Identity

Quelle pietose rime, in ch' io m' accorsi.

TO ANTONIO OF FERRARA, WHO, IN A POEM, HAD LAMENTED PETRARCH'S SUPPOSED DEATH.


    Those pious lines wherein are finely met
Proofs of high genius and a spirit kind,
Had so much influence on my grateful mind
That instantly in hand my pen I set
To tell you that death's final blow--which yet
Shall me and every mortal surely find--
I have not felt, though I, too, nearly join'd
The confines of his realm without regret;
But I turn'd back again because I read
Writ o'er the threshold that the time to me
Of life predestinate not all was fled,
Though its last day and hour I could not see.
Then once more let your sad heart comfort know,
And love the living worth which dead it honour'd so.

MACGREGOR...

Hou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still,
The eve is thine which even now drops down,
To carry peace or care to human will,
And in a misty veil enfolds the town.

While the vile mortals of the multitude,
By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on,
Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood
Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone

Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years,
In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim;
And from the water, smiling through her tears,

Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim;
And in the east, her long shroud trailing light,
List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night.

Herr Weiser! Three-score-years-and-ten,
A hale white rose of his country-men,
Transplanted here in the Hoosier loam,
And blossomy as his German home -
As blossomy and as pure and sweet
As the cool green glen of his calm retreat,
Far withdrawn from the noisy town
Where trade goes clamoring up and down,
Whose fret and fever, and stress and strife,
May not trouble his tranquil life!

Breath of rest, what a balmy gust!
Quite of the city's heat and dust,
Jostling down by the winding road,
Through the orchard ways of his quaint abode.
Tether the horse, as we onward fare
Under the pear-trees trailing there,
And thumping the wood bridge at night
With lumps of ripeness and lush delight,
Till the stream, as it maunders on till dawn,
Is powdered and p...

1.
The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
And evening's breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

2.
There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;
And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
The dust and straws are driven up and down,
And whirled about the pavement of the town.

3.
Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and forever
It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the...
You, being changed, will find it then as now.

A rose, as fair as ever saw the North,
Grew in a little garden all alone;
A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth,
Nor fairer garden yet was never known:
The maidens danc'd about it morn and noon,
And learned bards of it their ditties made;
The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon
Water'd the root and kiss'd her pretty shade.
But well-a-day, the gard'ner careless grew;
The maids and fairies both were kept away,
And in a drought the caterpillars threw
Themselves upon the bud and every spray.
God shield the stock! if heaven send no supplies,
The fairest blossom of the garden dies.

Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about,
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Though has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turn, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world's embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be
But Though has shaken his ankles free.

Though cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius' disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.

    1

    Her violets in thine eyes
        The Springtide stained I know,
    Two bits of mystic skies
    On which the green turf lies,
        Whereon the violets blow.


    2

    I know the Summer wrought
        From thy sweet heart that rose,
    With that faint fragrance fraught,
    Its sad poetic thought
        Of peace and deep repose.


    3

    That Autumn, like some god,
        From thy delicious hair--
    Lost sunlight 'neath the sod
    Shot up this golden-rod
        To toss it everywhere.


    4

    That Winter from thy breast
        The snowdrop's whiteness stole--
    Much kinder than the rest--
    Thy innocence confessed,
        The pureness of...

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!

As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

    On the road to nowhere
    What wild oats did you sow
    When you left your father's house
    With your cheeks aglow?
    Eyes so strained and eager
    To see what you might see?
    Were you thief or were you fool
    Or most nobly free?

    Were the tramp-days knightly,
    True sowing of wild seed?
    Did you dare to make the songs
    Vanquished workmen need?
    Did you waste much money
    To deck a leper's feast?
    Love the truth, defy the crowd
    Scandalize the priest?
    On the road to nowhere
    What wild oats did you sow?
    Stupids find the nowhere-road
    Dusty, grim and slow.

    Ere their sowing's ended
    They turn them on their track,
    Look at the caitiff craven wights
    Repe...

Yes, we knew we must lose him, - though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom,
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of timid,
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumph...

I.

Dead!
And the Muses cried with a stormy cry
‘Send them no more, for evermore.
Let the people die.’


II.

Dead!
‘Is it he then brought so low?’
And a careless people flock’d from the fields
With a purse to pay for the show.


III.

Dead, who had served his time,
Was one of the people’s kings,
Had labour’d in lifting them out of slime,
And showing them, souls have wings!


IV.

Dumb on the winter heath he lay.
His friends had stript him bare,
And roll’d his nakedness everyway
That all the crowd might stare.


V.

A storm-worn signpost not to be read,
And a tree with a moulder’d nest
On its barkless bones, stood stark by the dead;
And behind him, low in t...

Apollo never smote a lovelier strain,
When swan-necked Hebe paused her thirsty bowl
A-sparkle with its wealth of nectar-draughts
To lend a list'ners ear and smile on him,
As that the Tritons blew on wreathed horns
When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam
Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow
Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze,
Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell
Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge
And branching corals by the changed monsoon.
Wind-rocked she swung her white feet on the sea,
And music raved down the slant western winds;
With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed the conch,
Where, breasting with cold bosoms the green waves,
That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet,
Oceanids with dimple-dented palms
Smote sidewise the pale ...

        I and new love, in all its living bloom,
    Sat vis-a-vis, while tender twilight hours
    Went softly by us, treading as on flowers.
        Then suddenly I saw within the room
        The old love, long since lying in its tomb.
    It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face
    And smiled on me, with a remembered grace
        That, like the noontide, lit the gloaming's gloom.

        Upon its shroud there hung the grave's green mould,
    About it hung the odor of the dead;
    Yet from its cavernous eyes such light was shed
        That all my life seemed gilded, as with gold;
    Unto the trembling new love '"Go," I said
        "I do not need thee, for I have the old."

        I had come from the city early
                That Saturday afternoon;
            I sat with Beatrix under the trees
            In the mossy orchard; the golden bees
        Buzzed over clover-tops, pink and pearly;
                I was at peace, and inclined to spoon.

        We were stopping awhile with mother,
                At the quiet country place
            Where first we'd met, one blossomy May,
            And fallen in love so the dreamy day
        Brought to my memory many another
                In the happy time when I won her grace.

        Days in the bright Spring weather,
                When the twisted, rough old tree
        Showered down apple-blooms, dainty and sweet,
            That swung in her hair, and blushed ...

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.

Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.

Let him Oh! with his air of angels the...

"MYSELF!" It means that you don't care
To have me lift you in your chair;
That if I do, you'll rage and tear.

"MYSELF!" It means you don't require
Assistance from your willing sire
In eating; 'twill but rouse your ire.

"MYSELF!" It means when you are through
That you don't want your daddy to
Unseat you, as he used to do.

Time was, and not so long ago,
When you were carried to and fro
And waited on, but now? No! No!

You'd rather fall and break your head,
Or fill your lap with cream and bread
Than be helped up or down, or fed.

Well, kid, I hope you'll stay that way
And that there'll never come a day
When you're without the strength to say,
"MYSELF!"

By the pool that I see in my dreams, dear love,
I have sat with you time and again;
And listened beneath the dank leaves, dear love,
To the sibilant sound of the rain.

And the pool, it is silvery bright, dear love,
And as pure as the heart of a maid,
As sparkling and dimpling, it darkles and shines
In the depths of the heart of the glade.

But, oh, I 've a wish in my soul, dear love,
(The wish of a dreamer, it seems,)
That I might wash free of my sins, dear love,
In the pool that I see in my dreams.

Alone in the night
On a dark hill
With pines around me
Spicy and still,

And a heaven full of stars
Over my head,
White and topaz
And misty red;

Myriads with beating
Hearts of fire
That aeons
Cannot vex or tire;

Up the dome of heaven
Like a great hill,
I watch them marching
Stately and still,
And I know that I
Am honored to be
Witness
Of so much majesty.