Identity

    I.

    Who follows Jesus shall not walk
    In darksome road with danger rife;
    But in his heart the Truth will talk,
    And on his way will shine the Life.

    So, on the story we must pore
    Of him who lives for us, and died,
    That we may see him walk before,
    And know the Father in the guide.


    II.

    In words of truth Christ all excels,
    Leaves all his holy ones behind;
    And he in whom his spirit dwells
    Their hidden manna sure shall find.

    Gather wouldst thou the perfect grains,
    And Jesus fully understand?
    Thou must obey him with huge pains,
    And to God's will be as Christ's hand.


    III.

    What profits it to reason high
    And in hard q...

How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding sheet!
    Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;
    Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex's only glory.
    So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
    Still to survive in my immortal song.

Beatrice, immortalized by "altissimo poeta ... cotanto amante;" Laura, celebrated by a great though an inferior bard, - have alike paid the exceptional penalty of exceptional honor, and have come down to us resplendent with charms, but (at least, to my apprehension) scant of attractiveness.

These heroines of world-wide fame were preceded by a bevy of unnamed ladies "donne innominate" sung by a school of less conspicuous poets; and in that land and that period which gave simultaneous birth to Catholics, to Albigenses, and to Troubadours, one can imagine many a lady as sharing her lover's poetic aptitude, while the barrier between them might be one held sacred by both, yet not such as to render mutual love incompatible with mutual honor.

Had such a lady spoken for herself, the portrait left us might have appeared more ...

January

The first fair month! In singing Summer’s sphere
She glows, the eldest daughter of the year.
All light, all warmth, all passion, breaths of myrrh,
And subtle hints of rose-lands, come with her.
She is the warm, live month of lustre she
Makes glad the land and lulls the strong, sad sea.
The highest hope comes with her. In her face
Of pure, clear colour lives exalted grace;
Her speech is beauty, and her radiant eyes
Are eloquent with splendid prophecies.



February

The bright-haired, blue-eyed last of Summer. Lo,
Her clear song lives in all the winds that blow;
The upland torrent and the lowland rill,
The stream of valley and the spring of hill,
The pools that slumber and the brooks that run
Where dense the leaves are, gr...

1.

Oh! well I know your subtle Sex,
Frail daughters of the wanton Eve, -
While jealous pangs our Souls perplex,
No passion prompts you to relieve.


2

From Love, or Pity ne'er you fall,
By you, no mutual Flame is felt,
"Tis Vanity, which rules you all,
Desire alone which makes you melt.


3

I will not say no souls are yours,
Aye, ye have Souls, and dark ones too,
Souls to contrive those smiling lures,
To snare our simple hearts for you.


4

Yet shall you never bind me fast,
Long to adore such brittle toys,
I'll rove along, from first to last,
And change whene'er my fancy cloys.


5

Oh! I should be a baby fool,
To sigh the dupe of female art -
Woman! perhaps...

If after times
Should pay the least attention to these rhymes,
I bid them learn
'Tis not my own heart here
That doth so often seem to break and burn -
O no such thing! -
Nor is it my own dear
Always I sing:
But, as a scrivener in the market-place,
I sit and write for lovers, him or her,
Making a song to match each lover's case -
A trifling gift sometimes the gods confer!

(After STRATO)

The sad nights are here and the sad mornings,
The air is filled with portents and with warnings,
Clouds that vastly loom and winds that cry,
A mournful prescience
Of bright things going hence;
Red leaves are blown about the widowed sky,
And late disconsolate blooms
Dankly bestrew
The garden walks, as in deserted rooms
The parted guest, in haste to bid adieu,
Trinklets and shreds forgotten left behind,
Torn letters and a ribbon once so brave -
Wreckage none cares to save,
And hearts grow sad to find;
And phantom echoes, as of old foot-falls,
Wander and weary out in the thin air,
And the last cricket calls -
A tiny sorrow, shrilling "Where? ah! where?"

Dogmatic Teachers, of the snow-white fur!
Ye wrangling Schoolmen, of the scarlet hood!
Who, with a keenness not to be withstood,
Press the point home, or falter and demur,
Checked in your course by many a teasing burr;
These natural council-seats your acrid blood
Might cool; and, as the Genius of the flood
Stoops willingly to animate and spur
Each lighter function slumbering in the brain,
Yon eddying balls of foam, these arrowy gleams
That o'er the pavement of the surging streams
Welter and flash, a synod might detain
With subtle speculations, haply vain,
But surely less so than your far-fetched themes!

Why do not all fresh maids appear
To work love's sampler only here,
Where spring-time smiles throughout the year?
Are not here rosebuds, pinks, all flowers
Nature begets by th' sun and showers,
Met in one hearse-cloth to o'erspread
The body of the under-dead?
Phil, the late dead, the late dead dear,
O! may no eye distil a tear
For you once lost, who weep not here!
Had Lesbia, too-too kind, but known
This sparrow, she had scorn'd her own:
And for this dead which under lies
Wept out her heart, as well as eyes.
But, endless peace, sit here and keep
My Phil the time he has to sleep;
And thousand virgins come and weep
To make these flowery carpets show
Fresh as their blood, and ever grow,
Till passengers shall spend their doom:
Not Virgil's gnat...

Others may need new life in Heaven,
Man, Nature, Art, made new, assume!
Man with new mind old sense to leaven,
Nature, new light to clear old gloom,
Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room.

I shall pray: “Fugitive as precious,
Minutes which passed, return, remain!
Let earth’s old life once more enmesh us,
You with old pleasure, me, old, pain,
So we but meet nor part again!”

The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
A burly velveted rover,
Who loves the booming wind in his ear
As he sails the seas of clover.

A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
With not a soul to deplore him,
He steers for the open verge of blue
With the filmy world before him.

His flimsy sails abroad on the wind
Are shivered with fairy thunder;
On a line that sings to the light of his wings
He makes for the lands of wonder.

He harries the ports of the Hollyhocks,
And levies on poor Sweetbrier;
He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox,
And the Rose is his desire.

He hangs in the Willows a night and a day;
He rifles the Buckwheat patches;
Then battens his store of pelf galore
Under the tautest hatches.

He woos the Poppy and weds the ...

Thank Fate for foes!    I hold mine dear
    As valued friends.    He cannot know
The zest of life who runneth here
    His earthly race without a foe.

I saw a prize.    "Run," cried my friend;
    "'Tis thine to claim without a doubt."
But ere I half-way reached the end,
    I felt my strength was giving out.

My foe looked on the while I ran;
    A scornful triumph lit his eyes.
With that perverseness born in man,
    I nerved myself, and won the prize.

All blinded by the crimson glow
    Of sin's disguise, I tempted Fate.
"I knew thy weakness!" sneered my foe,
    I saved myself, and balked his hate.

For half my blessings, half my gain,
    I needs must thank my trusty foe;
Despite his envy and disdain,
    He serves me...

Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.

O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.

O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?

Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.

Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.

Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander

I
Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth
Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon's mirth,
Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun, and unsure
If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and loved and endure.
A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight,
And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the star-clothed night.
Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories again to be:
Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the waking beyond her be.
A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper awhile,
Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile.
As a maid's mouth laughing with love and subdued for the love's sake, May
Shines and withholds for a little t...

The swallows, at the close of day,
When autumn shone with fainter ray,
Around the chimney circling flew,
Ere yet they bade a long adieu,
To climes where soon the winter drear
Shall close the unrejoicing year.
Now with swift wing they skim aloof,
Now settle on the crowded roof,
As counsel and advice to take,
Ere they the chilly north forsake.
Then one, disdainful, turned his eye,
Upon a red-breast twittering nigh,
And thus began, with taunting scorn:
Thou household imp, obscure, forlorn,
Through the deep winter's dreary day,
Here, dull and shivering, shalt thou stay;
Whilst we, who make the world our home,
To softer climes impatient roam,
Where summer, still on some green isle
Rests, with her sweet and lovely smile?
Thus speeding, far and fa...

Clouds of the autumn night,
Under the hunter's moon,--
Ghostly and windy white,--
Whither, like leaves wild strewn,
Take ye your stormy flight?

Out of the west, where dusk,
From her rich windowsill,
Leaned with a wand of tusk,
Witch-like, and wood and hill
Phantomed with mist and musk.

Into the east, where morn
Sleeps in a shadowy close,
Shut with a gate of horn,
'Round which the dreams she knows
Flutter with rose and thorn.

Blow from the west, oh, blow,
Clouds that the tempest steers!
And with your rain and snow
Bear of my heart the tears,
And of my soul the woe.

Into the east then pass,
Clouds that the night winds sweep!
And on her grave's sear grass,
There where she lies asleep.
There let them ...

I.

Annisquam

Old days, old ways, old homes beside the sea;
Old gardens with old-fashioned flowers aflame,
Poppy, petunia, and many a name
Of many a flower of fragrant pedigree.
Old hills that glow with blue- and barberry,
And rocks and pines that stand on guard, the same,
Immutable, as when the Pilgrim came,
And here laid firm foundations of the Free.
The sunlight makes the dim dunes hills of snow,
And every vessel's sail a twinkling wing
Glancing the violet ocean far away:
The world is full of color and of glow;
A mighty canvas whereon God doth fling
The flawless picture of a perfect day.

II.

"The Highlands, " Annisquam

Here, from the heights, among the rocks and pines,
The sea and shore seem some tremendous page

Permit me, Reader, to make my bow,
And allow
Me to humbly commend to your tender mercies
The hero of these simple verses.
By domicile, of the British Nation;
By birth and family, a Crustacean.
One's hero should have a name that rare is;
And his was Homarus, but--Vulgaris!
A Lobster, who dwelt with several others,--
His sisters and brothers,--
In a secluded but happy home,
Under the salt sea's foam.
It lay
At the outermost point of a rocky bay.
A sandy, tide-pooly, cliff-bound cove,
With a red-roofed fishing village above,
Of irregular cottages, perched up high
Amid pale yellow poppies next to the sky.
Shells and pebbles, and wrack below,
And shrimpers shrimping all in a row;
Tawny sails and tarry boats,
Dark brown nets an...