Identity

        It seemeth such a little way to me
    Across to that strange country - the Beyond;
        And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be
    The home of those of whom I am so fond,
        They make it seem familiar and most dear,
        As journeying friends bring distant regions near.

        So close it lies that when my sight is clear
    I think I almost see the gleaming strand.
        I know I feel those who have gone from here
    Come near enough sometimes to touch my hand.
        I often think, but for our veiled eyes,
        We should find Heaven right round about us lies.

        I cannot make it seem a day to dread,
    When from this dear earth I shall journey out
        To that still dearer country of the dead,
    And join th...

    Like Bunyan's pilgrim with his pack,
    Forth went the dreaming youth
    To seek, to find, and make his own
    Wisdom, virtue, and truth.
    Life was his book, and patiently
    He studied each hard page;
    By turns reformer, outcast, priest,
    Philosopher and sage.

    Christ was his Master, and he made
    His life a gospel sweet;
    Plato and Pythagoras in him
    Found a disciple meet.
    The noblest and best his friends,
    Faithful and fond, though few;
    Eager to listen, learn, and pay
    The love and honor due.

    Power and place, silver and gold,
    He neither asked nor sought;
    Only to serve his fellowmen,
    With heart and word and thought.
    A pilgrim still, but in his pack
    No sins ...

        Dulcis conscia lectuli lucerna.
        MARTIAL, lib. xiv. epig. 89.


"Oh! love the Lamp" (my Mistress said),
    "The faithful Lamp that, many a night,
"Beside thy Lais' lonely bed?
    "Has kept its little watch of light.

"Full often has it seen her weep,
    "And fix her eye upon its flame.
"Till, weary, she has sunk to sleep,
    "Repeating her beloved's name.

"Then love the Lamp--'twill often lead
    "Thy step through learning's sacred way;
"And when those studious eyes shall read,
"At midnight, by its lonely ray,
    "Of things sublime, of nature's birth,
    "Of all that's bright in heaven or earth,
Oh, think that she, by whom 'twas given,
"Adores thee more than earth or heaven!"

Yes--dearest...

A path, old tree, goes by thee crooking on,
And through this little gate that claps and bangs
Against thy rifted trunk, what steps hath gone?
Though but a lonely way, yet mystery hangs
Oer crowds of pastoral scenes recordless here.
The boy might climb the nest in thy young boughs
That's slept half an eternity; in fear
The herdsman may have left his startled cows
For shelter when heaven's thunder voice was near;
Here too the woodman on his wallet laid
For pillow may have slept an hour away;
And poet pastoral, lover of the shade,
Here sat and mused half some long summer day
While some old shepherd listened to the lay.

    I would I were a child,
That I might look, and laugh, and say, My Father!
And follow Thee with running feet, or rather
    Be led thus through the wild.

    How I would hold thy hand!
My glad eyes often to thy glory lifting,
Which casts all beauteous shadows, ever shifting,
    Over this sea and land.

    If a dark thing came near,
I would but creep within thy mantle's folding,
Shut my eyes close, thy hand yet faster holding,
    And so forget my fear.

    O soul, O soul, rejoice!
Thou art God's child indeed, for all thy sinning;
A trembling child, yet his, and worth the winning
    With gentle eyes and voice.

    The words like echoes flow.
They are too good; mine I can call them never;
Such water drinking once, I should ...

    PSALM LXXXIV.


A brackish lake is there with bitter pools
Anigh its margin, brushed by heavy trees.
A piping wind the narrow valley cools,
Fretting the willows and the cypresses.
Gray skies above, and in the gloomy space
An awful presence hath its dwelling-place.


I saw a youth pass down that vale of tears;
His head was circled with a crown of thorn,
His form was bowed as by the weight of years,
His wayworn feet by stones were cut and torn.
His eyes were such as have beheld the sword
Of terror of the angel of the Lord.


He passed, and clouds and shadows and thick haze
Fell and encompassed him. I might not see
What hand upheld him in those dismal ways,
Wherethrough he staggered with his misery.
The creeping mists that t...

As in some dim baronial hall restrained,
A prisoner sits, engirt by secret doors
And waving tapestries that argue forth
Strange passages into the outer air;
So in this dimmer room which we call life,
Thus sits the soul and marks with eye intent
That mystic curtain o'er the portal death;
Still deeming that behind the arras lies
The lambent way that leads to lasting light.
Poor fooled and foolish soul! Know now that death
Is but a blind, false door that nowhere leads,
And gives no hope of exit final, free.

Could I divine how her gray eyes
Gat such cold haughtiness of skies;

How, some wood-flower's shadow brown,
Dimmed her fair forehead's wrath a frown;

How, rippled sunshine blown thro' air,
Tossed scorn her eloquence of hair;

How to a folded bud again
She drew her blossomed lips' disdain;

Naught deigning save eyes' utterance,
Star-words, which quicker reach the sense;

Then, afterwards, how melted there
The austere woman to one tear;

Then were I wise to know how grew
This star-stained miracle of blue,
How God makes wild flowers out of dew.

    Who is it says May is the crown of the year?
    Who is it says June is the gladdest?
    Who is it says Autumn is withered and sere,
    The gloomiest season and saddest?

    You shut to your doors as I come with my train,
    And heed not the challenge I'm flinging,
    The ruddy leaf washed by the fresh falling rain,
    The scarlet vine creeping and clinging!

    Come out where I'm holding my court like a queen,
    With canopy rare stretching over;
    Come out where I revel in amber and green,
    And soon I may call you my lover!

    Come out to the hillside, come out to the vale,
    Come out ere your mood turns to blaming,
    Come out where my gold is, my red gold and pale,
    Come out where my banners are flaming!

    Co...

    "Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
    Their homely joys, and destiny obscure:
    Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
    The short and simple annals of the poor."

Gray


I.

        My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!
            No mercenary bard his homage pays;
        With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end:
            My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise:
        To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
            The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
        The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
            What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
    Ah! tho' his work unknown, far happier there, I ween!

II.

        November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;

From his brimstone bed at break of day
    A walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his snug little farm of the World,
    And see how his stock went on.

Over the hill and over the dale,
    And he went over the plain;
And backward and forward he swish'd his tail
    As a gentleman swishes a cane.

    How then was the Devil drest?
    Oh, he was in his Sunday's best
His coat was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where his tail came through.
A lady drove by in her pride,
In whose face an expression he spied
    For which he could have kiss'd her;
Such a flourishing, fine, clever woman was she,
With an eye as wicked as wicked can be,
I should take her for my Aunt, thought he,
    If my dam had had a sister.

    ...

1.
The keen stars were twinkling,
And the fair moon was rising among them,
Dear Jane!
The guitar was tinkling,
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again.

2.
As the moon's soft splendour
O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
Is thrown,
So your voice most tender
To the strings without soul had then given
Its own.

3.
The stars will awaken,
Though the moon sleep a full hour later,
To-night;
No leaf will be shaken
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.

4.
Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

    In the last spring I ever knew,
    In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard
    Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
    The hills at Miller's Ford;
    Just to muse on the apple tree
    With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
    And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
    Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
    Never to grow in fruit.
    And there was I with my spirit girded
    By the flesh half dead, the senses numb
    Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth, -
    Such phantom blossoms palely shining
    Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
    O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!
    Had I been only a tree to shiver
    With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,
    Then I had fallen in the cyclone
    ...

Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear.

Now read here. “Protus ends a period
Of empery beginning with a god:
Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,
Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
And if he quickened breath there, ’twould like fire
Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
A fame that he was missing spread afar
The world from its four corners, rose in war,
Till he was borne out on a balcony
To pacify the world when it should see.
The captains ranged before him, one, his h...

    Three score and ten, the psalmist saith,
    And half my course is well-nigh run;
    I've had my flout at dusty death,
    I've had my whack of feast and fun.
    I've mocked at those who prate and preach;
    I've laughed with any man alive;
    But now with sobered heart I reach
    The Great Divide of Thirty-five.

    And looking back I must confess
    I've little cause to feel elate.
    I've played the mummer more or less;
    I fumbled fortune, flouted fate.
    I've vastly dreamed and little done;
    I've idly watched my brothers strive:
    Oh, I have loitered in the sun
    By primrose paths to Thirty-five!

    And those who matched me in the race,
    Well, some are out and trampled down;
    The others jog with sober pac...

It might have been so different a year
To what has been; the summer's guileless play
Not all a jest, comes back to me to-day
In added sweetness, and provokes a tear.
Strange pictures rise, pass on, and disappear.
Drawn from your tender words of yesterday
When, looking in my eyes in the old way
You told me of your life, how passing dear
    It might have been.

Useless to dream, more useless to regret!
We might have lived and loved, nor lost the glow
Of Love's first sweet intensity; - to let
These foolish fancies die I strive, - and yet
I still must count it happiness to know
    It might have been.

Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can escape
From the lower world within him, moods of tiger, or of ape?
Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age of ages,
Shall not æon after æon pass and touch him into shape?

All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower and fade,
Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade,
Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in choric
Hallelujah to the Maker ‘It is finish’d. Man is made.’

D' Italia in Grecia.


From Rome to Greece, from Greece to Libya's sand,
        Yearning for liberty, just Cato went;
        Nor finding freedom to his heart's content,
        Sought it in death, and died by his own hand.
Wise Hannibal, when neither sea nor land
        Could save him from the Roman eagles, rent
        His soul with poison from imprisonment;
        And a snake's tooth cut Cleopatra's band.
In this way died one valiant Maccabee;
        Brutus feigned madness; prudent Solon hid
        His sense; and David, when he feared Gath's king.
Thus when the Mystic found that Jonah's sea
        Was yawning to engulf him, what he did
        He gave to God--a wise man's offering.