Identity

    Sometimes we remember kisses,
    Remember the dear heart-leap when they came:
    Not always, but sometimes we remember
    The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame
    Of laughter and farewell.

                    Beside the road
    Afar from those who said "Good-by" I write,
    Far from my city task, my lawful load.

    Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder,
    Streaming clouds, banners of new-born night
    Enchant me now.    The splendors growing bolder
    Make bold my soul for some new wise delight.

    I write the day's event, and quench my drouth,
    Pausing beside the spring with happy mind.
    And now I feel those kisses on my mouth,
    Hers most of all, one little friend most kind.

Song brings us light with the power of lending
Glory to brighten the work that we find;
Song brings us warmth with the power of rending
Rigor and frost in the swift-melting mind.
Song is eternal with power of blending
Time that is gone and to come in the soul,
Fills it with yearnings that flow without ending,
Seeking that sea where the light-surges roll.

Song brings us union, while gently beguiling
Discord and doubt on its radiant way;
Song brings us union and leads, reconciling
Battle-glad passions by harmony's sway,
Unto the beautiful, valiant, and holy
- Some can pass over its long bridge of light
Higher and higher to visions that solely
Faith can reveal to the spirit's pure sight.

Songs from the past of the past's longings telling,
Pensive...

Through the strait gate of passion,
Between the bickering fire
Where flames of fierce love tremble
On the body of fierce desire:

To the intoxication,
The mind, fused down like a bead,
Flees in its agitation
The flames' stiff speed:

At last to calm incandescence,
Burned clean by remorseless hate,
Now, at the day's renascence
We approach the gate.

Now, from the darkened spaces
Of fear, and of frightened faces,
Death, in our awful embraces
Approached and passed by;

We near the flame-burnt porches
Where the brands of the angels, like torches
Whirl, - in these perilous marches
Pausing to sigh;

We look back on the withering roses,
The stars, in their sun-dimmed closes,
Where 'twas given us to repose us

    Like many another I have crossed
        Oftener than once the broad Atlantic,
    And - feeling qualms when tempest-tossed,
        Have shuddered at the waves gigantic,
            Fearing that really nevermore
            I'd find myself again ashore.

    Then when - upset - and scarce awake,
        In moments of perturbed reflection,
    My wandering thoughts would slowly take
        Time and again the same direction.
            I'd think of that adventurous man,
            Who crossed the sea - first of my clan.

    'Tis not for me to hope to find
        Upon my family tree's broad branches
    Ancestors wholly to my mind;
        I know that I am taking chances
            In digging them up from the past
            To deck thi...

It was a knight of the southern land
Rode forth upon the way
When the birds sang sweet on either hand
About the middle of the May.

But when he came to the lily-close,
Thereby so fair a maiden stood,
That neither the lily nor the rose
Seemed any longer fair nor good.

"All hail, thou rose and lily-bough!
What dost thou weeping here,
For the days of May are sweet enow,
And the nights of May are dear?"

"Well may I weep and make my moan,
Who am bond and captive here;
Well may I weep who lie alone,
Though May be waxen dear."

"And is there none shall ransom thee;
Mayst thou no borrow find?"
"Nay, what man may my borrow be,
When all my wealth is left behind?

"Perchance some ring is left with thee,
Some belt that d...

Though Summer walks the world to-day
With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
And wait in Autumn's weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox
Spread carpets wheresoe'er she pass,
She seems to stand with sombre locks
Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias. -

Fall's terra-cotta-colored flowers,
Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged
With dingy lustre when the bower's
Thin, flame-flecked leaves the frost has singed;

Or with slow feet, 'mid gaunt gold blooms
Of marigolds her fingers twist,
She seems to pass with Fall's perfumes,
And dreams of sullen rain and mist.

Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;
Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,
With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary
And to-day my heart is weary;
Had I now the wings of a Faery,
Up to thee would I fly.
There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine;
Lift me, guide me high and high
To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning
Thou art laughing and scorning;
Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest,
And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveller as I.
Happy, happy Liver,
With a so...

A. D. 1670

AGLAE, a widow
MURIEL, her unmarried sister.

It happened once, in that brave land that lies
For half the twelvemonth wrapt in sombre skies,
Two sisters loved one man.    He being dead,
Grief loosed the lips of her he had not wed,
And all the passion that through heavy years
Had masked in smiles unmasked itself in tears.
No purer love may mortals know than this,
The hidden love that guards another's bliss.
High in a turret's westward-facing room,
Whose painted window held the sunset's bloom,
The two together grieving, each to each
Unveiled her soul with sobs and broken speech.

Both still were young, in life's rich summer yet;
And one was dark, with tints of violet
In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she
Who rose--a seco...

At Francis Allen’s on the Christmas-eve,—
The game of forfeits done—the girls all kiss’d
Beneath the sacred bush and past away—
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb’d: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honour had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump’d the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissionners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith...

What matter that you understood no word!
Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard
In broken sentences. My soul had found
All happiness in its own cause or ground.
Godhead on Godhead in sexual spasm begot
Godhead. Some shadow fell. My soul forgot
Those amorous cries that out of quiet come
And must the common round of day resume.

Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares,
and the wind of dawn blew on lighted stairs.

It was the hour when a swarm of evil visions
torments swarthy adolescents, when pillows hum:
when, a bloodshot eye, throbbing and quivering,
the lamp makes a reddened stain on the morning:
when the soul, by dull sour body, bowed down,
enacts the struggle between lamp and dawn.
Like a tearful face that the breeze wipes dry,
the air’s filled with the frisson of things that fly,
and man is tired of writing, woman with loving.

The chimneys, here and there, began smoking.
The women of pleasure, with their bleary eyes,
and gaping mouths, were sleeping stupefied:
poor old women, with chilled and meagre breasts,
blew the embers, then fingers, roused from rest.
It was the...

Thou art, and, therefore, Thou art near, oh God!
    Thick darkness covers me, I cannot see;
Is this the Shepherd's crook, or the correcting rod,
    And by Thy hand, O Father, laid on me?

I cry to Thee, and shall I cry in vain?
    My soul looks up as if through prison bars,
Up through the silent Heaven, ah, turn again
    Thy face to me, hide not behind the stars.

Thy presence hath been with me in the past,
    Where "heaps of witness" mark out all the way;
Thy years change not, Thy love is still as vast,
    I look to Thee, I trust Thee though Thou slay.

My friends walk on the hills the sun hath kissed,
    Flowers at their feet, their sky is blue and fair;
I'm prisoned in this vale of tearful mist,
    Shut in with sorrow, darkened by despair....

Gold and iron are good
To buy iron and gold;
All earth's fleece and food
For their like are sold.
Boded Merlin wise,
Proved Napoleon great,
Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
Out of dust to build
What is more than dust,
Walls Amphion piled
Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine
With the Virtues meet,
Find to their design
An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat,
here the statesman ploughs
Furrow for the wheat,--
When the Church is social worth,
When the state-house is the hearth,
Then the perfect State is come,
The republican at home.

She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed
Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze,
Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost,
And mouthed and mumbled to the sickly trees,
Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze.

Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore.
Some stars made misty blotches in the sky.
And all the wretched willows on the shore
Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye.
She felt their pity and could only sigh.

And then his skiff ground on the river rocks.
Whistling he came into the shadow made
By that dead tree. He kissed her dark brown locks;
And round her form his eager arms were laid.
Passive she stood, her secret unbetrayed.

And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss
Ached in her hair. She did not...

Ashes to ashes, dust unto dust,
What of his loving, what of his lust?
What of his passion, what of his pain?
What of his poverty, what of his pride?
Earth, the great mother, has called him again:
Deeply he sleeps, the world's verdict defied.
Shall he be tried again? Shall he go free?
Who shall the court convene? Where shall it be?
No answer on the land, none from the sea.
Only we know that as he did, we must:
You with your theories, you with your trust,--
Ashes to ashes, dust unto dust!

    Over the downs in sunlight clear
    Forth we went in the spring of the year:
    Plunder of April's gold we sought,
    Little of April's anger thought.

    Caught in a copse without defence
    Low we crouched to the rain-squall dense:
    Sure, if misery man can vex,
    There it beat on our bended necks.

    Yet when again we wander on
    Suddenly all that gloom is gone:
    Under and over through the wood,
    Life is astir, and life is good.

    Violets purple, violets white,
    Delicate windflowers dancing light,
    Primrose, mercury, moscatel,
    Shimmer in diamonds round the dell.

    Squirrel is climbing swift and lithe,
    Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe,
    Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap,
  ...

The night is long
    And there are no stars, -
        Let me but dream
        That the long fields gleam
With sunlight and song,
Then I shall not long
    For the light of stars.

Let me but dream, -
    For there are no stars, -
        Dream that the ache
        And the wild heart-break
Are but things that seem.
Ah! let me dream
    For there are no stars.

There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the shore,
They are chanting, they are singing through the starlight evermore,
As they steal amid the silence,
        And the shadows of the shore.

You can hear them when the Northern candles light the Northern sky,
Those pale, uncertain candle flames, that shiver, dart and die,
Those dead men's icy finger tips,
        Athwart the Northern sky.

You can hear the ringing war-cry of a long-forgotten brave
Echo through the midnight forest, echo o'er the midnight wave,
And the Northern lanterns tremble
        At the war-cry of that brave.

And you hear a voice responding, but in soft and tender song;
It is Dawendine's spirit singing, singing all night long;
And the whisper of the night wind
        ...