Identity

Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens;
Their old rock fences, that our day inherits;
Their doors, round which the great trees stand like wardens;
Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits;
Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens.

I see them gray among their ancient acres,
Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,
Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers,
Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,
Serene among their memory-hallowed acres.

Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies
Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers
Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies,
And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers,
And all the hours are toilless as the lilies.

I love their orchards where the gay woodp...

My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,
a captive as Racine, the man of craft,
drawn through his maze of iron composition
by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre.
When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body
caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,
the glassy bowing and scraping of my will....
I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself
to ask compassion... this book, half fiction,
an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting
my eyes have seen what my hand did.

I will not build on yonder mount;
And, should you call me to account,
Consulting with myself, I find
It was no levity of mind.
Whate'er I promised or intended,
No fault of mine, the scheme is ended;
Nor can you tax me as unsteady,
I have a hundred causes ready;
All risen since that flattering time,
When Drapier's-Hill appear'd in rhyme.
    I am, as now too late I find,
The greatest cully of mankind;
The lowest boy in Martin's school
May turn and wind me like a fool.
How could I form so wild a vision,
To seek, in deserts, Fields Elysian?
To live in fear, suspicion, variance,
With thieves, fanatics, and barbarians?
    But here my lady will object;
Your deanship ought to recollect,
That, near the knight of Gosford[1] placed,
Whom you al...

'T is little I could care for pearls
Who own the ample sea;
Or brooches, when the Emperor
With rubies pelteth me;

Or gold, who am the Prince of Mines;
Or diamonds, when I see
A diadem to fit a dome
Continual crowning me.

(FINNISH.)


“O where have ye been the morn sae late,
My merry son, come tell me hither?
O where have ye been the morn sae late?
And I wot I hae but anither.”
“By the water-gate, by the water-gate,
O dear mither.”

“And whatten kin’ o’ wark had ye there to make,
My merry son, come tell me hither?
And whatten kin’ o’ wark had ye there to make?
And I wot I hae but anither.”
“I watered my steeds with water frae the lake,
O dear mither.”

“Why is your coat sae fouled the day,
My merry son, come tell me hither?
Why is your coat sae fouled the day?
And I wot I hae but anither.”
“The steeds were stamping sair by the weary banks of clay,
O dear mither.”

“And where gat ye thae sleeves of red,
My merry son, come tell ...

"Say who is he around our mountain winds,
Or ever death has prun'd his wing for flight,
That opes his eyes and covers them at will?"

"I know not who he is, but know thus much
He comes not singly. Do thou ask of him,
For thou art nearer to him, and take heed
Accost him gently, so that he may speak."

Thus on the right two Spirits bending each
Toward the other, talk'd of me, then both
Addressing me, their faces backward lean'd,
And thus the one began: "O soul, who yet
Pent in the body, tendest towards the sky!
For charity, we pray thee' comfort us,
Recounting whence thou com'st, and who thou art:
For thou dost make us at the favour shown thee
Marvel, as at a thing that ne'er hath been."

"There stretches through the midst of Tuscany,"
I stra...

    If I were a monk, and thou wert a nun,
            Pacing it wearily, wearily,
    Twixt chapel and cell till day were done--
            Wearily, wearily--
    How would it fare with these hearts of ours
    That need the sunshine, and smiles, and flowers?

    To prayer, to prayer, at the matins' call,
            Morning foul or fair!--
    Such prayer as from weary lips might fall--
            Words, but hardly prayer--
    The chapel's roof, like the law in stone,
    Caging the lark that up had flown!

    Thou, in the glory of cloudless noon,
            The God-revealing,
    Turning thy face from the boundless boon--
            Painfully kneeling;
    Or, in brown-shadowy solitude,
    Bending thy head o'er the legend rude!
<...

Thank Fate for foes! I hold mine dear
    As valued friends. He cannot know
The zest of life who runneth here
    His earthly race without a foe.

I saw a prize. "Run," cried my friend;
    "'Tis thine to claim without a doubt."
But ere I half-way reached the end,
    I felt my strength was giving out.

My foe looked on the while I ran;
    A scornful triumph lit his eyes.
With that perverseness born in man,
    I nerved myself, and won the prize.

All blinded by the crimson glow
    Of sin's disguise, I tempted Fate.
"I knew thy weakness!" sneered my foe,
    I saved myself, and balked his hate.

For half my blessings, half my gain,
    I needs must thank my trusty foe;
Despite his envy and disdain,
    He serves me well whe...

When the dumb Hour, clothed in black,
Brings the Dreams about my bed,
Call me not so often back,
Silent Voices of the dead,
Toward the lowland ways behind me,
And the sunlight that is gone!
Call me rather, silent voices,
Forward to the starry track
Glimmering up the heights beyond me
On, and always on!

Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.

Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the trem...

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

Oh day of fire and sun,
Pure as a naked flame,
Blue sea, blue sky and dun
Sands where he spoke my name;

Laughter and hearts so high
That the spirit flew off free,
Lifting into the sky
Diving into the sea;

Oh day of fire and sun
Like a crystal burning,
Slow days go one by one,
But you have no returning.

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

The Land we from our fathers had in trust,
And to our children will transmit, or die:
This is our maxim, this our piety;
And God and Nature say that it is just.
That which we 'would' perform in arms we must!
We read the dictate in the infant's eye;
In the wife's smile; and in the placid sky;
And, at our feet, amid the silent dust
Of them that were before us. Sing aloud
Old songs, the precious music of the heart!                        
Give, herds and flocks, your voices to the wind!
While we go forth, a self-devoted crowd,
With weapons grasped in fearless hands, to assert
Our virtue, and to vindicate mankind.

    O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale!
        Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind,
        Worshipped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind
    Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail,

    Dost see the poet, weary-eyed and pale,
        Or lovers on their happy beds reclined,
        Showing white teeth in sleep, or vipers twined,
    'Neath the dry sward; or in a golden veil

    Stealest thou with faint footfall o'er the grass
        As of old, to kiss from twilight unto dawn
    The faded charms of thine Endymion?...

    "O child of this sick century, I see
    Thy grey-haired mother leering in her glass
    And plastering the breast that suckled thee!"

Above the clouds I sail, above the clouds,
    And wish my mind
Above its clouds could climb as well,
    And leave behind
The world and all its crowds,
    And ever dwell
In such a calm and limpid solitude
With ne'er a breath unkind or harsh or rude
    To break the spell -
With ne'er a thought to drive away
The golden splendour of the day.
Alone and lost beneath the tranquil blue,
    My God! With you!

Written in an Aeroplane.

To me at my fifth-floor window
The chimney-pots in rows
Are sets of pipes pandean
For every wind that blows;

And the smoke that whirls and eddies
In a thousand times and keys
Is really a visible music
Set to my reveries.

O monstrous pipes, melodious
With fitful tune and dream,
The clouds are your only audience,
Her thought is your only theme!

1875

Not so that Pair whose youthful spirits dance
With prompt emotion, urging them to pass;
A sweet confusion checks the Shepherd-lass;
Blushing she eyes the dizzy flood askance;
To stop ashamed, too timid to advance;
She ventures once again, another pause!
His outstretched hand He tauntingly withdraws
She sues for help with piteous utterance!
Chidden she chides again; the thrilling touch
Both feel, when he renews the wished-for aid:
Ah! if their fluttering hearts should stir too much,
Should beat too strongly, both may be betrayed.
The frolic Loves, who, from yon high rock, see
The struggle, clap their wings for victory!