Identity

Ah, through the open door
Is there an almond tree
Aflame with blossom!
    - Let us fight no more.

Among the pink and blue
Of the sky and the almond flowers
A sparrow flutters.
    - We have come through,

It is really spring! - See,
When he thinks himself alone
How he bullies the flowers.
    - Ah, you and me

How happy we'll be! - See him
He clouts the tufts of flowers
In his impudence.
    - But, did you dream

It would be so bitter? Never mind
It is finished, the spring is here.
And we're going to be summer-happy
And summer-kind.

We have died, we have slain and been slain,
We are not our old selves any more.
I feel new and eager
To start again.

It is gorgeous to live and forget.
...

While on my lonely couch I lie,
I seldom feel myself alone,
For fancy fills my dreaming eye
With scenes and pleasures of its own.

Then I may cherish at my breast
An infant's form beloved and fair,
May smile and soothe it into rest
With all a Mother's fondest care.

How sweet to feel its helpless form
Depending thus on me alone!
And while I hold it safe and warm
What bliss to think it is my own!

And glances then may meet my eyes
That daylight never showed to me;
What raptures in my bosom rise,
Those earnest looks of love to see,

To feel my hand so kindly prest,
To know myself beloved at last,
To think my heart has found a rest,
My life of solitude is past!

But then to wake and find it flown,
The dream of hap...

    Still anxious to secure your partial favour,
    And not less anxious, sure, this night than ever,
    A Prologue, Epilogue, or some such matter,
    'Twould vamp my bill, said I, if nothing better;
    So sought a Poet, roosted near the skies,
    Told him I came to feast my curious eyes;
    Said nothing like his works was ever printed;
    And last, my Prologue-business slyly hinted!
    "Ma'am, let me tell you," quoth my man of rhymes,
    "I know your bent, these are no laughing times:
    Can you, but, Miss, I own I have my fears,
    Dissolve in pause, and sentimental tears;
    With laden sighs, and solemn-rounded sentence,
    Rouse from his sluggish slumbers, fell Repentance;
    Paint Vengeance as he takes his horrid stand,
    Waving on high the des...

O why should nature nigardly restraine,
The Sotherne Nations relish not our tongue,
Else should my lines glide on the waues of Rhene,
And crowne the Pirens with my liuing song;
But bounded thus to Scotland get you forth:
Thence take you wing vnto the Orcades,
There let my verse get glory in the North,
Making my sighs to thawe the frozen seas,
And let the Bards within the Irish Ile,
To whom my Muse with fiery wings shall passe,
Call backe the stifneckd rebels from exile,
And molifie the slaughtering Galliglasse:
    And when my flowing numbers they rehearse,
    Let Wolues and Bears be charmed with my verse.

I
Love and praise, and a length of days whose shadow cast upon time is light,
Days whose sound was a spell shed round from wheeling wings as of doves in flight,
Meet in one, that the mounting sun to-day may triumph, and cast out night.
Two years more than the full fourscore lay hallowing hands on a sacred head,
Scarce one score of the perfect four uncrowned of fame as they smiled and fled:
Still and soft and alive aloft their sunlight stays though the suns be dead.
Ere we were or were thought on, ere the love that gave us to life began,
Fame grew strong with his crescent song, to greet the goal of the race they ran,
Song with fame, and the lustrous name with years whose changes acclaimed the man.

II
Soon, ere time in the rounding rhyme of choral seasons had hailed us men,
W...

    Heavily slumbered noonday bright
    Upon the lone field, glory-dight,
    A burnished grassy sea:
    The child, in gorgeous golden hours,
    Through heaven-descended starry flowers,
    Went walking on the lea.

    Velvety bees make busy hum;
    Green flies and striped wasps go and come;
    The butterflies gleam white;
    Blue-burning, vaporous, to and fro
    The dragon-flies like arrows go,
    Or hang in moveless flight:--

    Not one she followed; like a rill
    She wandered on with quiet will;
    Received, but did not miss;
    Her step was neither quick nor long;
    Nought but a snatch of murmured song
    Ever revealed her bliss.

    An almost solemn woman-child,
    Not fashioned frolicsome and wild,
 ...

        I am troubled to-night with a curious pain;
        It is not of the flesh, it is not of the brain,
    Nor yet of a heart that is breaking:
        But down still deeper, and out of sight -
        In the place where the soul and the body unite -
    There lies the scat of the aching.

        They have been lovers in days gone by;
        But the soul is fickle, and longs to fly
    From the fettering mesalliance:
        And she tears at the bonds which are binding her so,
        And pleads with the body to let her go,
    But he will not yield compliance.

        For the body loves, as he loved in the past,
        When he wedded the soul; and he holds her fast,
    And swears that he will not loose her;
        That he will keep her and hid...

This is the place that I love the best,
A little brown house like a ground-bird's nest,
Hid among grasses, and vines, and trees,
Summer retreat of the birds and bees.

The tenderest light that ever was seen
Sifts through the vine-made window screen -
Sifts and quivers, and flits and falls
On home-made carpets and gray-hung walls.

All through June, the west wind free
The breath of the clover brings to me.
All through the languid July day
I catch the scent of the new-mown hay.

The morning glories and scarlet vine
Over the doorway twist and twine;
And every day, when the house is still,
The humming-bird comes to the window-sill.

In the cunningest chamber under the sun
I sink to sleep when the day is done;
And am waked at morn, in ...

Why should such gloomy silence reign,
And why is all the house so drear,
When neither danger, sickness, pain,
Nor death, nor want, have entered here?

We are as many as we were
That other night, when all were gay
And full of hope, and free from care;
Yet is there something gone away.

The moon without, as pure and calm,
Is shining as that night she shone;
But now, to us, she brings no balm,
For something from our hearts is gone.

Something whose absence leaves a void--
A cheerless want in every heart;
Each feels the bliss of all destroyed,
And mourns the change--but each apart.

The fire is burning in the grate
As redly as it used to burn;
But still the hearth is desolate,
Till mirth, and love, and PEACE return.

'T...

(Horace speaking.)

You've read, sir, in poetic strain,
How Varus and the Mantuan swain
Have on my birth-day been invited,
(But I was forced in verse to write it,)
Upon a plain repast to dine,
And taste my old Campanian wine;
But I, who all punctilios hate,
Though long familiar with the great,
Nor glory in my reputation,
Am come without an invitation;
And, though I'm used to right Falernian,
I'll deign for once to taste Iërnian;
But fearing that you might dispute
(Had I put on my common suit)
My breeding and my politesse,
I visit in my birth-day dress:
My coat of purest Turkey red,
With gold embroidery richly spread;
To which I've sure as good pretensions,
As Irish lords who starve on pensions.
What though proud ministers of state...

Blue was the loch, [1] the clouds were gone,
Ben-Lomond in his glory shone,
When, Luss, I left thee; when the breeze
Bore me from thy silver sands,
Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees,
Where, grey with age, the dial stands;
That dial so well-known to me!
--Tho' many a shadow it had shed,
Beloved Sister, since with thee
The legend on the stone was read.
    The fairy-isles fled far away;
That with its woods and uplands green,
Where shepherd-huts are dimly seen,
And songs are heard at close of day;
That too, the deer's wild covert, fled,
And that, the Asylum of the Dead:
While, as the boat went merrily,
Much of ROB ROY [2] the boat-man told;
His arm that fell below his knee,
His cattle-ford and mountain-hold.
    Tarbet, [3] thy shore I climb'...

Away! away!
Tempt me no more, insidious Love:
Thy soothing sway
Long did my youthful bosom prove:
At length thy treason is discern'd,
At length some dear-bought caution earn'd:
Away! nor hope my riper age to move.

I know, I see
Her merit. Needs it now be shown,
Alas! to me?
How often, to myself unknown,
The graceful, gentle, virtuous maid
Have I admired! How often said—
What joy to call a heart like hers one's own!

But, flattering god,
O squanderer of content and ease
In thy abode
Will care's rude lesson learn to please?
O say, deceiver, hast thou won
Proud Fortune to attend thy throne,
Or placed thy friends above her stern decrees?

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

When falls the soldier brave,
Dead at the feet of wrong,
The poet sings and guards his grave
With sentinels of song.

Songs, march! he gives command,
Keep faithful watch and true;
The living and dead of the conquered land
Have now no guards save you.

Gray ballads! mark ye well!
Thrice holy is your trust!
Go! halt by the fields where warriors fell;
Rest arms! and guard their dust.

List, songs! your watch is long,
The soldiers' guard was brief;
Whilst right is right, and wrong is wrong,
Ye may not seek relief.

Go! wearing the gray of grief!
Go! watch o'er the dead in gray!
Go! guard the private and guard the chief,
And sentinel their clay!

And the songs, in stately rhyme
And with softly sounding tread,
G...

They come to ev'ry life -- sad, sunless days,
With not a light all o'er their clouded skies;
And thro' the dark we grope along our ways
With hearts fear-filled, and lips low-breathing sighs.

What is the dark? Why cometh it? and whence?
Why does it banish all the bright away?
How does it weave a spell o'er soul and sense?
Why falls the shadow where'er gleams the ray?

Hast felt it? I have felt it, and I know
How oft and suddenly the shadows roll
From out the depths of some dim realm of woe,
To wrap their darkness round the human soul.

Those days are darker than the very night;
For nights have stars, and sleep, and happy dreams;
But these days bring unto the spirit-sight
The mysteries of gloom, until it seems

The light is gone forever, and...

        A little baby went to sleep
            One night in his white bed,
        And the moon came by to take a peep
            At the little baby head.

        A wind, as wandering winds will do,
            Brought to the baby there
        Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew
            Out on some hill somewhere.

        And wind and flower and pale moonbeam
            About the baby's bed
        Stirred and woke the funniest dream
            In the little sleepy head.

        He thought he was all sorts of things
            From a lion to a cat;
        Sometimes he thought he flew on wings,
            Or fell and fell, so that

        When morning broke he was right glad
            But much surprised to s...

Let the dream go.    Are there not other dreams
    In vastness of clouds hid from thy sight
That yet shall gild with beautiful gold gleams,
    And shoot the shadows through and through with light?
    What matters one lost vision of the night?
        Let the dream go!!

Let the hope set.    Are there not other hopes
    That yet shall rise like new stars in thy sky?
Not long a soul in sullen darkness gropes
    Before some light is lent it from on high;
    What folly to think happiness gone by!
        Let the hope set!

Let the joy fade.    Are there not other joys,
    Like frost-bound bulbs, that yet shall start and bloom?
Severe must be the winter that destroys
    The hardy roots locked in their silent tomb.
    What cares the earth for her ...

Light human nature is too lightly tost
And ruffled without cause, complaining on
Restless with rest, until, being overthrown,
It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost
Or a small wasp have crept to the inner-most
Of our ripe peach, or let the wilful sun
Shine westward of our window, straight we run
A furlong's sigh as if the world were lost.
But what time through the heart and through the brain
God hath transfixed us, we, so moved before,
Attain to a calm. Ay, shouldering weights of pain,
We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore,
And hear submissive o'er the stormy main
God's chartered judgments walk for evermore.