Identity

Against the sunset's glowing wall
The city towers rise black and tall,
Where Zorah, on its rocky height,
Stands like an armed man in the light.

Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain
Falls like a cloud the night amain,
And up the hillsides climbing slow
The barley reapers homeward go.

Look, dearest! how our fair child's head
The sunset light hath hallowed,
Where at this olive's foot he lies,
Uplooking to the tranquil skies.

Oh, while beneath the fervent heat
Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat,
I've watched, with mingled joy and dread,
Our child upon his grassy bed.

Joy, which the mother feels alone
Whose morning hope like mine had flown,
When to her bosom, over-blessed,
A dearer life than hers is pressed.

Dread,...

    O woman full of wiliness!
        Although for love of me you pine,
    Withhold your hand adventurous,
        It holdeth nothing holding mine.

    Look on my head, how it is grey!
        My body's weakness doth appear;
    My blood is chill and thin; my day
        Is done, and there is nothing here.

    Do not call me a foolish man,
        Nor lean your lovely cheek to mine
    O slender witch, our bodies can
        Not mingle now, nor any time.

    So take your mouth from mine, your hand
        From mine, ah, take your lips away!
    Lest heat to will should ripen, and
        All this be grave that had been gay.

    It is this curl, a silken nest,
        And this grey eye bright as the dew,
    And this round, lo...

Sì breve è 'l tempo e 'l pensier sì veloce.

THE REMEMBRANCE OF HER CHASES SADNESS FROM HIS HEART.


    So brief the time, so fugitive the thought
Which Laura yields to me, though dead, again,
Small medicine give they to my giant pain;
Still, as I look on her, afflicts me nought.
Love, on the rack who holds me as he brought,
Fears when he sees her thus my soul retain,
Where still the seraph face and sweet voice reign,
Which first his tyranny and triumph wrought.
As rules a mistress in her home of right,
From my dark heavy heart her placid brow
Dispels each anxious thought and omen drear.
My soul, which bears but ill such dazzling light,
Says with a sigh: "O blessed day! when thou
Didst ope with those dear eyes thy passage here!"

MA...

I am tired of cursing the Bishop,
(Said Crazy Jane)
Nine books or nine hats
Would not make him a man.
I have found something worse
To meditate on.
A King had some beautiful cousins.
But where are they gone?
Battered to death in a cellar,
And he stuck to his throne.
Last night I lay on the mountain.
(Said Crazy Jane)
There in a two-horsed carriage
That on two wheels ran
Great-bladdered Emer sat.
Her violent man
Cuchulain sat at her side;
Thereupon'
Propped upon my two knees,
I kissed a stone
I lay stretched out in the dirt
And I cried tears down.

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

Life, like a romping schoolboy, full of glee,
Doth bear us on his shoulder for a time.
There is no path too steep for him to climb.
With strong, lithe limbs, as agile and as free,
As some young roe, he speeds by vale and sea,
    By flowery mead, by mountain peak sublime,
    And all the world seems motion set to rhyme,
Till, tired out, he cries, "Now carry me!"
    In vain we murmur; "Come," Life says, "Fair play!"
And seizes on us.    God! he goads us so!
    He does not let us sit down all the day.
At each new step we feel the burden grow,
Till our bent backs seem breaking as we go,
    Watching for Death to meet us on the way.

‘Would it were anything but merely voice!’
The No King cried who after that was King,
Because he had not heard of anything
That balanced with a word is more than noise;
Yet Old Romance being kind, let him prevail
Somewhere or somehow that I have forgot,
Though he’d but cannon, Whereas we that had thought
To have lit upon as clean and sweet a tale
Have been defeated by that pledge you gave
In momentary anger long ago;
And I that have not your faith, how shall I know
That in the blinding light beyond the grave
We’ll find so good a thing as that we have lost?
The hourly kindness, the day’s common speech,
The habitual content of each with each
When neither soul nor body has been crossed.

Poet:

"Why this fever why this sighing?
Why this restless longing dying
For a something dreamy something,
Undefined, and yet defying
All the pride and power of manhood?

"O these years of sin and sorrow!
Smiling while the iron harrow
Of a keen and biting longing
Tears and quivers in the marrow
Of my being every moment
Of my very inmost being.

"What to me the mad ambition
For men's praise and proud position
Struggling, fighting to the summit
Of its vain and earthly mission,
To lie down on bed of ashes
Bed of barren, bitter ashes?

"Cure this fever? I have tried it;
Smothered, drenched it and defied it
With a will of brass and iron;
Every smile and look denied it;
Yet it heeded not denying,
And it m...

Each day upon the yellow Nile, 'tis said.
Joseph, the youthful ruler, cast forth wheat,
That haply, floating to his father's feet,--
The sad old father, who believed him dead,--
It might be sign in Egypt there was bread;
And thus the patriarch, past the desert sands
And scant oasis fringed with thirsty green,
Be lured toward the love that yearned unseen.
So, flung and scattered--ah! by what dear hands?--
On the swift-rushing and invisible tide,
Small tokens drift adown from far, fair lands,
And say to us, who in the desert bide,
"Are you athirst? Are there no sheaves to bind?
Beloved, here is fulness; follow on and find."

Slipping away - slipping away!
Out of our brief year slips the May;
And Winter lingers, and Summer flies;
And Sorrow abideth, and Pleasure dies;
And the days are short, and the nights are long;
And little is right, and much is wrong.

Slipping away is the Summer time;
It has lost its rhythm and lilting rhyme -
For the grace goes out of the day so soon,
And the tired head aches in the glare of noon,
And the way seems long to the hills that lie
Under the calm of the western sky.

Slipping away are the friends whose worth
Lent a glow to the sad old earth:
One by one they slip from our sight;
One by one their graves gleam white;
Or we count them lost by the crueler death
Of a trust betrayed, or a murdered faith.

Slipping away are the hope...

I.

Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when
The need of battling Freedom called for men
To plant the banner on the outer wall;
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress
Melted to more than woman's tenderness,
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post
Fronting the violence of a maddened host,
Like some-gray rock from which the waves are tossed!
Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not
The faith of one whose walk and word were right;
Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field wrought,
And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white:
Prompt to redress another's wrong, his own
Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.

II.

Such was our friend. Formed on...

Like winds that with the setting of the sun
    Draw to a quiet murmuring and cease,
So is her little struggle fought and done;
    And the brief fever and the pain
In a last sigh fade out and so release
The lately-breathing dust they may not hurt again.

Now all that Wilma was is made as naught:
    Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure;
The pretty air, the childish grace untaught,
    The innocent wiles,
    And all the sunny smiles,
The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure;
    The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high,
    The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye;
    Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined,
    And the gay impulse of her baby mind
    That none could tame,
That sent her spinning round,
    A spirit ...

The fire that filled my heart of old
Gave luster while it burned;
Now only ashes gray and cold
Are in its silence urned.
Ah! better was the furious flame,
The splendor with the smart;
I never cared for the singer's fame
But, oh! for the singer's heart
Once more--
The burning fulgent heart!

No love, no hate, no hope, no fear,
No anguish and no mirth;
Thus life extends from year to year,
A flat of sullen dearth.
Ah! life's blood creepeth cold and tame,
Life's thought plays no new part;
I never cared for the singer's fame,
But, oh! for the singer's heart
Once more--
The bleeding passionate heart!

        On he goes, the little one,
        Bud of the universe,
        Pediment of life.

        Setting off somewhere, apparently.
        Whither away, brisk egg?

        His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,
        And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.

        A mere obstacle,
        He veers round the slow great mound of her.

        Tortoises always foresee obstacles.

        It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:
        "This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg."

        He does not even trouble to answer:    "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"
        He wearily looks the other way,
        And she even more wearily looks anot...

Ah, yes, the chapter ends to-day;
We even lay the book away;
But oh, how sweet the moments sped
Before the final page was read!

We tried to read between the lines
The Author's deep-concealed designs;
But scant reward such search secures;
You saw my heart and I saw yours.

The Master,--He who penned the page
And bade us read it,--He is sage:
And what he orders, you and I
Can but obey, nor question why.

We read together and forgot
The world about us. Time was not.
Unheeded and unfelt, it fled.
We read and hardly knew we read.

Until beneath a sadder sun,
We came to know the book was done.
Then, as our minds were but new lit,
It dawned upon us what was writ;

And we were startled. In our eyes,
Looked forth the l...

Genius of England! wherefore to the earth
Is thy plumed helm, thy peerless sceptre cast?
Thy courts of late with minstrelsy and mirth
Rang jubilant, and dazzling pageants past;
Kings, heroes, martial triumphs, nuptial rites--

Now, like a cypress, shiver'd by the blast,
Or mountain-cedar, which the lightning smites,
In dust and darkness sinks thy head declined,
Thy tresses streaming wild on ocean's reckless wind.

Art thou not glorious?--In that night of storms,
When He, in Power's supremacy elate,
Gaul's fierce Usurper! fulminating fate,
The Goth's barbaric tyranny restored,
And science, art, and all life's fairer forms,
Sunk to the dark dominion of the sword:
Didst thou not, champion of insulted man!
Confront this stern Destroyer in his pride?

A was an elegant Ape
Who tied up his ears with red tape,
    And wore a long veil
    Half revealing his tail
Which was trimmed with jet bugles and crape.

B was a boastful old Bear
Who used to say, - "Hoomh! I declare
    I can eat - if you'll get me
    The children, and let me -
Ten babies, teeth, toenails and hair!"

C was a Codfish who sighed
When snatched from the home of his pride,
    But could he, embrined,
    Guess this fragrance behind,
How glad he would be that he died!

D was a dandified Dog
Who said, - "Though it's raining like fog
    I wear no umbrellah,
    Me boy, for a fellah
Might just as well travel incog!"

E was an elderly Eel
Who would say, - "Well, I really feel -
    As my grandchildr...

How I love to watch, dear indolence,
like a bright shimmer,
of fabric, the skin of your elegant
body glimmer!

Over the bitter-tasting perfume,
the depths of your hair,
odorous, restless spume,
blue, and brown, waves, there,

like a vessel that stirs, awake
when dawn winds rise,
my dreaming soul sets sail
for those distant skies.

Your eyes where nothing’s revealed
either acrid or sweet,
are two cold jewels where steel
and gold both meet.

Seeing your rhythmic advance,
your fine abandon,
one might speak of a snake that danced
at the end of the branch it’s on.

Under its burden of languidness,
your head’s child-like slant,
rocks with weak listlessness
like a young elephant’s,

and your body h...