Identity

        Sweet friends, receive my offering. You will find
        Against each worded page a white page set:--
        This is the mirror of each friendly mind
        Reflecting that. In this book we are met.
        Make it, dear hearts, of worth to you indeed:--
        Let your white page be ground, my print be seed,
        Growing to golden ears, that faith and hope shall feed.

        YOUR OLD SOUL

Before

Twas not while England's sword unsheathed
Put half a world to flight,
Nor while their new-built cities breathed
Secure behind her might;
Not while she poured from Pole to Line
Treasure and ships and men
These worshipers at Freedoms shrine
They did not quit her then!

Not till their foes were driven forth
By England o'er the main
Not till the Frenchman from the North
Had gone with shattered Spain;
Not till the clean-swept oceans showed
No hostile flag unrolled,
Did they remember that they owed
To Freedom, and were bold!


After


Thesnow lies thick on Valley Forge,
The ice on the Delaware,
But the poor dead soldiers of King George
They neither know nor care.

Not though the earliest primro...

Tutta la mia fiorita e verde etade.

JUST WHEN HE MIGHT FAIRLY HOPE SOME RETURN OF AFFECTION, ENVIOUS DEATH CARRIES HER OFF.


    All my green years and golden prime of man
Had pass'd away, and with attemper'd sighs
My bosom heaved--ere yet the days arise
When life declines, contracting its brief span.
Already my loved enemy began
To lull suspicion, and in sportive guise,
With timid confidence, though playful, wise,
In gentle mockery my long pains to scan:
The hour was near when Love, at length, may mate
With Chastity; and, by the dear one's side,
The lover's thoughts and words may freely flow:
Death saw, with envy, my too happy state,
E'en its fair promise--and, with fatal pride,
Strode in the midway forth, an armèd foe!

DACRE.

Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly
Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know,
God hath a select family of sons
Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each alone,
Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one
By constant service to, that inward law,
Is weaving the sublime proportions
Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength,
The riches of a spotless memory,
The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got
By searching of a clear and loving eye
That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts,
And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day
To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,
Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be
The salt of all the elements, world of the world.

Do you remember that glorious June
    When we were lovers, you and I?
Something there was in the robin's tune,
    Something there was in earth and sky,
That was never before, and never since then.
        I wonder why.

Do you remember the bridge we crossed,
    And lingered to see the ships go by,
With snowy sails to the free winds tossed?
    I never pass that bridge but I sigh
With a sense at my heart as of something lost.
        I wonder why.

Do you remember the song we sung,
    Under the beautiful starlit sky?
The world was bright, and our hearts were young -
    I cannot forget though I try and try.
How you smiled in my eyes while the echoes rung.
        I wonder why.

Do you remember how debonair
    The new moon shon...

    So soon he fell, the world will never know
    What possibilities within him lay,
What hopes irradiated his young life,
With high ambition and with ardor rife;
    But ah! the speedy summons came, and so
        He passed away.

    So soon he fell, there lie unfinished plans
    By others misapplied, misunderstood;
And doors are barred that wait the master-key -
That wait his magic Open Sesame! -
    To that assertive power that commands
        The multitude.

    Too soon he fell! Was he not born to prove
    What manhood and integrity might be -
How one from all base elements apart
Might walk serene, in purity of heart,
    His face the bright transparency of love
        And sympathy?

    The student ranks are closed, there i...

    Wer't granted me to choose,
How I would end my dayes;
    Since I this life must loose,
It should be in Your praise;
For there is no Bayes
    Can be set aboue you.

    S' impossibly I loue You,
And for you sit so hie,
    Whence none may remoue You
In my cleere Poesie,
That I oft deny
    You so ample Merit.

    The freedome of my Spirit
Maintayning (still) my Cause,
    Your Sex not to inherit,
Vrging the Salique Lawes;
But your Vertue drawes
    From me euery due.

    Thus still You me pursue,
That no where I can dwell,
    By Feare made iust to You,
Who naturally rebell,
Of You that excell
    That should I still Endyte,

    Yet will You want some Ryte.
That lost in your high praise

The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful,
wonderful: I'm surprised half the time:
ground up fine, I puff if a pebble stirs:

I'm nervous: my moarality's intricate: if
a squash blossom dies, I feel withered as a stained
zucchini and blame my nature: and
when grassblades flop to the little red-ant
queens burring around trying to get aloft, I blame
my not keeping the grass short, stubble

firm: well, I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant
to be ignored: like when the sun sinking in the
west glares a plane invisible, I think how much

revelation concealment necessitates: and then I
think of the oecean, multiple to a blinding
oneness and realize that only total expression
expressed hiding: I'll have to say everything
to take on the roundness and...

Oh, long had we paltered
With bridle and girth
Ere those horses were haltered
That gave us the Earth,

Ere the Flame and the Fountain,
The Spark and the Wheel,
Sank Ocean and Mountain
Alike ’neath our keel.

But the Wind in her blowing,
The bird on the wind,
Made naught of our going,
And left us behind.

Till the gale was outdriven,
The gull overflown,
And there matched us in Heaven
The Sun-God alone.

He only the master
We leagued to o’erthrow,
He only the faster
And, therefore, our foe!
.    .    .    .    .
Light steals to uncurtain
The dim-shaping skies
That arch and make certain
Where he shall arise.

We lift to the onset.
We challenge anew.
From sunrise to sunset,
Apollo...

What soft, cherubic creatures
These gentlewomen are!
One would as soon assault a plush
Or violate a star.

Such dimity convictions,
A horror so refined
Of freckled human nature,
Of Deity ashamed, --

It's such a common glory,
A fisherman's degree!
Redemption, brittle lady,
Be so, ashamed of thee.

I gazed at the azure-hued mantle of heaven,
    The measureless depths of ethereal space;
I gazed at the clouds, so invisibly driven,
    And an eagle, which wheeled with symmetrical grace.

I gazed at that eagle, majestically wheeling,
    With dignity, born of the free mountain air;
I envied that bird, with an envious feeling
    Which springs from a heart that is shackled with care.

I envied that eagle, which bowed to no master,
    But soared at his will, through the ambient skies,
Defiant of danger, and scorning disaster,
    He screamed at the cliffs, which re-echoed his cries.

I envied that bird, on that fair summer morning,
    When nature lay decked with spontaneous art,
As he circled, with aspect defiant and scorning,
    And perched on a...

There's no menagerie, I vow,

Excels my Lily's at this minute;

She keeps the strangest creatures in it,
And catches them, she knows not how.

Oh, how they hop, and run, and rave,
And their clipp'd pinions wildly wave,
Poor princes, who must all endure
The pangs of love that nought can cure.

What is the fairy's name? Is't Lily? Ask not me!
Give thanks to Heaven if she's unknown to thee.

Oh what a cackling, what a shrieking,

When near the door she takes her stand,

With her food-basket in her hand!
Oh what a croaking, what a squeaking!
Alive all the trees and the bushes appear,
While to her feet whole troops draw near;
The very fish within, the water clear
Splash with impatience and their heads protrude;
And then ...

I.

I Climbed a forest path and found
A dim cave in the dripping ground,
Where dwelt the spirit of cool sound,
Who wrought with crystal triangles,
And hollowed foam of rippled bells,
A music of mysterious spells.

II.

Where Sleep her bubble-jewels spilled
Of dreams; and Silence twilight-filled
Her emerald buckets, star-instilled,
With liquid whispers of lost springs,
And mossy tread of woodland things,
And drip of dew that greenly clings.

III.

Here by those servitors of Sound,
Warders of that enchanted ground,
My soul and sense were seized and bound,
And, in a dungeon deep of trees
Entranced, were laid at lazy ease,
The charge of woodland mysteries.

IV.

The minions of Prince Drowsihead,

Not much to me is yonder lane
Where I go every day;
But when there's been a shower of rain
And hedge-birds whistle gay,
I know my lad that's out in France
With fearsome things to see
Would give his eyes for just one glance
At our white hawthorn tree.
*        *        *        *        *
Not much to me is yonder lane
Where he so longs to tread;
But when there's been a shower of rain
I think I'll never weep again
Until I've heard he's dead.

And is this, Yarrow? 'This' the Stream
Of which my fancy cherished,
So faithfully, a waking dream?
An image that hath perished!
O that some Minstrel's harp were near,
To utter notes of gladness,
And chase this silence from the air,
That fills my heart with sadness!

Yet why? a silvery current flows
With uncontrolled meanderings;
Nor have these eyes by greener hills
Been soothed, in all my wanderings.
And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake
Is visibly delighted;
For not a feature of those hills
Is in the mirror slighted.

A blue sky bends o'er Yarrow vale,
Save where that pearly whiteness
Is round the rising sun diffused,
A tender hazy brightness;
Mild dawn of promise! that excludes
All profitless dejection;
Though not...

I've paid thee what I promis'd; that's not all;
Besides I give thee here a verse that shall
(When hence thy circummortal part is gone),
Arch-like, hold up thy name's inscription.
Brave men can't die, whose candid actions are
Writ in the poet's endless calendar:
Whose vellum and whose volume is the sky,
And the pure stars the praising poetry.
Farewell

I'll tell you how the sun rose, --
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"

    *    *    *

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

    Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing,
    With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing,
    Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air,
    And a knot of red roses sown in under there
        Where the shadows are lost in her hair.

    Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground
    Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound;
    And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint
    And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint
        Round the lips of their favorite saint!

    And that lace at her throat - and the fluttering hands
    Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands,
    The flakes of their touches - first fluttering at
    The bow - then the roses - the hair - and then that
        Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat....