Identity

What shall we do for Love these days?
How shall we make an altar-blaze
To smite the horny eyes of men
With the renown of our Heaven,
And to the unbelievers prove
Our service to our dear god, Love?
What torches shall we lift above
The crowd that pushes through the mire,
To amaze the dark heads with strange fire?
I should think I were much to blame,
If never I held some fragrant flame
Above the noises of the world,
And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares,
Worshipt before the sacred fears
That are like flashing curtains furl'd
Across the presence of our lord Love.
Nay, would that I could fill the gaze
Of the whole earth with some great praise
Made in a marvel for men's eyes,
Some tower of glittering masonries,
Therein such a spirit flourishing

I glimpsed a woman's muslined form
Sing-songing airily
Against the moon; and still she sang,
And took no heed of me.

Another trice, and I beheld
What first I had not scanned,
That now and then she tapped and shook
A timbrel in her hand.

So late the hour, so white her drape,
So strange the look it lent
To that blank hill, I could not guess
What phantastry it meant.

Then burst I forth: "Why such from you?
Are you so happy now?"
Her voice swam on; nor did she show
Thought of me anyhow.

I called again: "Come nearer; much
That kind of note I need!"
The song kept softening, loudening on,
In placid calm unheed.

"What home is yours now?" then I said;
"You seem to have no care."
But the wild wavering tune went...

Book The First.


The book opens with the resting of the Ark on the mountains of the great Indian Caucasus, considered by many authors as Ararat: the present state of the inhabited world, contrasted with its melancholy appearance immediately after the flood. The poem returns to the situation of our forefathers on leaving the ark; beautiful evening described. The Angel of Destruction appears to Noah in a dream, and informs him that although he and his family alone have escaped, the VERY ARK, which was the means of his present preservation, shall be the cause of the future triumph of Destruction.

In his dream, the evils in consequence of the discovery of America, the slave-trade, et cet., are set before him. Noah, waking from disturbed sleep, ascends the summit of Caucasus. An angel appears to him; te...

Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn;
The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun;
That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn,
What a strange scene before us now does run--
Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun;
White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare;
The sycamore all withered in the sun.
No leaves are now upon the birch tree there:
All now is stript to the cold wintry air.

See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves--
And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue.
The winter chill on his cold bed receives
Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue.
Naked and bare the leafless trees repose.
Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare,
Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows;
That is not green, which was so through the ye...

Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length,
But no matter! I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead,
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart:- ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!

The sickness- the nausea,
The pitiless pain,
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain,
With the fever called "Living"
That b...

O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting & of wrong,
Thy left hand holding pity; & thy breast
Heaving with hope of that so certain rest:
Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid,
The soft lips trembling not, though they have said
The doom of the World and those that dwell therein.
The lips that smile not though thy children win
The fated Love that draws the fated Death.
O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath,
Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,
That, if it may be, I may have a part
In that great sorrow of thy children dead
That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head,
Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream,
And death the murmur of a restful stream,
But left no stain upon those souls of thine...

When I reflect with serious sense,
While years and years run on,
How soon I may be summoned hence -
There's cook a-calling John.

Our lives are built so frail and poor,
On sand and not on rocks,
We're hourly standing at Death's door -
There's some one double knocks.

All human days have settled terms,
Our fates we cannot force;
This flesh of mine will feed the worms -
They're come to lunch of course!

And when my body's turned to clay,
And dear friends hear my knell,
Oh let them give a sigh and say -
I hear the upstairs bell!

When I came home from wanderings
In a tall chattering ship,
I thought a hundred happy things,
Of people, places, and such things
As I came sailing home.

The tall ship moved how slowly on
With me and hundreds more,
That thought not then of wanderings,
But of unwhispered, longed-for things,
Familiar things of home.

For not in miles seemed other lands
Far off, but in long years
As we came near to England then;
Even the tall ship heard secret things
As she moved trembling home.

It was at dawn. The chattering ship
Was strangely hushed; faint mist
Crept everywhere, and we crept on,
And every eye was creeping on
The mist, as we moved home....

Until we saw, far, very far,
Or dreamed we saw, her cliffs,
And thought ...

I.

O the hills of old Lincoln!--I can see them to-day
As they stretch in dim distance far, far away,
And on Fancy's swift pinions my spirit hath flown
To rest 'mid the scenes which my childhood has known--
Where the old Hanging Fork, with its silvery gleam,
Glides away 'tween the meadows like thoughts in a dream,
And far to the south, with their outlines so blue,
The rugged knobs blend into heaven's own hue!


II.

O the hills of old Lincoln!--how fondly I gaze
On their wildwoods and thickets and deep-tangled ways
When memory's mirror presents them to view,
And I dream once again that I tread them anew,
While raptured I listen to the music of love
That the song-birds are singing in the tree-tops above,
And the soul drifts away in a swoon o...

The leaves are many under my feet,
    And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
    A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
    The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,--
    Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
    Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
    The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
    Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
    Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
    You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I ...

O tempo, o ciel volubil che fuggendo.

HE NO LONGER CONTEMPLATES THE MORTAL, BUT THE IMMORTAL BEAUTIES OF LAURA.


    O Time! O heavens! whose flying changes frame
Errors and snares for mortals poor and blind;
O days more swift than arrows or the wind,
Experienced now, I know your treacherous aim.
You I excuse, myself alone I blame,
For Nature for your flight who wings design'd
To me gave eyes which still I have inclined
To mine own ill, whence follow grief and shame.
An hour will come, haply e'en now is pass'd,
Their sight to turn on my diviner part
And so this infinite anguish end at last.
Rejects not your long yoke, O Love, my heart,
But its own ill by study, sufferings vast:
Virtue is not of chance, but painful art.

MACGREGOR.<...

Only a Dream!
    It floated thro'
The sky of a lonely sleep
As floats a gleam
    Athwart the Blue
Of a golden clouded Deep.

Only a Dream!
    I calmly slept.
Meseems I called a name;
I woke; and, waking, I think I wept
And called -- and called the same.

Only a Dream!
    Graves have no ears;
They give not back the dead;
They will not listen to the saddest tears
That ever may be shed.

Only a Dream!
    Graves keep their own;
They have no hearts to hear;
But the loved will come
From their Heaven-Home
To smile on the sleeper's tear.

Does it matter? - losing your leg? ...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? - losing your sight? ...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? - those dreams from the pit? ...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know that you've fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possessed!
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor give me once but one poor minute's rest.
    In me it speaks whether I sleep or wake;
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity.
    Before my face it lays down my despairs,
And hastes me on unto a sudden death;
Now tempting me to drown myself in tears,
And then in sighing to give up my breath.
    Thus am I still provoked to every evil,
    By this good wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil.

When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow, and silver gleam,
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight's dream.

When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is wrapt within the mother's breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
I am one with their hearts at rest.

From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love
Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
Word or touch from the lips beside.

Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw,
From the olden fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primeval being as o'erf...

I miss thee from my side, beloved,
    I miss thee from my side;
And wearily and drearily
    Flows Time's resistless tide.
The world, and all its fleeting joys,
    To me are worse than vain,
Until I clasp thee to my heart,
    Beloved one, again.

The wildwood and the forest-path,
    We used to thread of yore,
With bird and bee have flown with thee,
    And gone for ever more!
There is no music in the grove,
    No echo on the hill;
But melancholy boughs are there--
    And hushed the whip-poor-will.

I miss thee in the town, beloved,
    I miss thee in the town;
From morn I grieve till dewy eve
    Spreads wide its mantle brown.
My spirit's wings, that once could soar
    In Fancy's world of air,
Are crushed and beat...

The season was the childhood of sweet June,
Whose sunny hours from morning until noon
Went creeping through the day with silent feet,
Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;
Like the long years of blest Eternity
Never to be developed. Joy to thee,
Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,
For thou the wonders of the depth canst know
Of this unfathomable flood of hours,
Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers -

...

They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had rased their love - which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather - t...