Identity

        The railroad track is miles away,
            And the day is loud with voices speaking,
        Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
            But I hear its whistle shrieking.

        All night there isn't a train goes by,
            Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
        But I see its cinders red on the sky,
            And hear its engine steaming.

        My heart is warm with the friends I make,
            And better friends I'll not be knowing,
        Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
            No matter where it's going.

High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long:
"From town to town, from tower to tower,
The red rose is a gladsome flower.
Her thirty years of winter past,
The red rose is revived at last;
She lifts her head for endless spring,
For everlasting blossoming:
Both roses flourish, red and white:
In love and sisterly delight
The two that were at strife are blended,
And all old troubles now are ended.
Joy! joy to both! but most to her
Who is the flower of Lancaster!
Behold her how She smiles to-day
On this great throng, this bright array!
Fair greeting doth she send to all
From every corner of the hall;
But chiefly from...

A gift of Silence, sweet!
Who may not ever hear:
To lay down at your unobservant feet,
Is all the gift I bear.

I have no songs to sing,
That you should heed or know:
I have no lilies, in full hands, to fling
Across the path you go.

I cast my flowers away,
Blossoms unmeet for you!
The garland I have gathered in my day:
My rosemary and rue.

I watch you pass and pass,
Serene and cold: I lay
My lips upon your trodden, daisied grass,
And turn my life away.

Yea, for I cast you, sweet!
This one gift, you shall take:
Like ointment, on your unobservant feet,
My silence, for your sake.

Seraph! thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea,
Some ocean vexed as it may be
With storms; but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.
For 'mid the earnest cares and woes
That crowd around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas, where grows
Not even one lonely rose!)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee; and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I cross'd the Wild,
I chanc'd to see at break of day
The solitary Child.

No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wild Moor,
The sweetest Thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the Fawn at play,
The Hare upon the Green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night,
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your Mother thro' the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do;
'Tis scarcely afternoon,
The Minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the Moon."

At this the Father rais'd his hook
And snapp'd a faggot-band;
He plied his work, and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand....

Three times, sweet hawthorn! I have met thy bower,
And thou hast gain'd my love, and I do feel
An aching pain to leave thee: every flower
Around thee opening doth new charms reveal,
And binds my fondness stronger.--Wild wood bower,
In memory's calendar thou'rt treasur'd up:
And should we meet in some remoter hour,
When all thy bloom to winter-winds shall droop;
Ah, in life's winter, many a day to come,
Should my grey wrinkles pass thy spot of ground,
And find it bare--with thee no longer crown'd;
Within the woodman's faggot torn from hence,
Or chopt by hedgers up for yonder fence;
Ah, should I chance by thee as then to come,
I'll look upon thy nakedness with pain,
And, as I view thy desolated doom,
In fancy's eye I'll fetch thy shade again:
And of this lo...

Oh, I des received a letter f'om de sweetest little gal;
Oh, my; oh, my.
She's my lovely little sweetheart an' her name is Sal:
Oh, my; oh, my.
She writes me dat she loves me an' she loves me true,
She wonders ef I'll tell huh dat I loves huh, too;
An' my heaht's so full o' music dat I do' know what to do;
Oh, my; oh, my.

I got a man to read it an' he read it fine;
Oh, my; oh, my.
Dey ain' no use denying dat her love is mine;
Oh, my; oh, my.
But hyeah's de t'ing dat's puttin' me in such a awful plight,
I t'ink of huh at mornin' an' I dream of huh at night;
But how's I gwine to cou't huh w'en I do' know how to write?
Oh, my; oh, my.

My heaht is bubblin' ovah wid de t'ings I want to say;
Oh, my; oh, my.
An' dey's lots of folks to copy what ...

I would not ask thee back, fair May,
    With all your bright-eyed flowers;
Nor would I welcome April days
    With all their laughing showers;
For each bright season of the year
    Can claim its own sweet pleasures;
And we must take them as they come--
    These gladly-given treasures.

There's music in the rain that falls
    In bright October weather;
And we must learn to love them both--
    The sun and rain together.
A mist is 'round the mountain-tops
    Of gold-encircled splendor;
A dreamy spell is in the air
    Of beauty sad and tender.

The winter hath not wooed her yet,
    This fair October maiden;
And she is free to wander still
    With fruits and flowers laden.
She shakes the dew-drops from her hair
    In one...

Out of the bosom of the Air,
    Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
    Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
    Silent, and soft, and slow
    Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
    Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
    In the white countenance confession,
    The troubled sky reveals
    The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
    Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
    Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
    Now whispered and revealed
    To wood and field.

    Friend, old friend in the Manse by the fireside sitting,
        Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log;
    You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
    Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog.

    Silent here in the south sit I; and, leaning,
        One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand;
    Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
        Rather I read in the shadows and understand.

    Dear, kind she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
        Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:

Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
        Lit up a face in the leathern dusk of the shelves.

    Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
        Yet there is one gives back to the wint...

Air - "Daintie Davie."


I.

    It was the charming month of May,
    When all the flow'rs were fresh and gay,
    One morning, by the break of day,
        The youthful charming Chloe
    From peaceful slumber she arose,
    Girt on her mantle and her hose,
    And o'er the flowery mead she goes,
        The youthful charming Chloe.
            Lovely was she by the dawn,
                Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe,
            Tripping o'er the pearly lawn,
                The youthful charming Chloe.

II.

    The feather'd people you might see,
    Perch'd all around, on every tree,
    In notes of sweetest melody
        They hail the charming Chloe;
    Till painting gay the eastern skies,
    The g...

This is the house. On one side there is darkness,
On one side there is light.
Into the darkness you may lift your lanterns,
O, any number, it will still be night.
And here are echoing stairs to lead you downward
To long sonorous halls.
And here is spring forever at these windows,
With roses on the walls.

This is her room. On one side there is music,
On one side not a sound.
At one step she could move from love to silence,
Feel myriad darkness coiling round.
And here are balconies from which she heard you,
Your steady footsteps on the stair.
And here the glass in which she saw your shadow
As she unbound her hair.

Here is the room, with ghostly walls dissolving,
The twilight room in which she called you ‘lover’;
And the floorless room in wh...

She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

    You have become a forge of snow white fire,
    A crucible of molten steel, O France!
    Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
    And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
    They pass through meteor changes with a song
    Which to all islands and all continents
    Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
    Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
    Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
    Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
    Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
    Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
    Or seventy years.

    These are not all of life,
    O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
    Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
    Clog the ensanguinéd ice. But li...

    There is a quiet in my heart
    Like one who rests from days of pain.
    Outside, the sparrows on the roof
    Are chirping in the dripping rain.

    Rain in my heart; rain on the roof;
    And memory sleeps beneath the gray
    And windless sky and brings no dreams
    Of any well remembered day.

    I would not have the heavens fair,
    Nor golden clouds, nor breezes mild,
    But days like this, until my heart
    To loss of you is reconciled.

    I would not see you. Every hope
    To know you as you were has ranged.
    I, who am altered, would not find
    The face I loved so greatly changed.

To me not only does her soul suggest
Palms and the peace of tropic shore and wood,
But, oceaned far beyond the golden West,
The Fortunate Islands of true Womanhood.

PHI BETA KAPPA. - CAMBRIDGE, 1867

You bid me sing, - can I forget
The classic ode of days gone by, -
How belle Fifine and jeune Lisette
Exclaimed, "Anacreon, geron ei"?
"Regardez done," those ladies said, -
"You're getting bald and wrinkled too
When summer's roses all are shed,
Love 's nullum ite, voyez-vous!"

In vain ce brave Anacreon's cry,
"Of Love alone my banjo sings"
(Erota mounon). "Etiam si, -
Eh b'en?" replied the saucy things, -
"Go find a maid whose hair is gray,
And strike your lyre, - we sha'n't complain;
But parce nobis, s'il vous plait, -
Voila Adolphe! Voila Eugene!"

Ah, jeune Lisette! Ah, belle Fifine!
Anacreon's lesson all must learn;
O kairos oxiis; Spring is green,
But Acer Hyems waits his turn
I h...

The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand;
Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies,
But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knock- narea,
And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.
Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;
But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet
Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare,
For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;
But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood
I...