Identity

Our hearths are gone out and our hearts are broken,
And but the ghosts of homes to us remain,
And ghastly eyes and hollow sighs give token
From friend to friend of an unspoken pain.

O Raven days, dark Raven days of sorrow,
Bring to us in your whetted ivory beaks
Some sign out of the far land of To-morrow,
Some strip of sea-green dawn, some orange streaks.

Ye float in dusky files, forever croaking.
Ye chill our manhood with your dreary shade.
Dumb in the dark, not even God invoking,
We lie in chains, too weak to be afraid.

O Raven days, dark Raven days of sorrow,
Will ever any warm light come again?
Will ever the lit mountains of To-morrow
Begin to gleam athwart the mournful plain?


Prattville, Alabama, February, 1868.

Last night - how deep the darkness was!
And well I knew its depths, because
I waded it from shore to shore,
Thinking to reach the light no more.

She would not even touch my hand.
The winds rose and the cedars fanned
The moon out, and the stars fled back
In heaven and hid - and all was black!

But ah! To-night a summons came,
Signed with a tear-drop for a name,
For as I wondering kissed it, lo
A line beneath it told me so.

And now - the moon hangs over me
A disk of dazzling brilliancy,
And every star-tip stabs my sights
With splintered glitterings of light!

I

Earth was not: nor globes of attraction
The will of the Immortal expanded
Or contracted his all flexible senses.
Death was not, but eternal life sprung

II

The sound of a trumpet the heavens
Awoke & vast clouds of blood roll'd
Round the dim rocks of Urizen, so nam'd
That solitary one in Immensity

III

Shrill the trumpet: & myriads of Eternity,
Muster around the bleak desarts
Now fill'd with clouds, darkness & waters
That roll'd perplex'd labring & utter'd
Words articulate, bursting in thunders
That roll'd on the tops of his mountains

IV

From the depths of dark solitude. From
The eternal abode in my holiness,
Hidden set apart in my stern counsels
Reserv'd for the days of futurity...

I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins
Flows agèd blood; who rules a land of rains;
Who, young in years, is old in all distress;
Who flees good counsel to find weariness
Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred
Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;
Whose weary face emotion moves no more
E'en when his people die before his door.
His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile
Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;
The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,
Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood
No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom
Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.
The sage who takes his gold essays in vain
To purge away the old corrupted strain,
His baths of blood, that in the days of old
The Romans used when their hot ...

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,

Are lips,and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words,

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined
Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall,

Thy heart,thy heart!,I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy,
Of the baubles that it may.

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies...

O Sub! you certainly have been,
A little raking, roguish creature,
And in that face may still be seen,
Each laughing loves bewitching feature!

For thou hast stolen many a heart--
And robb'd the sweetness of the rose;
Plac'd on that cheek, it doth impart
More lovely tints, more fragrant blows!

Yes, thou art nature's favorite child,
Array'd in smiles, seducing, killing;
Did Joseph live, you'd drive him wild,
And set his very soul a thrilling!

A poet, much too poor to live,
Too poor, in this rich world to rove,
Too poor, for aught but verse to give,
But not, thank God, too poor to love!

Gives thee his little doggerel lay--
One truth I tell, in sorrow tell it,
I'm forc'd to give my verse away,
Because, alas! I cannot sell it....

Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
    I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."
    Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild an...

Gay was the Maid of Ocram
As lady eer might be
Ere she did venture past a maid
To love Lord Gregory.
Fair was the Maid of Ocram
And shining like the sun
Ere her bower key was turned on two
Where bride bed lay for none.

And late at night she sought her love--
The snow slept on her skin--
Get up, she cried, thou false young man,
And let thy true love in.
And fain would he have loosed the key
All for his true love's sake,
But Lord Gregory then was fast asleep,
His mother wide awake.

And up she threw the window sash,
And out her head put she:
And who is that which knocks so late
And taunts so loud to me?
It is the Maid of Ocram,
Your own heart's next akin;
For so you've sworn, Lord Gregory,
To come and let me in.

Why do I make so much of Aber Fall?
Four years ago
My little boy was with me here,
That’s all,
He died next year:
He died just seven years old,
A very gentle child, yet bold,
Having no fear.
You have seen such?
They are not much?
No . . . no.
And yet he was a very righteous child,
Stood up for what was right,
Intolerant of wrong, Pure azure light
Was cisterned in his eyes;
We thought him wise
Beyond his years, so sweet and mild,
But strong
For justice, doing what he could,
Poor little soul, to make all children good.
I almost think, and yet I am to blame,
He was a different child from others;
He had three sisters and two brothers:
He seemed a little king:
Among the children, ah I ‘tis a common thing,
Parents are all...

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth and go on out
over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and e...

    I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
    When I felt the bullet enter my heart
    I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
    For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
    Instead of running away and joining the army.
    Rather a thousand times the county jail
    Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
    And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
    What do they mean, anyway?

Methinks that I could trip o'er heaviest soil,
Light as a buoyant bark from wave to wave,
Were mine the trusty staff that Jewel gave
To youthful Hooker, in familiar style
The gift exalting, and with playful smile:
For thus equipped, and bearing on his head
The Donor's farewell blessing, can he dread
Tempest, or length of way, or weight of toil?
More sweet than odours caught by him who sails
Near spicy shores of Araby the blest,
A thousand times more exquisitely sweet,
The freight of holy feeling which we meet,
In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales
From fields where good men walk, or bowers wherein they rest.

Against these turbid turquoise skies
The light and luminous balloons
Dip and drift like satin moons
Drift like silken butterflies;

Reel with every windy gust,
Rise and reel like dancing girls,
Float like strange transparent pearls,
Fall and float like silver dust.

Now to the low leaves they cling,
Each with coy fantastic pose,
Each a petal of a rose
Straining at a gossamer string.

Then to the tall trees they climb,
Like thin globes of amethyst,
Wandering opals keeping tryst
With the rubies of the lime.

I have not the gift of vision,
    I have not the psychic ear,
And the realms that are called Elysian
    I neither see nor hear;
Yet oft when the shadows darken
    And the daylight hides its face,
The soul of me seems to hearken
    For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,
    They speak to me not by word;
Yet my soul would be guilty of treason
    If it did not say it had heard.
For Space has a message compelling
    To give to the ear of Earth;
And the things which the Silence is telling
    In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it -
    That ever through good or ill,
The will of the Ruling Spirit
    Is moving and ruling still.
In the clutch of the blood-red ter...

Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;
Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.
What though the holy secret which moulds thee
Moulds not the solid Earth? though never Winds
Have whisper’d it to the complaining Sea,
Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds
To its own impulse every creature stirs:
Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers

Shut it out of the heart this grief,
O Love, with the years grown old and hoary!
And let in joy that life is brief,
And give God thanks for the end of the story.

The bond of the flesh is transitory,
And beauty goes with the lapse of years
The brow's white rose and the hair's dark glory
God be thanked for the severing shears!

Over the past, Heart, waste no tears!
Over the past and all its madness,
Its wine and wormwood, hopes and fears,
That never were worth a moment's sadness.

Here she lies who was part o' its gladness,
Wife and mistress, and shared its woe,
The good of life as well as its badness,
Look on her face and see if you know.

Is this the face? yea, ask it slow!
The hair, the form, that we used to cherish?
Where is th...

On the Busts of Nero in the Uffizj.

I.

A child of brighter than the morning's birth
And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled
Save only of little children undefiled,
Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth,
Live rose of love, mute melody of mirth,
Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild,
Adorable as is nothing save a child,
Hails with wide eyes and lips his life on earth,
His lovely life with all its heaven to be.
And whoso reads the name inscribed or hears
Feels his own heart a frozen well of tears,
Child, for deep dread and fearful pity of thee
Whom God would not let rather die than see
The incumbent horror of impending years.

II.

Man, that wast godlike being a child, and now,
No less than kinglike, ar...