Identity

    Victor the King! alive to-day, not dead!
    Behold, I bring thee with a subject's hand
    A poor pale wreath, the best at my command,
    But all unfit to deck so grand a head.
    It is the outcome of a neighbour land
    Denounced of thee, and spurn'd for many years.
    It is the token of a nation's tears
    Which oft has joy'd in thee, and shall again.
    Love for thy hate, applause for thy disdain, -
    These are the flowers we spread upon thy hearse.
    We give thee back, to-day, thy poet-curse;
    We call thee friend; we ratify thy reign.
    Kings change their sceptres for a funeral stone,
    But thou hast turn'd thy tomb into a throne!

My heart sings like a bird to-night
That flies to its nest in the soft twilight,
And sings in its brooding bliss;
Ah! I so low, and he so high,
What could he find to love?    I cry,
Did ever love stoop so low as this?

As a miser jealously counts his gold,
I sit and dream of my wealth untold,
From the curious world apart;
Too sacred my joy for another eye,
I treasure it tenderly, silently,
And hide it away in my heart.

Dearer to me than the costliest crown
That ever on queenly forehead shone
Is the kiss he left on my brow;
Would I change his smile for a royal gem?
His love for a monarch's diadem?
Change it?    Ah, no, ah, no!

My heart sings like a bird to-night
That flies away to its nest of light
To brood o'er its living b...

To my fellow sinners all, who, in hope and doubt,
Through the Commonwealth to-night watch the Old Year out,
New Year’s Resolutions are jerry-built I know,
But I want to say to you, “Give yourselves a show”.

You who drink for drinking’s sake, love for lust alone,
Thinking heaven is a myth and the world your own,
Dancing gaily down to hell in the devil’s dance,
This I have to say to you: “Give your souls a chance”.

You who drink because of shame that you think will last,
Or because of wrong done you, trouble in the past,
“Nothing left to live for now,” you will say, I know;
But you have your own self yet, give that self a show!

You who want all things on earth, money, love, and fame
Having the advantage of worldly place or name,
You who have more than yo...

O Misery of mine, no other
    In faithfulness can match with thee,
Thou more than friend, and more than brother,
    The only thing that cares for me!

Where'er I turn, are unkind faces,
    And hate and treachery and guile,
Thou, Mis'ry, in all times and places,
    Dost greet me with thy pallid smile.

At birth I found thee waiting for me,
    I knew thee in my cradle first,
The same small eyes and dim watched o'er me,
    The same dry, bony fingers nursed.

And day by day when morning lightened,
    To school thou led'st me--home did'st bring,
And thine were all the blooms that brightened
    The chilly landscape of my spring.

And, thou my match and marriage monger,
    The marriage deed by thee was read;
The hands foretellin...

Last night I saw Helena.    She whose praise
    Of late all men have sounded.    She for whom
    Young Angus rashly sought a silent tomb
Rather than live without her all his days.

Wise men go mad who look upon her long,
    She is so ripe with dangers.    Yet meanwhile
    I find no fascination in her smile,
Although I make her theme of this poor song.

"Her golden tresses?" yes, they may be fair,
    And yet to me each shining silken tress
    Seems robbed of beauty and all lustreless -
Too many hands have stroked Helena's hair.

(I know a little maiden so demure
    She will not let her one true lover's hands
    In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands
So dainty-minded is she, and so pure.)

"Her great dark eyes that flash like ...

Upon the white cheek of the Cherub Year
    I saw a tear.
Alas!    I murmured, that the Year should borrow
    So soon a sorrow.
Just then the sunlight fell with sudden flame:
    The tear became
A wondrous diamond sparkling in the light -
    A beauteous sight.

Upon my soul there fell such woeful loss,
    I said, "The Cross
Is grievous for a life as young as mine."
    Just then, like wine,
God's sunlight shone from His high Heavens down;
    And lo! a crown
Gleamed in the place of what I thought a burden -
    My sorrow's guerdon.

        Be honest, kindly, simple, true;
        Seek good in all, scorn but pretence;
        Whatever sorrow come to you,
        Believe in Life's Beneficence!

    The World's all right; serene I sit,
    And cease to puzzle over it.
    There's much that's mighty strange, no doubt;
    But Nature knows what she's about;
    And in a million years or so
    We'll know more than to-day we know.
    Old Evolution's under way -
    What ho! the World's all right, I say.

    Could things be other than they are?
    All's in its place, from mote to star.
    The thistledown that flits and flies
    Could drift no hair-breadth otherwise.
    What is, must be; with rhythmic laws
    All Nature chimes, Effect and Cause.
    The sand-gra...

What sight so lured him thro’ the fields he knew
As where earth’s green stole into heaven’s own hue,

Far–far–away?

What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells

Far–far–away.

What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy,
Thro’ those three words would haunt him when a boy,

Far–far–away?

A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death

Far–far–away?

Far, far, how far? from o’er the gates of Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,

Far–far–away?

What charm in words, a charm no words could give?
O dying words, can Music make you live

Far–far–away?

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

O passi sparsi, o pensier vaghi e pronti.

EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF HIS PASSION IS A TORMENT TO HIM.


    O scatter'd steps! O vague and busy thoughts!
O firm-set memory! O fierce desire!
O passion powerful! O failing heart!
O eyes of mine, not eyes, but fountains now!
O leaf, which honourest illustrious brows,
Sole sign of double valour, and best crown!
O painful life, O error oft and sweet!
That make me search the lone plains and hard hills.
O beauteous face! where Love together placed
The spurs and curb, to strive with which is vain,
They prick and turn me so at his sole will.
O gentle amorous souls, if such there be!
And you, O naked spirits of mere dust,
Tarry and see how great my suffering is!

MACGREGOR.

Here among the beeches
Winds and wild perfume,
That the twilight pleaches
Into gleam and gloom,
Build for her a room.

Her whose Beauty cometh,
Misty as the morn,
When the wild-bee hummeth,
At its honey-horn,
In the wayside thorn.

As the wood grows dimmer,
With the drowsy night,
Like a moonbeam glimmer
Here she walks in white,
With a firefly light.

Moths around her flitting,
Like a moth she goes,
Here a moment sitting
By this wilding rose,
With my heart's repose.

Every bud and flower
From her look has caught
Something of that hour
While she stood in thought
Gazing into naught.

Every bough that dances
Has assumed the grace
Of her form; and fancies,
Flashed from eye and face...

Had I the gold that some so vainly spend,
For my lost loves a temple would I raise,
A shrine for each dear name: there should ascend
Incense for ever, and hymns of golden praise;
And I would live the remnant of my days,
Where hallowed windows cast their painted gleams,
At prayer before each consecrated face,
Kneeling within that cloister of old dreams.

And each fair altar, like a priest, I'd tend,
Trimming the tapers to a constant blaze,
And to each lovely and beloved friend
Garlands I'd bring, and virginal soft sprays
From April's bodice, and moon-breasted May's,
And there should be a sound for ever of streams
And birds 'mid happy leaves in that still place, -
Kneeling within that cloister of old dreams.

O'er missals of hushed memories would I ben...

The bard who is singing of Wollombi Jim
Is hardly just now in the requisite trim
To sit on his Pegasus fairly;
Besides, he is bluntly informed by the Muse
That Jim is a subject no singer should choose;
For Jim is poetical rarely.

But being full up of the myths that are Greek
Of the classic, and noble, and nude, and antique,
Which means not a rag but the pelt on;
This poet intends to give Daphne the slip,
For the sake of a hero in moleskin and kip,
With a jumper and snake-buckle belt on.

No party is Jim of the Pericles type
He is modern right up from the toe to the pipe;
And being no reader or roamer,
He hasn’t Euripides much in the head;
And let it be carefully, tenderly said,
He never has analysed Homer.

He can roar out a song of t...

It's hard to know if you're alive or dead
When steel and fire go roaring through your head.

One moment you'll be crouching at your gun
Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:
The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast -
No time to think - leave all - and off you go ...
To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime -
Breathe no good-bye, but ho, for the Red West!
        It's a queer time.

You're charging madly at them yelling 'Fag!'
When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
And find ... you're digging tunnels through the hay
In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day.
Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
You're back in the old sailor s...

Rousseau - Voltaire - our Gibbon - and De Staël -
Leman![75] these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee
How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,
In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,[76]
The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal,
Which of the Heirs of Immortality
Is proud, and makes the breath of Glory real!

Diodati, July, 1816.

            [First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]

At midnight hour I went, not willingly,

A little, little boy, yon churchyard past,
To Father Vicar's house; the stars on high

On all around their beauteous radiance cast,

At midnight hour.

And when, in journeying o'er the path of life,

My love I follow'd, as she onward moved,
With stars and northern lights o'er head in strife,

Going and coming, perfect bliss I proved

At midnight hour.

Until at length the full moon, lustre-fraught,

Burst thro' the gloom wherein she was enshrined;
And then the willing, active, rapid thought

Around the past, as round the future twined,

At midnight hour.

You remember the hall on the corner?
    To-night as I walked down street
I heard the sound of music,
    And the rhythmic beat and beat,
In time to the pulsing measure
    Of lightly tripping feet.

And I turned and entered the doorway -
    It was years since I had been there -
Years, and life seemed altered:
    Pleasure had changed to care.
But again I was hearing the music
    And watching the dancers fair.

And then, as I stood and listened,
    The music lost its glee;
And instead of the merry waltzers
    There were ghosts of the Used-to-be -
Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers
    Who once had danced with me.

Oh, 'twas a ghastly picture!
    Oh, 'twas a gruesome crowd!
Each bearing a skull on his shoulder,
    Each ...

When she sleeps, her soul, I know,
Goes a wanderer on the air,
Wings where I may never go,
Leaves her lying, still and fair,
Waiting, empty, laid aside,
Like a dress upon a chair. . . .
This I know, and yet I know
Doubts that will not be denied.

For if the soul be not in place,
What has laid trouble in her face?
And, sits there nothing ware and wise
Behind the curtains of her eyes,
What is it, in the self's eclipse,
Shadows, soft and passingly,
About the corners of her lips,
The smile that is essential she?

And if the spirit be not there,
Why is fragrance in the hair?