Identity

First in these fields I try the sylvan strains,
Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful plains:
Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring,
While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;
Let vernal airs tho' trembling osiers play,
And Albion's cliffs resound the rural lay.
You, that too wise for pride, too good for pow'r,
Enjoy the glory to be great no more,
And carrying with you all the world can boast,
To all the world illustriously are lost!
O let my Muse her slender reed inspire,
Till in your native shades you tune the lyre:
So when the Nightingale to rest removes,
The Thrush may chant to the forsaken groves,
But, charm'd to silence, listens while she sings,
And all th' aerial audience clap their wings.
Soon as the flocks shook off the nightly dews,
Tw...

                "A riddling world!" one cried.
    "If pangs must be, would God that they were sent
    To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside
                The holy innocent!"

                But I, "Ah no, no, no!
    Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall
    For a child’s agony; not a martyr’s woe;
                Not these, not these appal.

                "Not docile motherhood,
    Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;
    Not shedding of the unoffending blood;
                Not little joy grown less;

                "Not all-benign old age
    With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints
    And still pursues; not the vile heritage
                Of sin’s disease in saints;

                "Not thes...

    Deep-wooded combes, clear-mounded hills of morn,
        Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall,
        High lonely barrows where the curlews call,
    Far moors that echo to the ringing horn,--
    Devon! thou spirit of all these beauties born,
        All these are thine, but thou art more than all:
        Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall
    Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn.

    Yet, yet, O noble land, forbid us not
        Even now to join our faint memorial chime
    To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot
        Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime;
    Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps forgot
        With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time.

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the beared barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,...

When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:

"Be still, I am content,
Take back your poor compassion
Joy was a flame in me
Too steady to destroy.
Lithe as a bending reed
Loving the storm that sways her
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy."

Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,
The tiresome noises, all the common things
I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.
I longed for the cool quiet and the dark,
Under the common sod where louts and kings
Lie down, serene, unheeding, careless, stark,
Never to rise or move or feel again,
Filled with the ecstasy of being dead....

I put the shining pistol to my head
And pulled the trigger hard -- I felt no pain,
No pain at all; the pistol had missed fire
I thought; then, looking at the floor, I saw
My huddled body lying there -- and awe
Swept over me. I trembled -- and looked up.
About me was -- not that, my heart's desire,
That small and dark abode of death and peace --
But all from which I sought a vain release!
The sky, the people and the ...

O mad with mirth are the birds to-day
    That over my head are winging.
There is nothing but glee in the roundelay
    That I hear them singing, singing.
On wings of light, up, out of sight -
    I watch them airily flying.
What do they know of the world below,
    And the hopes that are dying, dying?

The roses turn to the sun's warm sky,
    Their sweet lips red and tender;
Oh! life to them is a dream of bliss,
    Of love, and passion, and splendour.
What know they of the world to-day,
    Of hearts that are silently breaking;
Of the human breast, and its great unrest,
    And its pitiless aching, aching?

They send me out into Nature's heart
    For help to bear my sorrow,
Nothing of strength can she impart,
    No peace from her ...

Three words I will tell you, of meaning full:
The lips of the many shout them;
Yet were they born of no sect or school,
The heart only knows about them:
    That man is of everything worth bereft
    Who in those three words has no faith left:

Man is born free--and is free alway
Even were he born in fetters!
Let not the mob's cry lead you astray,
Or the misdeeds of frantic upsetters:
    Fear not the slave when he breaks his bands;
    Fear nothing from any free man's hands.

And Virtue--it is no empty sound;
That a man can obey her, no folly;
Even if he stumble all over the ground
He yet can follow the Holy;
    And what never wisdom of wise man knew
    A child-like spirit can simply do.

And a God there is--a s...

Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren, at my birth
(Since which I number threescore winters past),
A shatter’d veteran, hollow-trunk’d perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
Relics of ages! could a mind, imbued
With truth from heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel, and worship thee.
It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act
Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.
Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
See...

Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
    Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
    Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
    Who, with meekly folded wing,
    Comes to sun himself and sing.

It was there, perhaps, last year,
    That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
    And to twitter, too, and tilt
    The bare branches in between,
    With a fond, familiar mien.

Once, I know, there was a nest,
    Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
    Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust
    Caught it, over-full of snow, -
    Bent the bush, - and robbed it so

Thus our highest holds are lost,
    By the ruthless winter's wind,
When, with swift-dismantling...

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer’s joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn’s red-lipp’d fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter’s night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy’s heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

Pomp of Egypt's elder day,
Shade of the mighty passed away,
Whose giant works still frown sublime
'Mid the twilight shades of Time;
Fanes, of sculpture vast and rude,
That strew the sandy solitude,
Lo! before our startled eyes,
As at a wizard's wand, ye rise,
Glimmering larger through the gloom!
While on the secrets of the tomb,
Rapt in other times, we gaze,
The Mother Queen of ancient days,
Her mystic symbol in her hand,
Great Isis, seems herself to stand.

From mazy vaults, high-arched and dim,
Hark! heard ye not Osiris' hymn?
And saw ye not in order dread
The long procession of the dead?
Forms that the night of years concealed,
As by a flash, are here revealed;
Chiefs who sang the victor song;
Sceptred kings, - a shadowy throng...

I

How warm this woodland wild Recess!
Love surely hath been breathing here;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.

II

Eight springs have flown, since last I lay
On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float hear and there, like things astray,
And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

III

No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with your name; yet why
That asking look? that yearning sigh?
That sense of promise every where?
Belovéd! flew your spirit by?

IV

As when a mother doth explore
The rose-mark on her long-lost child,
I met, I loved you, maiden mild!
As whom I long had loved befor...

When we went hunting the Dragon
In the days when we were young,
We tossed the bright world over our shoulder
As bugle and baldrick slung;
Never was world so wild and fair
As what went by on the wind,
Never such fields of paradise
As the fields we left behind:
    For this is the best of a rest for men
    That men should rise and ride
    Making a flying fairyland
    Of market and country-side,
    Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood,
    Wings upon pot and pan,
    For the hunting of the Dragon
    That is the life of a man.

For men grow weary of fairyland
When the Dragon is a dream,
And tire of the talking bird in the tree,
The singing fish in the stream;
And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale,
And the wonder is st...

Lord of all Life! When my hours are done,
Take me and make me anew -
And give me back to the earth and the sun,
And the sky's unlimited blue.

The nightingale sings in an ecstasy
To the moonlit April night,
But my songs are locked in the heart of me,
Like birds that may not take flight.

The little purple-winged swallows that fly
Through waves of the upper air,
Have a sweeter liberty, Lord, than I,
Who may not follow them there.

Pavilions of sunshine - tents of the rain,
For these, the wild and the free;
And for us walled garden and window-pane,
And bolt and staple and key.

We are worn with wisdom that never brings
Peace to the world and its woe -
For a space with Thy joyous lesser things,
Teach me the faith I would know.

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]

At The Summit Of The Washington Monument.

        Look North! A white-clad city fills
        This valley to its sloping hills;
        Here gleams the modest house of white,
        The statesman's longed-for, dizzy height.
        Beyond, a pledge of love to one
        Who in two lands was Freedom's son -
        The holder of an endless debt -
        Our nation's brother, Lafayette.
        But yonder lines of costly homes
        And bristling spires and swelling domes,
        And far away the spreading farms
        Where thrift displays substantial charms,
        And hamlets creeping out of sight,
        And cities full of wealth and might,
        Must own the fatherhood of him
        Whose...

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;
Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song:
Indoors and out, summer and winter,--Mirth.

Will she spring with a blush from the arms of Dawn,
When the sleepy songsters prune
Their dewy vestments on bush and thorn,
And the jovial magpie winds his horn
In sweet réveil to the lazy morn
And the sun comes all too soon?
Will she come with him from the farthest rim
Of the blue Pacific sea?
But how shall I know my lady? and by
What token will she know me?

Will she come to me in the noonday hush,
When the flowers are fast asleep
'Neath their counterpane of emerald plush
In the fragrant warmth of the under-brush,
Where Spring still lingers on moist and lush
While naught but the shadows creep,
And all is rest but the eager quest
And the buzz of the tireless bee?
But how shall I know my lady then?
And how will my love know me?

O...