Identity

The murmuring of bees has ceased;
But murmuring of some
Posterior, prophetic,
Has simultaneous come, --

The lower metres of the year,
When nature's laugh is done, --
The Revelations of the book
Whose Genesis is June.

"Away, away, - your flattering arts
May now betray some simpler hearts;
And you will smile at their believing,
And they shall weep at your deceiving."

Sterile these stones
By time in ruin laid.
Yet many a creeping thing
Its haven has made
In these least crannies, where falls
Dark's dew, and noonday shade.

The claw of the tender bird
Finds lodgment here;
Dye-winged butterflies poise;
Emmet and beetle steer
Their busy course; the bee
Drones, laden, near.

Their myriad-mirrored eyes
Great day reflect.
By their exquisite farings
Is this granite specked;
Is trodden to infinite dust;
By gnawing lichens decked.

Toward what eventual dream
Sleeps its cold on,
When into ultimate dark
These lives shall be gone,
And even of man not a shadow remain
Of all he has done?

An Algonquin legend.


Happy young friends, sit by me,
Under May's blown apple-tree,
While these home-birds in and out
Through the blossoms flit about.
Hear a story, strange and old,
By the wild red Indians told,
How the robin came to be:

Once a great chief left his son,
Well-beloved, his only one,
When the boy was well-nigh grown,
In the trial-lodge alone.
Left for tortures long and slow
Youths like him must undergo,
Who their pride of manhood test,
Lacking water, food, and rest.

Seven days the fast he kept,
Seven nights he never slept.
Then the young boy, wrung with pain,
Weak from nature's overstrain,
Faltering, moaned a low complaint
"Spare me, father, for I faint!"
But the chieftain, haughty-eyed,...

I am weary of lying within the chase
When the knights are meeting in market-place.

Nay, go not thou to the red-roofed town
Lest the hoofs of the war-horse tread thee down.

But I would not go where the Squires ride,
I would only walk by my Lady's side.

Alack! and alack! thou art overbold,
A Forester's son may not eat off gold.

Will she love me the less that my Father is seen
Each Martinmas day in a doublet green?

Perchance she is sewing at tapestrie,
Spindle and loom are not meet for thee.

Ah, if she is working the arras bright
I might ravel the threads by the fire-light.

Perchance she is hunting of the deer,
How could you follow o'er hill and mere?

Ah, if she is riding with the court,
I might run beside her ...

I know there shall dawn a day
Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes full in play?

Is it here, with grass about,
Under befriending trees,
When shy buds venture out,
And the air by mild degrees
Puts winter’s death past doubt?

Is it up amid whirl and roar
Of the elemental flame
Which star-flecks heaven’s dark floor,
That, new yet still the same,
Full in play comes Power once more?

Somewhere, below, above,
Shall a day dawn, this I know,
When Power, which vainly strove
My weakness to o’erthrow,
Shall triumph. I breathe, I move,

I truly am, at last!
For a veil is rent between
Me and the truth which passed
Fitful, half-guessed, half-seen,...

The little old poem that nobody reads
    Blooms in a crowded space,
Like a ground-vine blossom, so low in the weeds
    That nobody sees its face -
    Unless, perchance, the reader's eye
    Stares through a yawn, and hurries by,
    For no one wants, or loves, or heeds,
    The little old poem that nobody reads.

The little old poem that nobody reads
    Was written - where? - and when?
Maybe a hand of goodly deeds
    Thrilled as it held the pen:
    Maybe the fountain whence it came
    Was a heart brimmed o'er with tears of shame,
    And maybe its creed is the worst of creeds -
    The little old poem that nobody reads.

But, little old poem that nobody reads,
    Holding you here above
The wound of a heart that warmly bleeds
  ...

Now we had left the angel, who had turn'd
To the sixth circle our ascending step,
One gash from off my forehead raz'd: while they,
Whose wishes tend to justice, shouted forth:
"Blessed!" and ended with, "I thirst:" and I,
More nimble than along the other straits,
So journey'd, that, without the sense of toil,
I follow'd upward the swift-footed shades;
When Virgil thus began: "Let its pure flame
From virtue flow, and love can never fail
To warm another's bosom' so the light
Shine manifestly forth. Hence from that hour,
When 'mongst us in the purlieus of the deep,
Came down the spirit of Aquinum's hard,
Who told of thine affection, my good will
Hath been for thee of quality as strong
As ever link'd itself to one not seen.
Therefore these stairs will now see...

Oh! Arranmore, loved Arranmore,
    How oft I dream of thee,
And of those days when, by thy shore,
    I wandered young and free.
Full many a path I've tried, since then,
    Thro' pleasure's flowery maze,
But ne'er could find the bliss again
    I felt in those sweet days.

How blithe upon thy breezy cliffs,
    At sunny morn I've stood,
With heart as bounding as the skiffs
    That danced along thy flood;
Or, when the western wave grew bright
    With daylight's parting wing,
Have sought that Eden in its light,
    Which dreaming poets sing;[1]--

That Eden where the immortal brave
    Dwell in a land serene,--
Whose bowers beyond the shining wave,
    At sunset, oft are seen.
Ah dream too full of saddening truth!

What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating

Tritemius of Herbipolis, one day,
While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from without a miserable voice,
A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,
As of a lost soul crying out of hell.

Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby
His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;
And, looking from the casement, saw below
A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,
And withered hands held up to him, who cried
For alms as one who might not be denied.

She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave
His life for ours, my child from bondage save,
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves
In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves
Lap the white walls of Tunis!" "What I can
I give," Tritemiu...

When low and heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit moaning in ennui,
And when, spanning the circle of the world,
It pours a black day sadder than our nights;

When earth is changed into a sweaty cell,
In which Hope, captured, like a frantic bat,
Batters the walls with her enfeebled wing,
Striking her head against the rotting beams;

When steady rain trailing its giant train
Descends on us like heavy prison bars,
And when a silent multitude of spiders
Spins its disgusting threads deep in our brains,

Bells all at once jump out with all their force,
And hurl about a mad cacophony
As if they were those lost and homeless souls
Who send a dogged whining to the skies.

And long corteges minus drum or tone
Deploy morosely through my bei...

I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion: reasonings like vast serpents
Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.

I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,
Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each o...

I did not know that life could be so sweet,
I did not know the hours could speed so fleet,
Till I knew you, and life was sweet again.
The days grew brief with love and lack of pain--

I was a slave a few short days ago,
The powers of Kings and Princes now I know;
I would not be again in bondage, save
I had your smile, the liberty I crave.

Think not some knowledge rests with thee alone;
    Why, even God's stupendous secret, Death,
    We one by one, with our expiring breath,
Do pale with wonder seize and make our own;
The bosomed treasures of the earth are shown,
    Despite her careful hiding; and the air
    Yields its mysterious marvels in despair
To swell the mighty store-house of things known.
In vain the sea expostulates and raves;
    It cannot cover from the keen world's sight
    The curious wonders of its coral caves.
And so, despite thy caution or thy tears,
The prying fingers of detective years
    Shall drag thy secret out into the light.

1.

Your pardon, my friend,
If my rhymes did offend,
Your pardon, a thousand times o'er;
From friendship I strove,
Your pangs to remove,
But, I swear, I will do so no more.


2.

Since your beautiful maid,
Your flame has repaid,
No more I your folly regret;
She's now most divine,
And I bow at the shrine,
Of this quickly reformèd coquette.


3.

Yet still, I must own,
I should never have known,
From your verses, what else she deserv'd;
Your pain seem'd so great,
I pitied your fate,
As your fair was so dev'lish reserv'd.


4.

Since the balm-breathing kiss
Of this magical Miss,
Can such wonderful transports produce;
Since the "world you forget,
When your lips once...

I'll rest me in this sheltered bower,
And look upon the clear blue sky
That smiles upon me through the trees,
Which stand so thickly clustering by;

And view their green and glossy leaves,
All glistening in the sunshine fair;
And list the rustling of their boughs,
So softly whispering through the air.

And while my ear drinks in the sound,
My winged soul shall fly away;
Reviewing long departed years
As one mild, beaming, autumn day;

And soaring on to future scenes,
Like hills and woods, and valleys green,
All basking in the summer's sun,
But distant still, and dimly seen.

Oh, list! 'tis summer's very breath
That gently shakes the rustling trees,
But look! the snow is on the ground,
How can I think of scenes like these?

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...