamp-flames clear;
Thy sign, a star upon thy people's breast,
Where now a strange mysterious shape doth lie,
That once barred out the sun in noontide sky.

I stood upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch
Was glorious with the sun's returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me; - bathed in light
They gathered mid-way round the wooded height,
And, in their fading glory, shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown,
As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance,
Through the grey mist thrust up its shattered lance,
And rocking on the cliff was left
The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft,
The veil of cloud was lifted, and below
Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow
Was darkened by the forest's shade,
Or glistened in the white cascade;
Where upward, in the mellow blush of day,
The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.

I heard...

Thou wouldst have led us through the twilight land
Where spirit shows by form, form is refined
Away to spirit by transfiguring mind,
Till they are one, and in the morn we stand;
Treading thy footsteps, children, hand in hand,
With sense divinely growing, till, combined,
We heard the music of the planets wind
In harmony with billows on the strand;
Till, one with Earth and all God's utterance,
We hardly knew whether the sun outspake,
Or a glad sunshine from our spirits brake;
Whether we think, or windy leaflets dance:
Alas, O Poet Leader! for this good,
Thou wert God's tragedy, writ in tears and blood.

Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later li...

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.

So sick of dreams! the dreams, that stain
The aisle, along which life must pass,
With hues of mystic colored glass,
That fills the windows of the brain.

So sick of thoughts! the thoughts, that carve
The house of days with arabesques
And gargoyles, where the mind grotesques
In masks of hope and faith who starve.

Here lay thy over weary head
Upon my bosom! Do not weep!
"He giveth His beloved sleep."
Heart of my heart, be comforted.

Vnhappie sight, and hath shee vanisht by
So nere, in so good time, so free a place!
Dead Glasse, dost thou thy obiect so imbrace,
As what my hart still sees thou canst not spie!
I sweare by her I loue and lacke, that I
Was not in fault, who bent thy dazling race
Onely vnto the heau'n of Stellas face,
Counting but dust what in the way did lie.
But cease, mine eyes, your teares do witnesse well
That you, guiltlesse thereof, your nectar mist:
Curst be the page from whome the bad torch fell:
Curst be the night which did your strife resist:
Curst be the coachman that did driue so fast,
With no lesse curse then absence makes me tast.

On every nose he rightly read
What intellects were in the head
And yet that he was not the one
By whom God meant it to be done,
This on his own he never read.

I

When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams,
And slow the hues of sunset die;
When firefly and moth go by,
And in still streams the new moon seems
Another moon and sky:
Then from the hills there comes a cry,
The owlet's cry:
A shivering voice that sobs and screams,
With terror screams: -

"Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?
Who rides through the dusk and dew,
With a pair of horns,
As thin as thorns,
And face a bubble-blue? -
Who, who, who!
Who is it, who is it, who-o-o?"

II

When night has dulled the lily's white,
And opened wide the moonflower's eyes;
When pale mists rise and veil the skies,
And round the height in whispering flight
The night-wind sounds and sighs:
Then in the wood again it cries,
The owle...

Occhi miei, oscurato è 'l nostro sole.

HE ENDEAVOURS TO FIND PEACE IN THE THOUGHT THAT SHE IS IN HEAVEN.


    Mine eyes! our glorious sun is veil'd in night,
Or set to us, to rise 'mid realms of love;
There we may hail it still, and haply prove
It mourn'd that we delay'd our heavenward flight.
Mine ears! the music of her tones delight
Those, who its harmony can best approve;
My feet! who in her track so joy'd to move.
Ye cannot penetrate her regions bright!
But wherefore should your wrath on me descend?
No spell of mine hath hush'd for ye the joy
Of seeing, hearing, feeling, she was near:
Go, war with Death--yet, rather let us bend
To Him who can create--who can destroy--
And bids the ready smile succeed the tear.

WOLLASTON.
...

De night creep down erlong de lan',
De shadders rise an' shake,
De frog is sta'tin' up his ban',
De cricket is awake;
My wo'k is mos' nigh done, Celes',
To-night I won't be late,
I 's hu'yin' thoo my level bes',
Wait fu' me by de gate.

De mockin'-bird 'll sen' his glee
A-thrillin' thoo and thoo,
I know dat ol' magnolia-tree
Is smellin' des' fu' you;
De jessamine erside de road
Is bloomin' rich an' white,
My hea't 's a-th'obbin' 'cause it knowed
You 'd wait fu' me to-night.

Hit 's lonesome, ain't it, stan'in' thaih
Wid no one nigh to talk?
But ain't dey whispahs in de aih
Erlong de gyahden walk?
Don't somep'n kin' o' call my name,
An' say "he love you bes'"?
Hit 's true, I wants to say de same,
So wait fu' me, Cele...

Bee-Bitten in the orchard hung
The peach; or, fallen in the weeds,
Lay rotting, where still sucked and sung
The gray bee, boring to its seed's
Pink pulp and honey blackly stung.

The orchard-path, which led around
The garden, with its heat one twinge
Of dinning locusts, picket-bound
And ragged, brought me where one hinge
Held up the gate that scraped the ground.

All seemed the same: the martin-box
Sun-warped with pigmy balconies
Still stood, with all its twittering flocks,
Perched on its pole above the peas
And silvery-seeded onion-stocks.

The clove-pink and the rose; the clump
Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat
Sick to the heart: the garden stump,
Red with geranium-pots, arid sweet
With moss and ferns, this side the pump.

Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted,
I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.
(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)
I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;
Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;
And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;
And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;
And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;
And evening hush, broken by homing wings;
And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,
That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,
Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,
One after one, like tasting a sweet food.
I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

Claudio. Know you any Hero?
Hero. None my lord!                As You Like it.


Gentle and modest Hero! I can see
Her delicate figure, and her soft blue eye,
Like a warm vision - lovely as she stood,
Veiled in the presence of young Claudio.
Modesty bows her head, and that young heart
That would endure all suffering for the love
It hideth, is as tremulous as the leaf
Forsaken of the Summer. She hath flung
Her all upon the venture of her vow,
And in her trust leans meekly, like a flower
By the still river tempted from its stem,
And on its bosom floating.
                        Once again
I see her, and she standeth in her pride,
With her soft eye enkindled, and her lip
Curled with its sweet resentment, like a line
Of li...

When the heavens throb and vibrate
All along their silver veins,
To the mellow storm of music
Sweeping o'er the starry trains,
Heard by few, as erst by shepherds
On the far Chaldean plains:

Not the blazing, torch-like planets,
Not the Pleiads wild and free,
Not Arcturus, Mars, Uranus,
Bring the brightest dreams to me;
But I gaze in rapt devotion
On the central star of three.

Central star of three that tingle
In the balmy southern sky;
One above, and one below it,
Dreamily they pale and die,
As two lesser minds might dwindle,
When some great soul, passing by,

Stops, and reads their cherished secrets,
With a calm and godlike air,
Luring all their radiance from them
Leaving a dim twilight there,
Something vague, and...