Identity

In the whole wide world there was but one;
Others for others, but she was mine,
The one fair woman beneath the sun.

From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine
Down to the lithe and delicate feet
There was not a curve nor a waving line

But moved in a harmony firm and sweet
With all of passion my life could know.
By knowledge perfect and faith complete

I was bound to her, - as the planets go
Adoring around their central star,
Free, but united for weal or woe.

She was so near and Heaven so far -
She grew my heaven and law and fate,
Rounding my life with a mystic bar

No thought beyond could violate.
Our love to fulness in silence nursed
Grew calm as morning, when through the gate

Of the glimmering east the sun has...

Midnight, musical and splendid,
And the Old Year’s life is ended,
And the New, “born in the purple,” babe yet crowned, among us dwells;
While Creation’s welcome swells,
Starlight all the heavens pervading,
And the whole world serenading
Him, at birth, with all its bells!

Round the cradle of the tender
Flows the music, shines the splendor;
It is early yet for counsel, but bethink how Hermes gave,
(While the Myths were bright and brave),
Thwarted Phoebus no small battle,
Seeking back his lifted cattle,
Hour-old Hermes, in his cave!

New Year, if thy youth should blind us
Thy swift feet, perchance, may find us
Sleeping in the dark, unguarded, as the sun-god’s herds were found!
Lest, unready, on his round
We be hurried, World, take warning

In St. Luke's Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
        Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene
        Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat to sift us, and we all
        Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great,
Is by his station or estate
        Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
        Can enter;
No heart hath armor so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
        Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow,
Who hear the warning voice, but go
        Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
        And bleeding.

One look of that pa...

Life is before ye - and while now ye stand
Eager to spring upon the promised land,
Fair smiles the way, where yet your feet have trod
But few light steps, upon a flowery sod;
Round ye are youth's green bowers, and to your eyes
Th' horizon's line joins earth with the bright skies;
Daring and triumph, pleasure, fame, and joy,
Friendship unwavering, love without alloy,
Brave thoughts of noble deeds, and glory won,
Like angels, beckon ye to venture on.
And if o'er the bright scene some shadows rise,
Far off they seem, at hand the sunshine lies;
The distant clouds, which of ye pause to fear?
Shall not a brightness gild them when more near?
Dismay and doubt ye know not, for the power
Of youth is strong within ye at this hour,
And the great mortal conflict seems to y...

    Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,
    Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,
    With bands of reeds like thronged green swords
        Guarding the mirrored sky;
    And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills
    To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,
    And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,
        Trout flit or lie.

    I know those rivers that peacefully glide
    Past old towers and shaven gardens,
    Where mottled walls rise from the water
        And mills all streaked with flour;
    And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,
    That flow with a stately tidal motion
    Towards their destined estuaries
        Full of the pride of power;

    Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,
    Tweed with his g...

I have not felt, o'er seas of sand,
The rocking of the desert bark;
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,
By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark;
Nor pitched my tent at even-fall,
On dust where Job of old has lain,
Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,
The dream of Jacob o'er again.

One vast world-page remains unread;
How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky,
How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread,
How beats the heart with God so nigh
How round gray arch and column lone
The spirit of the old time broods,
And sighs in all the winds that moan
Along the sandy solitudes!

In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,
I have not heard the nations' cries,
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down
Where buried Tyre in ruin lies.
The Christian's prayer I have not said<...

While beams of orient light shoot wide and high,
Deep in the vale a little rural Town
Breathes forth a cloud-like creature of its own,
That mounts not toward the radiant morning sky,
But, with a less ambitious sympathy,
Hangs o'er its Parent waking to the cares
Troubles and toils that every day prepares.
So Fancy, to the musing Poet's eye,
Endears that Lingerer. And how blest her sway
(Like influence never may my soul reject)
If the calm Heaven, now to its zenith decked
With glorious forms in numberless array,
To the lone shepherd on the hills disclose
Gleams from a world in which the saints repose.

Your paths were all unknown to us:
We were so far away from you,
We mixed in thought your spirit thus--
With whiteness, stars of gold, and dew.

The mighty mother nourished you:
Her breath blew from her mystic bowers:
Their elfin glimmer floated through
The pureness of your shadowy hours.

The mighty mother made you wise;
Gave love that clears the hidden ways:
Her glooms were glory to your eyes;
Her darkness but the Fount of Days.

She made all gentleness in you,
And beauty radiant as the morn's:
She made our joy in yours, then threw
Upon your head a crown of thorns.

Your eyes are filled with tender light,
For those whose eyes are dim with tears;
They see your brow is crowned and bright,
But not its ring of wounding spears.

Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
    So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.
    Now, o'er all the dreary North-land,
Mighty Peboan, the Winter,
Breathing on the lakes and rivers,
Into stone had changed their waters.<...

I love my mother, the wildwood,
I sleep upon her breast;
A day or two of childhood,
And then I sink to rest.

I had once a lovely sister --
She was cradled by my side;
But one Summer day I missed her --
She had gone to deck a bride.

And I had another sister,
With cheeks all bright with bloom;
And another morn I missed her --
She had gone to wreathe a tomb.

And they told me they had withered,
On the bride's brow and the grave;
Half an hour, and all their fragrance
Died away, which heaven gave.

Two sweet-faced girls came walking
Thro' my lonely home one day,
And I overheard them talking
Of an altar on their way.

They were culling flowers around me,
And I said a little prayer
To go with them -- and they f...

A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.

The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?

It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivat...

Morns like these we parted;
Noons like these she rose,
Fluttering first, then firmer,
To her fair repose.

Never did she lisp it,
And 't was not for me;
She was mute from transport,
I, from agony!

Till the evening, nearing,
One the shutters drew --
Quick! a sharper rustling!
And this linnet flew!

Ceas'd is the rain; but heavy drops yet fall
    From the drench'd roof; - yet murmurs the sunk wind
    Round the dim hills; can yet a passage find
    Whistling thro' yon cleft rock, and ruin'd wall.
The swoln and angry torrents heard, appal,
    Tho' distant. - A few stars, emerging kind,
    Shed their green, trembling beams. - With lustre small,
    The moon, her swiftly-passing clouds behind,
Glides o'er that shaded hill. - Now blasts remove
    The shadowing clouds, and on the mountain's brow,
    Full-orb'd, she shines. - Half sunk within its cove
Heaves the lone boat, with gulphing sound; - and lo!
    Bright rolls the settling lake, and brimming rove
    The vale's blue rills, and glitter as they flow.

L' alma mia fiamma oltra le belle bella.

HE ACKNOWLEDGES THE WISDOM OF HER PAST COLDNESS TO HIM.


    My noble flame--more fair than fairest are
Whom kind Heaven here has e'er in favour shown--
Before her time, alas for me! has flown
To her celestial home and parent star.
I seem but now to wake; wherein a bar
She placed on passion 'twas for good alone,
As, with a gentle coldness all her own,
She waged with my hot wishes virtuous war.
My thanks on her for such wise care I press,
That with her lovely face and sweet disdain
She check'd my love and taught me peace to gain.
O graceful artifice! deserved success!
I with my fond verse, with her bright eyes she,
Glory in her, she virtue got in me.

MACGREGOR.

The pale discrowned stacks of maize,
Like spectres in the sun,
Stand shivering nigh Avonaise,
Where all is dead and gone.

The sere leaves make a music vain,
With melancholy chords;
Like cries from some old battle-plain,
Like clash of phantom swords.

But when the maize was lush and green
With musical green waves,
She went, its plumed ranks between,
Unto the hill of graves.

There you may see sweet flowers set
O’er damsels and o’er dames,
Rose, Ellen, Mary, Margaret,
The sweet old quiet names.

The gravestones show in long array,
Though white or green with moss,
How linked in Life and Death are they,
The Shamrock and the Cross.

The gravestones face the Golden East,
And in the morn they take
The blessing o...

Not in this world to see his face
Sounds long, until I read the place
Where this is said to be
But just the primer to a life
Unopened, rare, upon the shelf,
Clasped yet to him and me.

And yet, my primer suits me so
I would not choose a book to know
Than that, be sweeter wise;
Might some one else so learned be,
And leave me just my A B C,
Himself could have the skies.

    Here, through the ages old, the desert slept
        In solitudes unbroken, save when passed
    The bison herds, and savage hunters swept
        In thund'ring chaos down the valleys vast;
    But, lo! Across the barren margins stepped
        Advancement with her legions, and one blast
        From her imperial trumpet filled the last
    Lone covert where affrighted wildness crept.

    Full armed, full armored, at her wondrous birth,
        Her shining temples wreathed with gorgeous dower,
    She sits among the empires of the earth;
        Her proud achievements o'er the nations tower,
    Won by her people with their royal worth,
        With lofty culture, wisdom, wealth and power.

Now my strength is gone from me, I that was adviser to the Fenians, my whole body is tired to-night, my hands, my feet, and my head; tired, tired, tired.

It is bad the way I am after Finn of the Fenians; since he is gone away, every good is behind me.

Without great people, without mannerly ways; it is sorrowful I am after our king that is gone.

I am a shaking tree, my leaves gone from me; an empty nut, a horse without a bridle; a people without a dwelling-place, I Oisin, son of Finn.

It is long the clouds are over me to-night! it is long last night was; although this day is long, yesterday was longer again to me; every day that comes is long to me.

That is not the way I used to be, without fighting, without battles, without learning feats, without young girls, without music, without h...