Identity

Forty Augusts - aye, and several more - ago,
When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,
The waves huzza'd like a multitude below
In the sway of an all-including joy
    Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,
When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,
And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter
At the lot of men, and all the vapoury
    Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where
Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;
But they supplicate now - like a congregation there
Who murmur the Confession - I outside,
    Prayer denied.

    Friend, mark these muscles; mine's a frame
    Born, grown, and fitted for the toil.
    My father, tiller of the soil,
    Bequeathed them to me with my name.

    Fear work? Nay, many times and oft
    Upon my brow the sweat-bead stands,
    And these two brown and sinewy hands,
    Methinks, were never white or soft.

    I earn my bread and know its worth,
    Through days that chill and days that warm,
    I wrest it with my strong right arm
    From out the bosom of the earth.

    The moneyed man may boast his wealth,
    The high-born boast his pedigree,
    But greater far, it seems to me,
    My heritage of brawn and health.

    My sinews strong, my sturdy frame,
    My independence free and bold -
    Mine is the r...

O sweetly wild and 'witching Poesy!
Thou light of this world's hermitage I prove thee;
And surely none helps loving thee that knows thee,
A soul of feeling cannot help but love thee.
I would say how thy secret wonders move me,
Thou spell of loveliness!--but 'tis too much:
Had I the language of the gods above me
I might then venture thy wild harp to touch,
And sing of all thy thrilling pains and pleasures;
The flowers I meet in this world's wilderness;
The comforts rising from thy spell-bound treasures,
Thy cordial balm that softens my distress:
I would say all, but thou art far above me;
Words are too weak, expression can't be had;
I can but say I love, and dearly love thee,
And that thou cheer'st me when my soul is sad.

O Study! while thy lovers raise
Thy name with all the pow'r of praise,
Frown not, thou nymph with piercing mind!
If in this bosom thou should'st find
That all thy deep, thy brilliant, lore,
Which charm'd it once, now charms no more:
Frown not, if, on thy classic line,
One strange, uncall'd-for, tear should shine;
Frown not, if, when a smile should start,
A sigh should heave an aching heart:
If Mem'ry, roving far away,
Should an unmeaning homage pay,
Should ask thee for thy golden fruit,
And, when thou deign'st to hear her suit,
Should turn her from the proffer'd food,
To tread the shades of Solitude:
Frown not, if, in the humble line,
Ungrac'd by any thought of thine,
Should but that gentle name appear,
Fond cause of ev'ry joy and fear;
I l...

These Carols, sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,
For completion, I dedicate to the Invisible World.

The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there,
But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;
Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we're doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell.

There's the old love wronged ere the new was won, there's the light of long ago;
There's the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we're doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.

We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a heart is breaking there;
Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men's hearts lay bare!
We live and share the living lie, we a...

A grievous day of wrathful winds,
Of low-hung clouds, which scud and fly,
And drop cold rains, then lift and show
A sullen realm of upper sky.

The sea is black as night; it roars
From lips afoam with cruel spray,
Like some fierce, many-throated pack
Of wolves, which scents and chases prey.

Crouched in my little wind-swept nook,
I hear the menacing voices call,
And shudder, as above the deck
Topples and swings the weltering wall.

It seems a vast and restless grave,
Insatiate, hungry, beckoning
With dreadful gesture of command
To every free and living thing.

"O Lord," I cry, "Thou makest life
And hope and all sweet things to be;
Rebuke this hovering, following Death,--
This horror never born of Thee."

A sudden gl...

The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow
Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss
Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts;
In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow
Where beech-roots bulge the loam, protrude across
The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts.

And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense,
Among the rocks, great yellow violets,
Blue-bells and wind-flowers bloom; the agaric
In dampness crowds; a Fungus, thick, intense
With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets
The May-apples along the terraced creek
At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence
Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets

We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them: -
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, -
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine
Slow-dropped fr...

The waterfall, deep in the wood,
Talked drowsily with solitude,
A soft, insistent sound of foam,
That filled with sleep the forest's dome,
Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood
Accentuating solitude.

The crickets' tinkling chips of sound
Strewed dim the twilight-twinkling ground;
A whippoorwill began to cry,
And glimmering through the sober sky
A bat went on its drunken round,
Its shadow following on the ground.

Then from a bush, an elder-copse,
That spiced the dark with musky tops,
What seemed, at first, a shadow came
And took her hand and spoke her name,
And kissed her where, in starry drops,
The dew orbed on the elder-tops.

The glaucous glow of fireflies
Flickered the dusk; and foxlike eyes
Peered from the shadows; ...

In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.

Down in the darkness of the grave
She cannot see the life she gave.
For all her love, she cannot tell
Whether I use it ill or well,
Nor knock at dusty doors to find
Her beauty dusty in the mind.

If the grave's gates could be undone,
She would not know her little son,
I am so grown. If we should meet
She would pass by me in the street,
Unless my soul's face let her see
My sense of what she did for me.

What have I done to keep in mind
My debt to her and womankind?
What woman's happier life repays
Her for those month...

("Sara, belle d'indolence.")

[XIX., August, 1828.]


In a swinging hammock lying,
    Lightly flying,
Zara, lovely indolent,
O'er a fountain's crystal wave
    There to lave
Her young beauty - see her bent.

As she leans, so sweet and soft,
    Flitting oft,
O'er the mirror to and fro,
Seems that airy floating bat,
    Like a feather
From some sea-gull's wing of snow.

Every time the frail boat laden
    With the maiden
Skims the water in its flight,
Starting from its trembling sheen,
    Swift are seen
A white foot and neck so white.

As that lithe foot's timid tips
    Quick she dips,
Passing, in the rippling pool,
(Blush, oh! snowiest ivory!)
    Frolic, she
Laughs to feel th...

Ah yes, I know you well, a sojourner
    At the hearth;
I know right well the marriage ring you wear,
    And what it's worth.

The angels came to Abraham, and they stayed
    In his house awhile;
So you to mine, I imagine; yes, happily
    Condescend to be vile.

I see you all the time, you bird-blithe, lovely
    Angel in disguise.
I see right well how I ought to be grateful,
    Smitten with reverent surprise.

Listen, I have no use
    For so rare a visit;
Mine is a common devil's
    Requisite.

Rise up and go, I have no use for you
    And your blithe, glad mien.
No angels here, for me no goddesses,
    Nor any Queen.

Put ashes on your head, put sackcloth on
    And learn to serve.
You have fed me w...

Wordsworth I love, his books are like the fields,
Not filled with flowers, but works of human kind;
The pleasant weed a fragrant pleasure yields,
The briar and broomwood shaken by the wind,
The thorn and bramble o'er the water shoot
A finer flower than gardens e'er gave birth,
The aged huntsman grubbing up the root--
I love them all as tenants of the earth:
Where genius is, there often die the seeds;
What critics throw away I love the more;
I love to stoop and look among the weeds,
To find a flower I never knew before;
Wordsworth, go on--a greater poet be;
Merit will live, though parties disagree!

Time was when I was free as air,
The thistle’s downy seed my fare,
My drink the morning dew;
I perch’d at will on every spray,
My form genteel, my plumage gay,
My strains for ever new.


But gaudy plumage, sprightly strain,
And form genteel were all in vain,
And of a transient date;
For, caught and caged, and starved to death,
In dying sighs my little breath
Soon pass’d the wiry grate.


Thanks, gentle swain, for all my woes,
And thanks for this effectual close
And cure of every ill!
More cruelty could none express;
And I, if you had shown me less,
Had been your prisoner still.

And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.


You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat ;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.

    Our fathers must have sinned: we pay for it!
        Through them the base-born tribe that sold their king
    Sneaked into power, and in high places sit,
        And do their will and wish in everything;
    For they may rob and kill, grieve and disgrace
    All who are left alive of Eiver's race.

    They seized with daring guile on rank and pelf,
        And swore that they would never bend a knee
    Unto the king: they robbed the Church herself:
        They stole our princes' lands, and o'er the sea
    They packed those princes, or drove them away
    To barren rocks and fields that have no clay.

    That spawn of base mechanics! who could ne'er,
        Though Doomsday came, by any art be made
    Noble, are noble now, and have no care:
    ...

Never enlivened with the liveliest ray
That fosters growth or checks or cheers decay,
Nor by the heaviest rain-drops more deprest,
This Flower, that first appeared as summer's guest,
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves
And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.
When files of stateliest plants have ceased to bloom,
One after one submitting to their doom,
When her coevals each and all are fled,
What keeps her thus reclined upon her lonesome bed?

The old mythologists, more impressed than we
Of this late day by character in tree
Or herb, that claimed peculiar sympathy,
Or by the silent lapse of fountain clear,
Or with the language of the viewless air
By bird or beast made vocal, sought a cause
To solve the mystery, not in Nature's laws
But in Man'...