Identity

(To L. L.)

Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,
Were it worth the pleasure,
We never could learn love's song,
We are parted too long.

Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead,
Could we live it all over again,
Were it worth the pain!

I remember we used to meet
By an ivied seat,
And you warbled each pretty word
With the air of a bird;

And your voice had a quaver in it,
Just like a linnet,
And shook, as the blackbird's throat
With its last big note;

And your eyes, they were green and grey
Like an April day,
But lit into amethyst
When I stooped and kissed;

And your mouth, it would never smile
For a long, long while,
Then it rippled all over with laughter
Five minutes...

Redbirds, redbirds,
Long and long ago,
What a honey-call you had
In hills I used to know;

Redbud, buckberry,
Wild plum-tree
And proud river sweeping
Southward to the sea,

Brown and gold in the sun
Sparkling far below,
Trailing stately round her bluffs
Where the poplars grow.

Redbirds, redbirds,
Are you singing still
As you sang one May day
On Saxton's Hill?

In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
As though with an awed sense of such ostent;
And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,
To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,
Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:
Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

And the sick grief that you were far away
Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?
Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,
Less than a Want to me, as day by day
I lived unware, uncaring all that lay
Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

1866.

        Some cawing Crows, a hooting Owl,
        A Hawk, a Canary, an old Marsh-Fowl,
    One day all meet together
        To hold a caucus and settle the fate
        Of a certain bird (without a mate),
    A bird of another feather.

        "My friends," said the Owl, with a look most wise,
        "The Eagle is soaring too near the skies,
    In a way that is quite improper;
        Yet the world is praising her, so I'm told,
        And I think her actions have grown so bold
    That some of us ought to stop her."

        "I have heard it said," quoth Hawk, with a sigh,
        "That young lambs died at the glance of her eye,
    And I wholly scorn and despise her.
        This, and more, I am told they say,
        And I think that the only ...

It is most true that eyes are form'd to serue
The inward light, and that the heauenly part
Ought to be King, from whose rules who do swerue,
Rebels to nature, striue for their owne smart.
It is most true, what we call Cupids dart
An image is, which for ourselues we carue,
And, foolse, adore in temple of our hart,
Till that good god make church and churchmen starue.
True, that true beautie virtue is indeed,
Whereof this beautie can be but a shade,
Which, elements with mortal mixture breed.
True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made,
And should in soule up to our countrey moue:
True, and yet true that I must Stella loue.

        From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
        He leaned against his window-bars to rest
        And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.

        It came with sundown noises from the moors,
        Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
        Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.

        He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
        And certain scents stole up across the street
        That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.

        Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
        Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
        And watched above the quiet tents of night.

        Alas, that the old Mother should not know
        How ached his heart to be entreated so,
        Who heard her ca...

I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.

A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!

Out in the upland places,
    I see both dale and down,
And the ploughed earth with open scores
    Turning the green to brown.

The bare bones of the country
    Lie gaunt in winter days,
Grim fastnesses of rock and scaur,
    Sure, while the year decays.

And, as the autumn withers,
    And the winds strip the tree,
The companies of buried folk
    Rise up and speak with me; -

From homesteads long forgotten,
    From graves by church and yew,
They come to walk with noiseless tread
    Upon the land they knew; -

Men who have tilled the pasture
    The writhen thorn beside,
Women within grey vanished walls
    Who bore and loved and died.

And when the great town closes
    Upon me like a sea,
Daylong, a...

"Look here," said Rose, with laughing eyes,
    "Within this box, by magic hid,
"A tuneful Sprite imprisoned lies,
    "Who sings to me whene'er he's bid.
"Tho' roving once his voice and wing,
    "He'll now lie still the whole day long;
"Till thus I touch the magic spring--
    "Then hark, how sweet and blithe his song!"
            (A symphony.)

"Ah, Rose," I cried, "the poet's lay
    "Must ne'er even Beauty's slave become;
"Thro' earth and air his song may stray,
    "If all the while his heart's at home.
"And tho' in freedom's air he dwell,
    "Nor bond nor chain his spirit knows,
"Touch but the spring thou knowst so well,
    "And--hark, how sweet the love-song flows!"
            (A symphony.)

Thus pleaded I for free...

AFTER LEE O. HARRIS

The master-hand whose pencils trace
    This wondrous landscape of the morn,
Is but the sun, whose glowing face
Reflects the rapture and the grace
    Of inspiration Heaven-born.

And yet with vision-dazzled eyes,
    I see the lotus-lands of old,
Where odorous breezes fall and rise,
And mountains, peering in the skies,
    Stand ankle-deep in lakes of gold.

And, spangled with the shine and shade,
    I see the rivers raveled out
In strands of silver, slowly fade
In threads of light along the glade
    Where truant roses hide and pout.

The tamarind on gleaming sands
    Droops drowsily beneath the heat;
And bowed as though aweary, stands
The stately palm, with lazy hands
    That fold their shadows...

The pigeons, following the faint warm light,
Stayed at last on the roof till warmth was gone,
Then in the mist that's hastier than night
Disappeared all behind the carved dark stone,
Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost.
With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came
Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then
Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost,
Vanishing and returning ever again,
Small cloud following cloud across the flame
That clear and meagre burned and burned away
And left the ice unmelting day by day.

... Nor could the sun through the roof's purple slate
(Though his gold magic played with shadow there
And drew the pigeons from the streaming air)
With any fiery magic penetrate.
Under the roof the air and water froze,

My little bark glides steadily along,
    Still and unshaken as a summer dream;
    And never falls the oar into the stream,
For 'tis but morning, and the current strong;
    So let the ripples bear me as they will;
Sweet, sweet is Life, and every sound is song;
    Sorrow lies sleeping, and Joy sends me still
            Swift floating down the River.

Bright shines the sun athwart the linden-trees;
    One little cloud alone steals o'er the sky,
    As o'er the widening stream below steal I,
Fann'd by the same faint perfume-laden breeze;
    Bird-music answers sweetly through the air,
The unheard warbling of heart melodies;
    Thus go I dreaming, free from faintest care,
            Swift floating down the River.

Pure lie the broad-leaved lilies ...

In faded chairs, the pale old courtesans,
Eyebrows painted, eye of fatal calm,
Smirking, and letting drop from skinny ears
Those jingling sounds of metal and of stone;

Around green cloth, the faces without lips,
Lips without colour over toothless jaws,
And fingers twisted by infernal fires,
Digging in pockets, or in panting breast;

Under the filthy ceilings, chandeliers
And lamps of oil doling out their glow
Over the brilliant poets' gloomy brows,
Who come to squander here their bloody sweat;

This is the black tableau that in my dream
I see unroll before my prescient eye.
There in an idle corner of that den
I see myself-cold, mute, and envying,

Envious of these men's tenacious lust,
The morbid gaiety of these old whores,
Traff...

As bullets come to us they're thin,
They're angular, or smooth and fat,
Some spiral are, and gimlet in,
And some are sharp, and others flat.
The slim one pink you clean and neat,
The flat ones bat a solid blow
Much as a camel throws his feet,
And leave you beastly incomplete.
If lucky you don't know it through.

The flitting bullets flow and flock;
They twitter as they pass;
They're picking at the solid rock,
They're rooting in the grass.
A tiny ballet swiftly throws
Its gossamer of rust,
Brown fairies on their little toes
A-dancing in the dust.

You cower down when first they come
With snaky whispers at your ear;
And when like swarming bees they hum
You know the tinkling chill of fear.
A whining thing will pluck your heel,

Our souls shall be Leviathans
In purple seas of wine
When drunkenness is dead with death,
And drink is all divine;
Learning in those immortal vats
What mortal vineyards mean;
For only in heaven we shall know
How happy we have been.

Like clouds that wallow in the wind
Be free to drift and drink;
Tower without insolence when we rise,
Without surrender sink:
Dreams dizzy and crazy we shall know
And have no need to write
Our blameless blasphemies of praise,
Our nightmares of delight.

For so in such misshapen shape
The vision came to me,
Where such titanian dolphins dark
Roll in a sunset sea:
Dark with dense colours, strange and strong
As terrible true love,
Haloed like fish in phospher light
The holy monsters move.

    See where it stands, the world-appointed flower,
    Pure gold at centre, like the sun at noon, -
    A mimic sun to light a true-love bower
    For fair Queen Mab, now dead or in a swoon,
    Whom late a poet saw beneath the moon.
    It lifts its dainty face till sunset hour,
    As if endowed with nympholeptic power, -
    Then shuts its petals like a folding tune!
    I love it more than words of mine can say,
    And more than anchorite may breathe in prayer.
    Methinks the lark has made it still his care
    To brag of daisies to the lord of day.
    Well! I will follow suit, as best I may,
    Launching my love-songs on the summer air.

PROEM.

Where Kings have been by mob-elections
    Raised to the throne, 'tis strange to see
What different and what odd perfections
    Men have required in Royalty.
Some, liking monarchs large and plumpy,
    Have chosen their Sovereigns by the weight;--
Some wisht them tall, some thought your Dumpy,
    Dutch-built, the true Legitimate.[1]
The Easterns in a Prince, 'tis said,
Prefer what's called a jolterhead:[2]
The Egyptians weren't at all partic'lar,
    So that their Kings had not red hair--
This fault not even the greatest stickler
    For the blood-royal well could bear.

A thousand more such illustrations
Might be adduced from various nations.
But, 'mong the many tales they tell us,
    Touching...

The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo,
His mental processes are plain, one knows what he will do,
And can logically predicate his finish by his start;
But the English, ah, the English!, they are quite a race apart.

Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and raw.
They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw;
But the straw that they were tickled with-the chaff that they were fed with,
They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head with.

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State,
They arrive at their conclusions, largely inarticulate.
Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none;
But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.

Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through c...