Identity

    Beauty, beloved of all gentle hearts
        And pure, and cherished of the gifted tribe
    Whose skill to canvas and even stone imparts
        Such things as words are powerless to describe.
    And bards, who woo thee in the silent shade
        And dote upon thee under moonlit skies,
    And lovers, who behold thee new-array'd,
        As our first parents did in Paradise!

    These all have been thy priests.    In times remote,
        In Athens and the cool Thessalian dells,
    They sung thy liturgy with dulcet note,
        And quaff'd thy chalice from the sacred wells
    Of leafy Helicon.    Beneath the brows
        Of fam'd Olympus and among the isles
    Of the Aegean sea they paid their vows,
        And read thy lore in Nature's frowns and...

1.
Fairest of the Destinies,
Disarray thy dazzling eyes:
Keener far thy lightnings are
Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest,
And the smile thou wearest
Wraps thee as a star
Is wrapped in light.

2.
Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn
From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,
Or could the morning shafts of purest light
Again into the quivers of the Sun
Be gathered - could one thought from its wild flight
Return into the temple of the brain
Without a change, without a stain, -
Could aught that is, ever again
Be what it once has ceased to be,
Greece might again be free!

3.
A star has fallen upon the earth
Mid the benighted nations,
A quenchless atom of immortal light,
A living spark of Night,
A cresset shaken from th...

I Bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

I

When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,
Just at the time of opening apple-buds,
When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,
On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,
There is an unseen presence that eludes:
Perhaps a dryad, in whose tresses cling
The loamy odours of old solitudes,
Who, from her beechen doorway, calls, and leads
My soul to follow; now with dimpling words
Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds;
While here and there is it her limbs that swing?
Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?

II

Or, haply, 'tis a Naiad now who slips,
Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,
While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips
The moisture rains cool music on the grass.
Her have I heard and followed, ...

That tribe of prophets with the burning eyes
Is on the road, their babies on their backs,
Who satisfy their appetite attacks
With treasured breasts that always hang nearby.

On foot, with weapons shining, go the men
Beside the carts in which their people lie,
With sorrow-laden eyes searching the sky,
Yearning for vanished chimeras again.

The cricket, as he sees them pass along,
Deep in his lair redoubles his shrill song;
Cybele, their friend, augments her greenery,

Turns rocks to springs, brings flowers from the sand
Before these sojourners, empowered to see
Their future darkness, that familiar land.

With Verse, is Form the first, or Sense?
Hereon men waste their Eloquence.


"Sense (cry the one Side), Sense, of course.
How can you lend your Theme its Force?
How can you be direct and clear,
Concise, and (best of all) sincere,
If you must pen your Strain sublime
In Bonds of Measure and of Rhyme?
Who ever heard true Grief relate
Its heartfelt Woes in 'six' and 'eight'?
Or felt his manly Bosom swell
Beneath a French-made Villanelle?
How can your Mens divinior sing
Within the Sonnet's scanty Ring,
Where she must chant her Orphic Tale
In just so many Lines, or fail?..."

"Form is the first (the Others bawl);
If not, why write in Verse at all?
Why not your throbbing Thoughts expose
(If verse be such Restraint) in Prose?
For sur...

Il mio avversario, in cui veder solete.

LAURA AT HER LOOKING-GLASS.


    My foe, in whom you see your own bright eyes,
Adored by Love and Heaven with honour due,
With beauties not its own enamours you,
Sweeter and happier than in mortal guise.
Me, by its counsel, lady, from your breast,
My chosen cherish'd home, your scorn expell'd
In wretched banishment, perchance not held
Worthy to dwell where you alone should rest.
But were I fasten'd there with strongest keys,
That mirror should not make you, at my cost,
Severe and proud yourself alone to please.
Remember how Narcissus erst was lost!
His course and thine to one conclusion lead,
Of flower so fair though worthless here the mead.

MACGREGOR.


    My mirror'd foe re...

I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land."
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call";
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

A child saw in the morning skies
The dissipated-looking moon,
And opened wide her big blue eyes,
And cried: "Look, look, my lost balloon!"
And clapped her rosy hands with glee:
"Quick, mother! Bring it back to me."

A poet in a lilied pond
Espied the moon's reflected charms,
And ravished by that beauty blonde,
Leapt out to clasp her in his arms.
And as he'd never learnt to swim,
Poor fool! that was the end of him.

A rustic glimpsed amid the trees
The bluff moon caught as in a snare.
"They say it do be made of cheese,"
Said Giles, "and that a chap bides there. . . .
That Blue Boar ale be strong, I vow -
The lad's a-winkin' at me now."

Two lovers watched the new moon hold
The old moon in her bright embrace.
Said she: "There's...

Whose is the voice that will not let me rest?
        I hear it speak.
Where is the shore will gratify my quest,
        Show what I seek?
Not yours, weak Muse, to mimic that far voice,
        With halting tongue;
No peace, sweet land, to bid my heart rejoice
        Your groves among.

Whose is the loveliness I know is by,
        Yet cannot place?
Is it perfection of the sea or sky,
        Or human face?
Not yours, my pencil, to delineate
        The splendid smile!
Blind in the sun, we struggle on with Fate
        That glows the while.

Whose are the feet that pass me, echoing
        On unknown ways?
Whose are the lips that only part to sing
        Through all my days?
Not yours, fond youth, to fill mine eager eyes
  ...

The moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat North
Suddenly hid Love's moon away.
Believing every word I said,
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.
We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she'd not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that Love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
Although crowds g...

We chanced in passing by that afternoon
To catch it in a sort of special picture
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees,
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass,
The little cottage we were speaking of,
A front with just a door between two windows,
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black.
We paused, the minister and I, to look.
He made as if to hold it at arm's length
Or put the leaves aside that framed it in.
"Pretty," he said. "Come in. No one will care."
The path was a vague parting in the grass
That led us to a weathered window-sill.
We pressed our faces to the pane. "You see," he said,
"Everything's as she left it when she died.
Her sons won't sell the house or the things in it.
They say they mean to come and summer here
Where they were boy...

As they draw to a close,
Of what underlies the precedent songs of my aims in them;
Of the seed I have sought to plant in them;
Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them;
(For them for them have I lived In them my work is done;)
Of many an aspiration fond of many a dream and plan,
Of you, O mystery great! to place on record faith in you, O death!
To compact you, ye parted, diverse lives!
To put rapport the mountains, and rocks, and streams,
And the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine,
With you, O soul of man.

What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There's better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.
I never bade you go
To Moscow or to Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.
Seek those images
That constitute the wild,
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child
Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing,
Recognise the five
That make the Muses sing.

Urn and sarcophagus erst were with life adorn'd by the heathen

Fauns are dancing around, while with the Bacchanal troop
Chequerd circles they trace; and the goat-footed, puffy-cheekd player

Wildly produceth hoarse tones out of the clamorous horn.
Cymbals and drums resound; we see and we hear, too, the marble.

Fluttering bird! oh how sweet tastes the ripe fruit to thy bill!
Noise there is none to disturb thee, still less to scare away Amor,

Who, in the midst of the throng, learns to delight in his torch.
Thus doth fullness overcome death; and the ashes there cover'd

Seem, in that silent domain, still to be gladdend with life.
Thus may the minstrel's sarcophagus be hereafter surrounded

With such a scroll, which himself richly with life has adorn'd.

Down in the vale the lazy sheep
    Are roaming at their will,
But I would be away to weep
    Upon the windy hill,

For Summer's song is in my heart,
    Her kiss is on my brow,
As here I kneel alone, apart,
    To consecrate our vow.

Ah, doubly poor the gift shall be
    That links my soul with hers,
For she has given her all to me
    While I can give but tears!

Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows;
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat give me serene-moving animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturb'd;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman, of whom I should never tire;
Give me a perfect child give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural, domestic life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev'd, recluse by myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude give me Nature give me agai...

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city’s feet;
On one side sleep the plains, with heaped-up hills.
Oaks and beeches whisper in rings about it.
Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat.

The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.

Rain wi...