Identity

Beautiful landscape! I could look on thee
For hours, unmindful of the storm and strife,
And mingled murmurs of tumultuous life.
Here, all is still as fair; the stream, the tree,
The wood, the sunshine on the bank: no tear,
No thought of Time's swift wing, or closing night,
That comes to steal away the long sweet light
No sighs of sad humanity are here.
Here is no tint of mortal change; the day,
Beneath whose light the dog and peasant-boy
Gambol, with look, and almost bark, of joy,
Still seems, though centuries have passed, to stay.
Then gaze again, that shadowed scenes may teach
Lessons of peace and love, beyond all speech.

My heart is high, is high, my dear,
And the warm wind sunnily blows;
My heart is high with a mood that's cheer,
And burns like a sun-blown rose.

My heart is high, is high, my dear,
And the Heaven's deep skies are blue;
My heart is high as the passionate year,
And smiles like a bud in dew.

My heart, my heart is high, my sweet,
For wild is the smell o' the wood,
That gusts in the breeze with a pulse o' heat,
Mad heat that beats like a blood.

My heart, my heart is high, my sweet,
And the sense of summer is full;
A sense of summer, - full fields of wheat,
Full forests and waters cool.

My heart is high, is high, my heart,
As the bee's that groans and swinks
In the dabbled flowers that dart and part
To his woolly bulk when he d...

I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
i(Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round,
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West,
And the girdle of light is unhound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.)

'We're going home!' I heard two lovers say,
    They kissed their friends and bade them bright good-byes;
    I hid the deadly hunger in my eyes,
And, lest I might have killed them, turned away.
Ah, love! we too once gambolled home as they,
    Home from the town with such fair merchandise, -
    Wine and great grapes - the happy lover buys:
A little cosy feast to crown the day.

Yes! we had once a heaven we called a home
    Its empty rooms still haunt me like thine eyes,
When the last sunset softly faded there;
Each day I tread each empty haunted room,
        And now and then a little baby cries,
    Or laughs a lovely laughter worse to bear.

I met a sailor in the woods,
    A silver ring wore he,
His hair hung black, his eyes shone blue,
    And thus he said to me: -

'What country, say, of this round earth,
    What shore of what salt sea,
Be this, my son, I wander in,
    And looks so strange to me?'

Says I, 'O foreign sailorman,
    In England now you be,
This is her wood, and this her sky,
    And that her roaring sea.'

He lifts his voice yet louder,
    'What smell be this,' says he,
'My nose on the sharp morning air
    Snuffs up so greedily?'

Says I, 'It is wild roses
    Do smell so winsomely,
And winy briar too,' says I,
    'That in these thickets be.'

'And oh!' says he, 'what leetle bird
    Is singing in yon high tree,
So every...

Above her veil a shrouded Moorish maid
    Showed melting eyes, as limpid as a lake;
A brow untouched by care; a band of jetty hair,
    And nothing more.    The all-concealing haik
Fell to her high arched instep.    At her side
    An old duenna walked; her withered face
    Half covered only, since no lingering grace
Bespoke the beauty once her master's pride.

Above her veil, the Moorish maid beheld
    The modern world, in Paris-decked Algiers;
Saw happy lad and lass, in love's contentment pass,
    Or in sweet wholesome friendship, free from fears.
She saw fair matrons, walking arm-in-arm
    With life-long lovers, time-endeared, and then
    She saw the ardent look in eyes of men,
And thrilled and trembled with a vague alarm.

Above her veil sh...

We overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination (given us to bring down
The choirs of singing angels overshone
By God's clear glory) down our earth to rake
The dismal snows instead, flake following flake,
To cover all the corn; we walk upon
The shadow of hills across a level thrown,
And pant like climbers: near the alder brake
We sigh so loud, the nightingale within
Refuses to sing loud, as else she would.
O brothers, let us leave the shame and sin
Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood,
The holy name of grief! holy herein
That by the grief of one came all our good.

I clomb full high the belfry tower
    Up to yon arrow-slit, up and away,
I said 'let me look on my heart's fair flower
    In the wallèd garden where she doth play.'

My care she knoweth not, no nor the cause,
    White rose, red rose about her hung,
And I aloft with the doves and the daws.
    They coo and call to their callow young.

Sing, 'O an she were a white rosebud fair
    Dropt, and in danger from passing feet,
'T is I would render her service tender,
    Upraised on my bosom with reverence meet.'

Playing at the ball, my dearest of all,
    When she grows older how will it be,
I dwell far away from her thoughts to-day
    That heed not, need not, or mine or me.

Sing, 'O an my love were a fledgeling dove
    That flutters fo...

Back to the flower-town, side by side,
The bright months bring,
New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
Freedom and spring.

The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
Filled full of sun;
All things come back to her, being free;
All things but one.

In many a tender wheaten plot
Flowers that were dead
Live, and old suns revive; but not
That holier head.

By this white wandering waste of sea,
Far north, I hear
One face shall never turn to me
As once this year:

Shall never smile and turn and rest
On mine as there,
Nor one most sacred hand be prest
Upon my hair.

I came as one whose thoughts half linger,
Half run before;
The youngest to the oldest singer
That England bore.

I found him whom I shal...

It is not long since, here among all these folk
in London, I should have held myself
of no account whatever,
but should have stood aside and made them way
thinking that they, perhaps,
had more right than I - for who was I?

Now I see them just the same, and watch them.
But of what account do I hold them?

Especially the young women. I look at them
as they dart and flash
before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a pool.

If I pass them close, or any man,
like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside
pretending to avoid us; yet all the time
calculating.

They think that we adore them - alas, would it were true!

Probably they think all men adore them,
howsoever they pass by.

What is it, that, from their faces f...

Ten years! and to my waking eye
Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream, and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,
The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the church-yard fair,
And ’neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush
Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
Quick through the oleanders brush,
And clap thy hands, and cry: ’Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wander’d back,
Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
And flitted down the flowery track
Where feet like ...

The dying words of Goethe.

"Light! more light! the shadows deepen,
    And my life is ebbing low,
Throw the windows widely open:
    Light! more light! before I go.

"Softly let the balmy sunshine
    Play around my dying bed,
E'er the dimly lighted valley
    I with lonely feet must tread.

"Light! more light! for Death is weaving
    Shadows 'round my waning sight,
And I fain would gaze upon him
    Through a stream of earthly light."

Not for greater gifts of genius;
    Not for thoughts more grandly bright,
All the dying poet whispers
    Is a prayer for light, more light.

Heeds he not the gathered laurels,
    Fading slowly from his sight;
All the poet's aspirations
    Centre in that prayer for light.
<...

If I could bid thee, pleasant shade, farewell
Without a sigh, amidst whose circling bowers
My stripling prime was passed, and happiest hours,
Dead were I to the sympathies that swell
The human breast! These woods, that whispering wave,
My father reared and nursed, now to the grave
Gone down; he loved their peaceful shades, and said,
Perhaps, as here he mused: Live, laurels green;
Ye pines that shade the solitary scene,
Live blooming and rejoice! When I am dead
My son shall guard you, and amid your bowers,
Like me, find shelter from life's beating showers.
These thoughts, my father, every spot endear;
And whilst I think, with self-accusing pain,
A stranger shall possess the loved domain,
In each low wind I seem thy voice to hear.
But these are shadows of the sh...

Beginning my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness--these forms--the power of motion,
The least insect or animal--the senses--eyesight--love;
The first step, I say, aw'd me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish'd to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in extatic songs.

What care I, so they stand the same,--
Things of the heavenly mind,--
How long the power to give them name
Tarries yet behind?

Thus far to-day your favors reach,
O fair, appeasing presences!
Ye taught my lips a single speech,
And a thousand silences.

Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day;
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say.

Above the valleys, over rills and meres,
Above the mountains, woods, the oceans, clouds,
Beyond the sun, past all ethereal bounds,
Beyond the borders of the starry spheres,

My agile spirit, how you take your flight!
Like a strong swimmer swooning on the sea
You gaily plough the vast immensity
With manly, inexpressible delight.

F1y far above this morbid, vaporous place;
Go cleanse yourself in higher, finer air,
And drink up, like a pure, divine liqueur,
Bright fire, out of clear and limpid space.

Beyond ennui, past troubles and ordeals
That load our dim existence with their weight,
Happy the strong-winged man, who makes the great
Leap upward to the bright and peaceful fields!

The man whose thoughts, like larks, take to their wings
E...

    They laughed at me as "Prof. Moon,"
    As a boy in Spoon River, born with the thirst
    Of knowing about the stars.
    They jeered when I spoke of the lunar mountains,
    And the thrilling heat and cold,
    And the ebon valleys by silver peaks,
    And Spica quadrillions of miles away,
    And the littleness of man.
    But now that my grave is honored, friends,
    Let it not be because I taught
    The lore of the stars in Knox College,
    But rather for this: that through the stars
    I preached the greatness of man,
    Who is none the less a part of the scheme of things
    For the distance of Spica or the Spiral Nebulae;
    Nor any the less a part of the question
    Of what the drama means.

How sweet the sacred legend - if unblamed
In my slight verse such holy things are named -
Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy,
Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!
Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong
Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!
The choral host had closed the Angel's strain
Sung to the listening watch on Bethlehem's plain,
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.
They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er, -
They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor
Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;
And some remembered how the holy scribe,
Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,
Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son
To that fa...