Identity

    Low hidden in among the forest trees
        An artist's tilted easel, ankle-deep
    In tousled ferns and mosses, and in these
        A fluffy water-spaniel, half asleep
            Beside a sketch-book and a fallen hat -
            A little wicker flask tossed into that.

    A sense of utter carelessness and grace
        Of pure abandon in the slumb'rous scene, -
    As if the June, all hoydenish of face,
        Had romped herself to sleep there on the green,
            And brink and sagging bridge and sliding stream
            Were just romantic parcels of her dream.

The golden bells of fairyland, that ring
Perpetual chime for childhood's flower-sweet spring,
Sang soft memorial music in his ear
Whose answering music shines about us here.
Soft laughter as of light that stirs the sea
With darkling sense of dawn ere dawn may be,
Kind sorrow, pity touched with gentler scorn,
Keen wit whose shafts were sunshafts of the morn,
Love winged with fancy, fancy thrilled with love,
An eagle's aim and ardour in a dove,
A man's delight and passion in a child,
Inform it as when first they wept and smiled.
Life, soiled and rent and ringed about with pain
Whose touch lent action less of spur than chain,
Left half the happiness his birth designed,
And half the power, unquenched in heart and mind.
Comrade and comforter, sublime in shame,

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

I am of all bereft,
Save but some few beans left,
Whereof, at last, to make
For me and mine a cake,
Which eaten, they and I
Will say our grace, and die.

I.

Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plow’d hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.



II.

Opens a door in heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob’s ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.



III.

Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung thro’ the woods,



IV.

The woods with living airs
How softly fann’d,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
Heard by the land.



V.

O,...

Be his rest the rest he sought:
Calm and deep.
Let no wayward word or thought
Vex his sleep.

Peace the peace that no man knows
Now remains
Where the wasted woodwind blows,
Wakes and wanes.

Latter leaves, in Autumn’s breath,
White and sere,
Sanctify the scholar’s death,
Lying here.

Soft surprises of the sun
Swift, serene
O’er the mute grave-grasses run,
Cold and green.

Wet and cold the hillwinds moan;
Let them rave!
Love that takes a tender tone
Lights his grave.

He who knew the friendless face
Sorrows shew,
Often sought this quiet place
Years ago.

One, too apt to faint and fail,
Loved to stray
Here where water-shallows wail
Day by day.

Care that lays her heavy...

    When conquering Summer stalks the street,
        His eyes are eyes of fire,
    The pavement burns beneath his feet,
        Men droop before his ire;
    But yonder, out upon the land,
        His manners are not these:
    He is a courtier mild and bland
        Beneath the maple trees.

    He throws his buckler on the grass,
        Unclasps his sheathèd blade;
    He doffs his helmet and cuirass,
        And lounges in the shade;
    His pennon, fastened to a bough,
        Is fluttering in the breeze:
    He is at home and happy now
        Beneath the maple trees.

    No furious rage disturbs his breast,
        No fever heats his brain;
    Right cheerily he takes his rest,
        And views his glad domain;
    His ...

Gold-haired she stood among the golden-rod,
A girl, embodying all the Golden Age,
Who made that autumn day a glorious page
Out of a book of gold inspired of God
And made for Him by priests and worshippers
Of Truth and Beauty, putting their praise in gold.
The golden blossoms round her and, gold-rolled,
The fields before, were as a golden verse
Of which she was the bright initial: she!
My heart-song's gold beginning, from whom grew
Love's golden ritual, filled with aureate gleams
And music, which my soul read wonderingly
Within Love's book of gold, that mightily drew
Our souls together, binding them with dreams.

Aweel, I'm couped. But wha' could tell
    The road wad rin sae sair?
I couldna gang yon pace mysel',
    An' I winna try nae mair!

There's them wad coonsel me to stan',
    But this is what I say:
When Natur's forces fecht wi' man,
    Dod, he maun just give way!

If man's nae framed to lift his fit
    Agin' a nat'ral law,
I winna' lift my heid, for it
    Wad dae nae guid ava'.

Puir worms are we; the poo'pit rings
    Ilk Sawbath wi' the same,
Gin airth's the place for sic-like things,
    I'm no sae far frae hame!

Yon's guid plain raes'nin'; an' forby,
    This pairish has nae sense,
There's mony traiv'lin wad deny
    Natur and Providence;

For loud an' bauld the leears wage
    On men lik...

    Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jewelled fingers,
    The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room.
    Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral
    Sit the readers of poems one by one.
    And all the room is in shadow except for the blur
    Of mahogany surface, and tapers against the wall.

    And a youth reads a poem of love: forever and ever
    Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings
    Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul.
    And after a time under the lamp a man
    Begins to read a letter having no poem to read.
    And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse
    Dampened by rain, it's a dying mind that writes
    What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks.
    And a sickness enters our ...

Love me for what I am, Love. Not for sake
Of some imagined thing which I might be,
Some brightness or some goodness not in me,
Born of your hope, as dawn to eyes that wake
Imagined morns before the morning break.
If I, to please you (whom I fain would please),
Reset myself like new key to old tune,
Chained thought, remodelled action, very soon
My hand would slip from yours, and by degrees
The loving, faulty friend, so close to-day,
Would vanish, and another take her place,--
A stranger with a stranger's scrutinies,
A new regard, an unfamiliar face.
Love me for what I am, then, if you may;
But, if you cannot,--love me either way.

The wild-plum tree, whose leaves grow thin,
Has strewn the way with half its fruit:
The grasshopper's and cricket's din
Grows hushed and mute;
The veery seems a far-off flute
Where Summer listens, hand on chin,
And taps an idle foot.

A silvery haze veils half the hills,
That crown themselves with clouds like cream;
The crow its clamor almost stills,
The hawk its scream;
The aster stars begin to gleam;
And 'mid them, by the sleepy rills,
The Summer dreams her dream.

The butterfly upon its weed
Droops as if weary of its wings;
The bee, 'mid blooms that turn to seed,
Half-hearted clings,
Sick of the only song it sings,
While Summer tunes a drowsy reed
And dreams of far-off things.

Passion, of which unrest is part,
T...

Here doth white Spring white violets show,
Broadcast doth white, frail wind-flowers sow
Through starry mosses amber-fair,
As delicate as ferns that grow,
Hart's-tongue and maiden-hair.

Here fungus life is beautiful,
White mushroom and the thick toad-stool
As various colored as wild blooms;
Existences that love the cool,
Distinct in rank perfumes.

Here stray the wandering cows to rest,
The calling cat-bird builds her nest
In spice-wood bushes dark and deep;
Here raps the woodpecker his best,
And here young rabbits leap.

Tall butternuts and hickories,
The pawpaw and persimmon trees,
    The beech, the chestnut, and the oak,
Wall shadows huge, like ghosts of bees
    Through which gold sun-bits soak.

Here to pale melanc...

Here, where the breath of the scented-gorse floats through the sun-stained air,
On a steep hill-side, on a grassy ledge, I have lain hours long and heard
Only the faint breeze pass in a whisper like a prayer,
And the river ripple by and the distant call of a bird.

On the lone hill-side, in the gold sunshine, I will hush me and repose,
And the world fades into a dream and a spell is cast on me;
And what was all the strife about, for the myrtle or the rose,
And why have I wept for a white girl's paleness passing ivory!

Out of the tumult of angry tongues, in a land alone, apart,
In a perfumed dream-land set betwixt the bounds of life and death,
Here will I lie while the clouds fly by and delve an hole where my heart
May sleep deep down with the gorse above and red, red...

The brooding ghosts of Australian night have gone from the bush and town;
My spirit revives in the morning breeze, though it died when the sun went down;
The river is high and the stream is strong, and the grass is green and tall,
And I fain would think that this world of ours is a good world after all.

The light of passion in dreamy eyes, and a page of truth well read,
The glorious thrill in a heart grown cold of the spirit I thought was dead,
A song that goes to a comrade's heart, and a tear of pride let fall,
And my soul is strong! and the world to me is a grand world after all!

Let our enemies go by their old dull tracks, and theirs be the fault or shame
(The man is bitter against the world who has only himself to blame);
Let the darkest side of the past be dark, and only t...

The birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they flew;
They sang, "The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds, flying from the South,
What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"
"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
The sickened camp, the blazing town!

"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
We saw your march-worn children die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs
And saw, from line and trench, your sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

"And heard and saw ye only wrong
And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"
"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
The crash...

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument, all bare, is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside!
O! blame me not, if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

Three saints, for their salvation jealous,
Pursued, with hearts alike most zealous,
By routes diverse, their common aim.
All highways lead to Rome: the same
Of heaven our rivals deeming true,
Each chose alone his pathway to pursue.
Moved by the cares, delays, and crosses
Attach'd to suits by legal process,
One gave himself as judge, without reward,
For earthly fortune having small regard.
Since there are laws, to legal strife
Man damns himself for half his life.
For half? - Three-fourths! - perhaps the whole!
The hope possess'd our umpire's soul,
That on his plan he should be able
To cure this vice detestable. -
The second chose the hospitals.
I give him praise: to solace pain
Is charity not spent in vain,
While men in part are animals.
The...