Identity

Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
(Martial, Epigrams 12.84)

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing—This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
In tasks so bold, can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?

Sol thro' white curtains shot a tim'rous ray,
And op'd those eyes that must eclipse the day;
Now lap-dogs give themselv...

"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!

"Of such strange tidings what think ye,
O birds in brown that peck and preen?
Men know but little more than we!

"When I was borne from yonder tree
In bonds to them, I hoped to glean
How happy days are made to be,

"And want and wailing turned to glee;
Alas, despite their mighty mien
Men know but little more than we!

"They cannot change the Frost's decree,
They cannot keep the skies serene;
How happy days are made to be

"Eludes great Man's sagacity
No less than ours, O tribes in treen!
Men know but little more than we
How happy days are made to be."

For my part, I never care
For those lips that tongue-tied are:
Tell-tales I would have them be
Of my mistress and of me.
Let them prattle how that I
Sometimes freeze and sometimes fry:
Let them tell how she doth move
Fore or backward in her love:
Let them speak by gentle tones,
One and th' other's passions:
How we watch, and seldom sleep;
How by willows we do weep;
How by stealth we meet, and then
Kiss, and sigh, so part again.
This the lips we will permit
For to tell, not publish it.

        Green moss will creep
        Along the shady graves where we shall sleep.

        Each year will bring
        Another brood of birds to nest and sing.

        At dawn will go
        New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.

        Night will call home
        The hunter from the hills we loved to roam.

        She will not ask,
        The milkmaid, singing softly at her task,

        Nor will she care
        To know if I were brave or you were fair.

        No one will think
        What chalice life had offered us to drink,

        When from our clay
        The sun comes back to kiss the snow away.

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their...

How weary is it none can tell,
    How dismally the days go by!
I hear the tinkling of the bell,
    I see the cross against the sky.

The year wears round to Autumn-tide,
    Yet comes no reaper to the corn;
The golden land is like a bride
    When first she knows herself forlorn;

She sits and weeps with all her hair
    Laid downward over tender hands;
For stainèd silk she hath no care,
    No care for broken ivory wands;

The silver cups beside her stand;
    The golden stars on the blue roof
Yet glitter, though against her hand
    His cold sword presses for a proof

He is not dead, but gone away.
    How many hours did she wait
For me, I wonder? Till the day
    Had faded wholly, and the gate

Clanged to behin...

A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
    With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
    Break in crisp whispers at my feet.

My book, neglected of an idle mind,
    Hides for a moment from the eyes of men;
Or lightly opened by a critic wind,
    Affrightedly reviews itself again.

Off through the haze that dances in the shine
    The warm sun showers in the open glade,
The forest lies, a silhouette design
    Dimmed through and through with shade.

A dreamy day; and tranquilly I lie
    At anchor from all storms of mental strain;
With absent vision, gazing at the sky,
    "Like one that hears it rain."

The Katydid, so boisterous last night,
    Clinging, inverted, in uneasy poise,
Beneath...

An Indian girl was sitting where
Her lover, slain in battle, slept;
Her maiden veil, her own black hair,
Came down o'er eyes that wept;
And wildly, in her woodland tongue,
This sad and simple lay she sung:

"I've pulled away the shrubs that grew
Too close above thy sleeping head,
And broke the forest boughs that threw
Their shadows o'er thy bed,
That, shining from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest.

"It was a weary, weary road
That led thee to the pleasant coast,
Where thou, in his serene abode,
Hast met thy father's ghost:
Where everlasting autumn lies
On yellow woods and sunny skies.

"Twas I the broidered mocsen made,
That shod thee for that distant land;
'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid
Beside ...

And I have thought of youth which strains
Nearer its God to rise, -
What were ambition and its pains
Were life a cowardice!

The grander souls that rose above
Thought's noblest heights to tread,
Found their endeavor in their love,
And truth behind the dead.

A secret glory in the tomb,
A night that dawns in light,
An intense presence veiled with gloom,
And not an endless night....

Nepenthe of this struggling world,
Thou who dost stay mad Care
When her fury's scourge above is curled
And we see her writhing hair!

Oh, what is so pure as the glad summer rain,
That falls on the grass where the sunlight has lain?
And what is so fair as the flowers that lie
All bathed in the tears of the soft summer sky?

The blue of the heavens is dimmed by the rain
That wears away sorrow and washes out pain;
But we know that the flowers we cherish would die
Were it not for the tears of the cloud-laden sky.

The rose is the sweeter when kissed by the rain,
And hearts are the dearer where sorrow has lain;
The sky is the fairer that rain-clouds have swept,
And no eyes are so bright as the eyes that have wept.

Oh, they are so happy, these flowers that die,
They laugh in the sunshine, oh, why cannot I?
They droop in the shadow, they smile in the sun,
Yet they die in the winter when ...

THE INDIFFERENT.

COME to the dance with me, come with me, fair one!

Dances a feast-day like this may well crown.
If thou my sweetheart art not, thou canst be so,

But if thou wilt not, we still will dance on.
Come to the dance with me, come with me, fair one!

Dances a feast-day like this may well crown.

THE TENDER.

Loved one, without thee, what then would all feast be?

Sweet one, without thee, what then were the dance?
If thou my sweetheart wert not, I would dance not.

If thou art still so, all life is one feast.
Loved one, without thee, what then would all feasts be?

Sweet one, without thee, what then were the dance?

THE INDIFFERENT.

Let them but love, then, and leave us the dancing!

Langu...

When I woke, the lake-lights were quivering on the wall,
The sunshine swam in a shoal across and across,
And a hairy, big bee hung over the primulas
In the window, his body black fur, and the sound of him cross.

There was something I ought to remember: and yet
I did not remember. Why should I? The running lights
And the airy primulas, oblivious
Of the impending bee - they were fair enough sights.

When haughty expectations prostrate lie,
And grandeur crouches like a guilty thing,
Oft shall the lowly weak, till nature bring
Mature release, in fair society
Survive, and Fortune's utmost anger try;
Like these frail snowdrops that together cling,
And nod their helmets, smitten by the wing
Of many a furious whirl-blast sweeping by.
Observe the faithful flowers! if small to great
May lead the thoughts, thus struggling used to stand
The Emathian phalanx, nobly obstinate;
And so the bright immortal Theban band,
Whom onset, fiercely urged at Jove's command,
Might overwhelm, but could not separate!

I will think as thinks the rabbit:--

    Oh, delight
    In the night
    When the moon
    Sets the tune
    To the woods!
    And the broods
    All run out,
    Frisk about,
    Go and come,
    Beat the drum--
    Here in groups,
    There in troops!
    Now there's one!
    Now it's gone!
    There are none!
And now they are dancing like chaff!
I look, and I laugh,
But sit by my door, and keep to my habit--
A wise, respectable, clean-furred old rabbit!

    Now I'm going,
            Business calls me out--
    Going, going,
    Very knowing,
            Slow, long-heeled, and stout,
            Loping, lumbering,
    Nipping, numbering,
    Head on this side and on that,
    Along the...

From gray, bleak hills 'neath steely skies
Thro' beards of ice the forests roar;
Along the river's humming shore
The skimming skater bird-like flies.

On windy meads where wave white breaks,
Where fettered briers' glist'ning hands
Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands,
Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes.

With frowsy snow blanched is the world;
Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines,
Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines
Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled

Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold:
Ghost-vested willows rim the stream,
Low hang lank limbs where in a dream
The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold

On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash,
Like champions mailed for clanking war,
Glares down large Phosph...

Before a midnight breaks in storm,
Or herded sea in wrath,
Ye know what wavering gusts inform
The greater tempest's path;
Till the loosed wind
Drive all from mind,
Except Distress, which, so will prophets cry,
O'ercame them, houseless, from the unhinting sky.

Ere rivers league against the land
In piratry of flood,
Ye know what waters steal and stand
Where seldom water stood.
Yet who will note,
Till fields afloat,
And washen carcass and the returning well,
Trumpet what these poor heralds strove to tell?

Ye know who use the Crystal Ball
(To peer by stealth on Doom),
The Shade that, shaping first of all,
Prepares an empty room.
Then doth It pass
Like breath from glass,
But, on the extorted Vision bowed intent,
No man...

When the mornings dankly fall
    With a dim forethought of rain,
And the robins richly call
To their mates mercurial,
    And the tree-boughs creak and strain
    In the wind;
When the river's rough with foam,
    And the new-made clearings smoke,
And the clouds that go and come
Shine and darken frolicsome,
    And the frogs at evening croak
    Undefined
Mysteries of monotone,
    And by melting beds of snow
Wind-flowers blossom all alone;
    Then I know
That the bitter winter's dead.
    Over his head
The damp sod breaks so mellow, -
Its mosses tipped with points of yellow, -
    I cannot but be glad;
Yet this sweet mood will borrow
Something of a sweeter sorrow,
    To touch and turn me sad.

I list your prattle, baby boy,
    And hear your pattering feet
With feelings more of pain than joy
    And thoughts of bitter-sweet.

While touching your soft hands in play
    Such passionate longings rise
For my wee boy who strayed away
    So soon to Paradise.

You win me with your infant art;
    But when our play is o'er,
The empty cradle in my heart
    Seems lonelier than before.

Sweet baby boy, you do not guess
    How oft mine eyes are dim,
Or that my lingering caress
    Is sometimes meant for HIM.