Identity

    Have I slept and failed to hear you calling?
    Cry again, belov'd; for sleep is heavy,
    Curtaining away the golden sunlight,
    Shutting out the blue sky and the breezes,
    Sealing up my ears to all you tell me.
    Cry again! your voice shall pierce the clumsy
    Leaden folds that sleep has wrapt about me,
    Cry again! accomplish what the singing,
    Hours old now on all the trees and bushes,
    And the wind and sun could not accomplish.
    Lo!    I waste good hours of love and kisses
    While the sun and you have spilt your glory
    Freely on me lying unregarding.
    In the happy islands, where no sunset
    Stains the waters with a morbid splendour,
    Where the open skies are blue for ever,
    I might stay for years and years unsleep...

The bard, if e’er he feel at all,
Must sure be quicken’d by a call
Both on his heart and head,
To pay with tuneful thanks the care
And kindness of a lady fair,
Who deigns to deck his bed.


A bed like this, in ancient time,
On Ida’s barren top sublime
(As Homer’s epic shows),
Composed of sweetest vernal flowers,
Without the aid of sun or showers,
For Jove and Juno rose.


Less beautiful, however gay,
Is that which in the scorching day
Receives the weary swain,
Who, laying his long scythe aside,
Sleeps on some bank with daisies pied,
Till roused to toil again.


What labours of the loom I see!
Looms numberless have groan’d for me!
Should every maiden come
To scramble for the patch that bears
The impres...

(Suggested by the lives of Napoleon and Josephine.)


I.

One night was full of rapture and delight -
    Of reunited arms and swooning kisses,
    And all the unnamed and unnumbered blisses
Which fond souls find in love of love at night.

Heart beat with heart, and each clung into each
    With twining arms that did but loose their hold
    To cling still closer; and fond glances told
These truths for which there is no uttered speech.

There was sweet laughter and endearing words,
    Made broken by the kiss that could not wait,
    And cooing sounds as of dear little birds
That in spring-time love and woo and mate.

And languid sighs that breathed of love's content
And all too soon this night of rapture went.


II.

    My Auntie has a camera, and when I'm out at play
    And see her coming with it, I try to hide away.
    For oh, it is so bothersome to hear her, with a laugh,
    Call, "Stand just were you are, dear; I'll take a photograph."

    Sometimes, an angry lion, I have just begun to roar,
    And all the children run from me to sneak behind the door,
    When Auntie to our forest comes - why does she stop our fun?
    I'd like to shoot that camera there with my wooden gun.

    Perhaps, a fire engine, I am rushing to a fire,
    While people loudly call for help as flames rise higher and higher.
    I hurry toward the hydrant here, for oh! the flames are hot!
    When Auntie with her camera cries, "What a fine snapshot!"

    But then it doesn't seem to snap, so I m...

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.

Year after year the artist wrought
    With earnest, loving care,
The music flooding all his soul
    To pour upon the air.

For this no metal was too rare,
    He counted not the cost;
Nor deemed the years in which he toiled
    As labor vainly lost.

When morning flushed with crimson light
    The golden gates of day,
He longed to fill the air with chimes
    Sweet as a matin's lay.

And when the sun was sinking low
    Within the distant West,
He gladly heard the bells he wrought
    Herald the hour of rest.

The music of a thousand harps
    Could never be so dear
As when those solemn chants and thrills
    Fell on his list'ning ear.

He poured his soul into their chimes,
    And felt his toil repaid;
...

'Oh happy happy land!
Angels like rushes stand
    About the wells of light.' -
    'Alas, I have not eyes for this fair sight:
Hold fast my hand.' -

'As in a soft wind, they
Bend all one blessed way,
    Each bowed in his own glory, star with star.' -
    'I cannot see so far,
    Here shadows are.' -

'White-winged the cherubim,
Yet whiter seraphim,
    Glow white with intense fire of love.' -
'Mine eyes are dim:
    I look in vain above,
And miss their hymn.' -

'Angels, Archangels cry
One to other ceaselessly
    (I hear them sing)
    One "Holy, Holy, Holy" to their King.' -
'I do not hear them, I.' -

'At one side Paradise
    Is curtained from the rest,
Made green for wearied eyes;
    Much so...

No! in truth there's here no lack:
White the bread, the maidens black!
To another town, next night:
Black the bread, the maidens white!

Half-hidden in a graveyard,
In the blackness of a yew,
Where never living creature stirs,
Nor sunbeam pierces through,

Is a tombstone green and crooked,
Its faded legend gone,
And but one rain-worn cherub's head
To sing of the unknown.

There, when the dusk is falling,
Silence broods so deep
It seems that every wind that breathes
Blows from the fields of sleep?

Day breaks in heedless beauty,
Kindling each drop of dew,
But unforsaking shadow dwells
Beneath this lonely yew.

And, all else lost and faded,
Only this listening head
Keeps with a strange unanswering smile
Its secret with the dead.

Hills of the west, that gird
Forest and farm,
Home of the nestling bird,
Housing from harm,
When on your tops is heard
Storm:

Hills of the west, that bar
Belts of the gloam,
Under the twilight star,
Where the mists roam,
Take ye the wanderer
Home.

Hills of the west, that dream
Under the moon,
Making of wind and stream,
Late-heard and soon,
Parts of your lives that seem
Tune.

Hills of the west, that take
Slumber to ye,
Be it for sorrow's sake
Or memory,
Part of such slumber make
Me.

    There soars a warbler toward high Heaven,
        His course seems sure and straight; -
    So speeds an arrow from the bow-string,
        Yet who can read his fate!

    For while he carols like a seraph
        Bound for a radiant star
    Mayhap the fowler's eye, relentless,
        Has doomed him from afar.

    A longer life the crawling snail hath
        Than thou - O wanderer bright -
    Ah, let the sluggard crawl in safety,
        Thine is the realm of light!

    Like thee a soaring soul's in peril,
        Yet its one hour is worth
    A whole Eternity of grovelling
        Closer to grimy earth.

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone
The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream
Through bushes, where the mountain spring lies lone,
A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,
And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note
Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;
Here cat and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote
Their presence on the silence with a tune;
And here the fox drank 'neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush
Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,
And wiry bushes, brush, that seemed to crush
The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence
Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly
In orange and amber, lik...

But, to remote Northumbria's royal Hall,
Where thoughtful Edwin, tutored in the school
Of sorrow, still maintains a heathen rule,
'Who' comes with functions apostolical?
Mark him, of shoulders curved, and stature tall,
Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek,
His prominent feature like an eagle's beak;
A Man whose aspect doth at once appal
And strike with reverence. The Monarch leans
Toward the pure truths this Delegate propounds
Repeatedly his own deep mind he sounds
With careful hesitation, then convenes
A synod of his Councilors: give ear,
And what a pensive Sage doth utter, hear!

(See Note 50)

I went to a school that was little and proper,
Both for church and for state a conventional hopper,
Feeding rollers that ground out their grist unwaiting;
And though it was clear from the gears' frequent grating
They rarely with oil of the spirit were smeared,
Yet no other school in that region appeared.
We had to go there till older; - though sorry,
I went there also, - but reveled in Snorre.

The self-same books, the same so-called education,
That teacher after teacher, by decrees of power royal,
Into class after class pounds with self-negation,
And that only bring promotion to them that are loyal! -
The self-same books, the same so-called education,
Quickly molding to one type all the men in the land,
An excellent fellow who on 

The President to Kingdoms,
As in the Days of Old;
The King to the Republic,
As it had been foretold.
They could not read the spelling,
They would not hear the call;
They would not brook the telling
Of Writing on the Wall.

I buy my Peace with Slaughter,
With Peace I fashion War;
I drown the land with water,
With land I build the shore.
I walk with Son and Daughter
Where Ocean rolled before.
I build a town where sea was
A tower where tempests roar.

From bays in distant islands,
And rocks in lonely seas,
With unseen Death in silence
I smite mine enemies!
The great Cathedral crashes
Where once a city stood;
I build again on ashes
And breed on clotted blood!

I link the seas together,
And at my sign and ...

Hear ye not the waters beating where the rapid rivers, meeting
With the winds above them fleeting, hurry to the distant seas,
And a smothered sound of singing from old Ocean upwards springing,
Sending hollow echoes ringing like a wailing on the breeze?
For the tempest round us brewing, cometh with the clouds pursuing,
And the bright Day, like a ruin, crumbles from the mournful trees.

When the thunder ceases pealing, and the stars up heaven are stealing,
And the Moon above us wheeling throws her pleasant glances round,
From our homes we boldly sally ’neath the trysting tree to rally,
For a night-hunt up the valley, with our brothers and the hound!
Through a wild-eyed Forest, staring at the light above it glaring,
We will travel, little caring for the dangers where we bound.
...

Fresh from piano, school, and books,
A happy girl with rosy looks
    Young Plowman wooed and won; despite
Her pretty, pouting prejudice,
Her deep distaste for rural bliss
    Or countryfied delight.

Romance through all her nature ran -
Indeed, to wed a husband-man
    Suffused her ardent maiden thought;
But lofty fancy dwelt upon
A new "Queen Anne," a terraced lawn,
    A city's corner lot.

Her lily fingers that so well
Could paint a scene - in aquarelle -
    Or broider plush with leaves and vines,
No more of real labor knew
Than waxen petals of the dew
    On native eglantines.

Anon, with lapse of tender ways
That emphasized the courting days,
    The housewife in her apron blue,
As mistress of her new abode,
...

Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
    His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
    Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
    He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
    The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
    Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
    Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
    Among her children stand;
They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,
    They held him by the hand!--
A tear burst from the sleeper's lids
    And fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode
    Along the Niger's bank;
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
    And, with a mar...