Identity

Romance was always young.
You come today
Just eight years old
With marvellous dark hair.
Younger than Dante found you
When you turned
His heart into the way
That found the heavenly stair.

Perhaps we must be strangers.
I confess
My soul this hour is Dante's,
And your care
Should be for dolls
Whose painted hands caress
Your marvellous dark hair.

Romance, with moonflower face
And morning eyes,
And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
The canticles of a coming king unknown,
Remember, when you join him
On his throne,
Even me, your far off troubadour,
And wear
For me some trifling rose
Beneath your veil,
Dying a royal death,
Happy and pale,
Choked by the passion,
The wonder and the snare,

Let me go back again. There is the road,
O memory! The humble garden lane
So young with me. Let me rebuild again
The start of faith and hope by that abode;
Amend with morning freshness all the code
Of youth's desire; remap my chart's demesne
With tuneful joy, and plan a far campaign
For better marches in ambition's mode.

Ah, no, my heart! More certain now the skies
For joy abide: the cage of tree and sod,
Horizons firm that faith and hope attain,
Far realms of innocence in children's eyes,
And hearts harmonious with the will of God:--
These might I miss if I were back again.

How dazzling the sunbeams awoke on the spray,
When Australia first rose in the distance away,
As welcome to us on the deck of the bark,
As the dove to the vision of those in the ark!
What fairylike fancies appear’d to the view
As nearer and nearer the haven we drew!
What castles were built and rebuilt in the brain,
To totter and crumble to nothing again!

We had roam’d o’er the ocean had travers’d a path,
Where the tempest surrounded and shriek’d in its wrath:
Alike we had roll’d in the hurricane’s breath,
And slumber’d on waters as silent as death:
We had watch’d the Day breaking each morn on the main,
And had seen it sink down in the billows again;
For week after week, till dishearten’d we thought
An age would elapse ere we enter’d the port.

How o...

Sir Knight of the world's oldest order,
    Sir Knight of the Army of God,
You have crossed the strange mystical border,
    The ground-floor of truth you have trod;
You stand on the typical threshold
    Which leads to the temple above;
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
    In the Kingdom of Friendship and Love.

As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
    Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
    In hall, or asylum, shall end.
Outside, in the great world of pleasure.
    Beyond in the clamour of trade,
In the battle of life and its coarse daily strife,
    Remember the vows you have made.

Your service, majestic and solemn,
    Your symbols, suggestive and sweet,
Your uniform phala...

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls, on you,
The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.
Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But, there are wanderers in the middle mist,
Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,
And do not love at all. Of these am I.

When the white dawn comes
I shall kneel to welcome it;
The dread that darkened on my eyes
Shall vanish and be gone.
I shall look upon it
As the parched on fountains,
Yet it was the blinding night
That taught the joy of dawn.

When the first bird sings,
Oh, I shall hear rejoicing,
And all my life shall thrill to it
And all my heart draw near.
I shall lean to listen
Lest a note elude me,
Yet it was the fearsome night
That taught me how to hear.

When the sun comes up
I shall lift my arms to it;
The fear of fear shall fall from me
As shackles from a slave.
I shall run to hail it,
Free and unbewildered,
Yet it was the silent night
That taught me to be brave.

A happy day at Whitsuntide,
As soon ’s the zun begun to vall,
We all stroll’d up the steep hill-zide
To Meldon, gret an’ small;
Out where the Castle wall stood high
A-mwoldren to the zunny sky.

An’ there wi’ Jenny took a stroll
Her youngest sister, Poll, so gay,
Bezide John Hind, ah! merry soul,
An’ mid her wedlock fay;
An’ at our zides did play an’ run
My little maid an’ smaller son.

Above the baten mwold upsprung
The driven doust, a-spreaden light,
An’ on the new-leav’d thorn, a-hung,
Wer wool a-quiv’ren white;
An’ corn, a-sheenen bright, did bow,
On slopen Meldon’s zunny brow.

There, down the roofless wall did glow
The zun upon the grassy vloor,
An’ weakly-wandren winds did blow,
Unhinder’d by a door;
An’ smok...

Was it a dream?--that crowded concert-room
In Bath; that sea of ruffles and laced coats;
And William Herschel, in his powdered wig,
Waiting upon the platform, to conduct
His choir and Linley's orchestra? He stood
Tapping his music-rest, lost in his own thoughts
And (did I hear or dream them?) all were mine:

My periwig's askew, my ruffle stained
With grease from my new telescope!
                    Ach, to-morrow
How Caroline will be vexed, although she grows
Almost as bad as I, who cannot leave
My work-shop for one evening.
            I must give
One last recital at St. Margaret's,
And then--farewell to music.
        Who can lead
Two lives at once?
            Yet--it has taught me much,
Thrown curious lights upon our world, to p...

        I.

Shall we forget how, in our day,
The Sabine fields about us lay
In amaranth and asphodel,
And bubbling, cold Bandusian well,
Fair Pyrrhas haunting every way?
In dells of forest faun and fay,
Moss-lounged within the fountain's spray,
How drained we wines too rare to tell,
            Shall we forget?

The fine Falernian or the ray
Of fiery Cæcuban, while gay
We heard Bacchantes shout and yell,
Filled full of Bacchus, and so fell
To dreaming of some Lydia;
            Shall we forget?


        II.

If we forget in after years,
My comrade, all the hopes and fears
That hovered all our walks around
When ent'ring on that mystic ground
Of ghostly legends, where one hears
By bandit towers the chase th...

    The cooper should know about tubs.
    But I learned about life as well,
    And you who loiter around these graves
    Think you know life.
    You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,
    In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.
    You cannot lift yourself to its rim
    And see the outer world of things,
    And at the same time see yourself.
    You are submerged in the tub of yourself -
    Taboos and rules and appearances,
    Are the staves of your tub.
    Break them and dispel the witchcraft
    Of thinking your tub is life
    And that you know life.

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 all the twilight-twinkling ground;
A whip-poor-will began to cry,
And, staggering 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 called 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 fox-like eyes
Peered from the sha...

And I, cooing in my saddle, with lost time.
His weapons and horses the finest.
Beloved of God, engendered fiercely
for the occasion - with
pin stripes and a drinking vessel
of the most expert silver.

Pharaonic splendor,
ingots of the heaviest gold
borrowed sun bright yet so untarnished
they hold up the morning sky.

Two hands encase that handsome
volume - finest of imported leather and
saddle soap transparent to the eye
so that all might ring forth
its belated vision;
not be dreary earthed with brine
but terse,
furtive inside the gathering glade.

HE.
I know a youth who loves a little maid
(Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!)
Silent is he, for he's modest and afraid
(Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!)

SHE.
I know a maid who loves a gallant youth,
(Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!)
She cannot tell him all the sad, sad truth
(Hey, but I think that little maid will die!)

BOTH.
Now tell me pray, and tell me true,
What in the world should the poor soul do?

HE.
He cannot eat and he cannot sleep
(Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!)
Daily he goes for to wail for to weep
(Hey, but he's wretched as a youth can be!)

SHE.
She's very thin and she's very pale
(Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!)
Daily she goes for to weep for to wail
(...

Lives there who, with unhallow'd hand, would tear,
One leaf from that immortal wreath which shades
The Hero's living brow, or decks his urn?
Breathes there who does not triumph in the thought
That "Nelson's language is his mother tongue,"
And that St. Vincent's country is his own?
Oh! these bright guerdons of renown are won
By means most palpable to sense and sight;
By days of peril and by nights of toil;
By Valour's long probation, closed at last
In Victory's arms--consummated and seal'd
In deathless Glory and immortal Fame.

Musing I stand upon his lowly grave,
Who, though he fought no battle--though he pour'd
No hostile thunders on his country's foes,
Achieved for Britain triumphs, less array'd
"In pomp and circumstance," nor visible
To vul...

So, this is all, the utmost reach
Of priestly power the mind to fetter!
When laymen think, when women preach,
A war of words, a "Pastoral Letter!"
Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes!
Was it thus with those, your predecessors,
Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes
Their loving-kindness to transgressors?
A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull;
Alas! in hoof and horns and features,
How different is your Brookfield bull
From him who bellows from St. Peter's!
Your pastoral rights and powers from harm,
Think ye, can words alone preserve them?
Your wiser fathers taught the arm
And sword of temporal power to serve them.
Oh, glorious days, when Church and State
Were wedded by your spiritual fathers!
And on submissive shoulders sat
Your Wilsons and your C...

    I'll weep and sigh when e'er she wills
    To frown--and when she deigns to smile
    It will be cure for all my ills,
    And, foolish still, I'll laugh the while;
    But till that comes, I'll bless the rules
    Experience taught, and deem it wise
    To hold thee as the game of fools,
    And all thy tricks despise.

I.
The sea shall praise him and the shores bear part
That reared him when the bright south world was black
With fume of creeds more foul than hell’s own rack,
Still darkening more love’s face with loveless art
Since Paul, faith’s fervent Antichrist, of heart
Heroic, haled the world vehemently back
From Christ’s pure path on dire Jehovah’s track,
And said to dark Elisha’s Lord, ‘Thou art.’
But one whose soul had put the raiment on
Of love that Jesus left with James and John
Withstood that Lord whose seals of love were lies,
Seeing what we see how, touched by Truth’s bright rod,
The fiend whom Jews and Africans called God
Feels his own hell take hold on him, and dies.

II.
The world has no such flower in any land,
And no such pearl in any gulf the sea,...

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life, that in me has rest,
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as wither'd weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchor'd on
The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universe...