Identity

I would be ignorant as the dawn
That has looked down
On that old queen measuring a town
With the pin of a brooch,
Or on the withered men that saw
From their pedantic Babylon
The careless planets in their courses,
The stars fade out where the moon comes,
And took their tablets and did sums;
I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw—
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

        Why art thou sad, my Beppo? But last eve,
    Here at my feet, thy dear head on my breast,
        I heard thee say thy heart would no more grieve
    Or feel the olden ennui and unrest.

        What troubles thee? Am I not all thine own? -
    I, so long sought, so sighed for and so dear?
        And do I not live but for thee alone?
    "Thou hast seen Lippo, whom I loved last year!"

        Well, what of that? Last year is naught to me -
    'Tis swallowed in the ocean of the past.
        Art thou not glad 'twas Lippo, and not thee,
    Whose brief bright day in that great gulf was cast.
        Thy day is all before thee. Let no cloud,
    Here in the very morn of our delight,
        Drift up from distant foreign skies, to shroud
  ...

The birds put off their every hue
To dress a room for Montagu.
The peacock sends his heavenly dyes,
His rainbows and his starry eyes;
The pheasant plumes, which round enfold
His mantling neck with downy gold;
The cock his arch’d tail’s azure show;
And, river-blanch’d, the swan his snow.
All tribes beside of Indian name,
That glossy shine, or vivid flame,
Where rises, and where sets the day,
Whate’er they boast of rich and gay,
Contribute to the gorgeous plan,
Proud to advance it all they can.
This plumage neither dashing shower,
Nor blasts, that shake the dripping bower,
Shall drench again or discompose,
But, screen’d from every storm that blows,
It boasts a splendour ever new,
Safe with protecting Montagu.
To the same patroness resort,

For a while the salt brine leaves me
O'er my terraced rocks to fall,
And my broad swift-gliding waters
Olden memories recall.

Ere the tallest pines were seedlings
With my life-stream these were blent;
As a father's words, like arrows
Straight to children's hearts are sent,

So my currents speeding downwards,
Ever passing, sing the same
Story of the days remembered,
When the stranger people came.

Men of mighty limbs and voices,
Bearing shining shields and knives,
Painted gleamed their hair like evening,
When the sun in ocean dives.

Blue their eyes and tall their stature,
Huge as Indian shadows seen
When the sun through mists of morning
Casts them o'er a clear lake's sheen.

From before the great Pale-faces
Fl...

!Full Chorus.
To Him Who bade the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion,
To Him Who tames the moonstruck tide twice a day round Ocean,
Let His Names be magnified in all poor folks’ devotion!

Powers and Gifts.
Not for Prophecies or Powers, Visions, Gifts, or Graces,
But the unregardful hours that grind us in our places
With the burden on our backs, the weather in our faces.

Toils.
Not for any Miracle of easy Loaves and Fishes,
But for doing, ’gainst our will, work against our wishes,
Such as finding food to fill daily-emptied dishes.

Glories.
Not for Voices, Harps or Wings or rapt illumination,
But the grosser Self that springs of use and occupation,
Unto which the Spirit clings as her last salvation.

Powers, Glories, Toils, and...

The greater and the lesser ills:
    He waved his grey hand wearily
    Back to the anger of the sea,
Then forward to the blue of hills.

Out from the shattered barquenteen
    The black frieze-coated sailors bore
    Their dying despot to the shore
And wove a crazy palanquin.

They found a valley where the rain
    Had worn the fern-wood to a paste
    And tiny streams came down in haste
To eastward of the mountain chain.

And here was handiwork of Cretes,
    And olives grew beside a stone,
    And one slim phallos stood alone
Blasphemed at by the paroquets.

Hard by a wall of basalt bars
    The night came like a settling bird,
    And here he wept and slept and stirred
Faintly beneath the turning stars.

...

O teares! no teares, but raine, from Beauties skies,
Making those lillies and those roses growe,
Which ay most faire, now more then most faire shew,
While gracefull Pitty Beautie beautifies.
O honied sighs! which from that breast do rise,
Whose pants do make vnspilling creame to flow,
Wing'd with whose breath, so pleasing Zephires blow.
As might refresh the hell where my soule fries.
O plaints! conseru'd in such a sugred phrase,
That Eloquence itself enuies your praise,
While sobd-out words a perfect musike giue.
Such teares, sighs, plaints, no sorrow is, but ioy:
Or if such heauenly signes must proue annoy,
All mirth farewell, let me in sorrow liue.

The word is writ that he who runs may read.
What is the passing breath of earthly fame?
But to snatch glory from the hands of blame--
That is to be, to live, to strive indeed.
A poor Virginia cabin gave the seed,
And from its dark and lowly door there came
A peer of princes in the world's acclaim,
A master spirit for the nation's need.
Strong, silent, purposeful beyond his kind,
The mark of rugged force on brow and lip,
Straight on he goes, nor turns to look behind
Where hot the hounds come baying at his hip;
With one idea foremost in his mind,
Like the keen prow of some on-forging ship.

Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger:
    Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray;
Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger
    Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.

Turn back the leaves of life; don't read the story, -
    Let's find the pictures, and fancy all the rest: -
We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory
    Than Old Time, the story-teller, at his very best!

Turn to the brook, where the honeysuckle, tipping
    O'er its vase of perfume spills it on the breeze,
And the bee and humming-bird in ecstacy are sipping
    From the fairy flagons of the blooming locust trees.

Turn to the lane, where we used to "teeter-totter,"
    Printing little foot-palms in the mellow mold,
Laughing at the lazy ca...

A modest youth, in love a simpleton,
When to escape myself I seek and shift,
Lady, I of my heart the humble gift
Vow unto thee. In trials many a one,
True, brave, I've found it, firm to things begun;
By gracious, prudent, worthy thoughts uplift.
When roars the great world, in the thunder-rift,
Its own self, armour adamant, it will don,
From chance and envy as securely barred,
From fears and hopes that still the crowd abuse,
As inward gifts and high worth coveting,
And the resounding lyre, and every Muse:
There only wilt thou find it not so hard
Where Love hath fixed his ever cureless sting.

I.

White art thou, O Lilith! as the foam that glimmers and quivers,
Glitters and clingingly silvers and snows from the balm
Of the beautiful breasts of the nymphs of the seas and rivers
That crystal and pearl by clusters of tropical palm,
Forests of tenebrous palm.
Once didst thou beckon and smile, O Lilith! as givers
Of heavenly gifts smile: and, lo! my heart no longer was calm.

II.

Cruel art thou, O Lilith! as spirits that battle
In tempest and night, in ultimate realms of the Earth;
Immaterial hosts, that shimmer and shout and rattle
Elemental armour and drive, with madness and mirth,
Down from the mountains, into the sea, like cattle,
Gaunt and glacial cattle,
Congealed thunder, the icebergs, gigantic of girth.

III.

Subtl...

    It seemed that from the west
    The live red flame of sunset,
    Eating the dead blue sky
    And cold insensate peaks,
    Was loosened slowly, and fell.
    Above it, a few red stars
    Burned down like low candle-flames
    Into the gaunt black sockets
    Of the chill insensible mountains.
    But in the ascendant skies
    (Cloudless, like some vast corpse
    Unfeatured, cerementless)
    Succeeded nor star nor planet.
    It may have been that black,
    Pulseless, dead stars arose
    And crossed as of old the heavens.
    But came no living orb,
    Nor comet seeming the ghost,
    Homeless, of an outcast world,
    Seeking its former place
    That is no more nor shall be
    In all the Cosmos again.
    Null, bla...

The age is too diffusive.    Time and Force
    Are frittered out and bring no satisfaction.
    The way seems lost to straight determined action.
    Like shooting stars that zig-zag from their course
    We wander from our orbit's pathway; spoil
The role we're fitted for, to fail in twenty.
Bring empty measures, that were shaped for plenty,
    At last as guerdon for a life of toil.
There's lack of greatness in this generation
    Because no more man centres on one thought.
    We know this truth, and yet we heed it not:
The secret of success is Concentration.

    And I thought of things,
    things that come in small clutches,
    tiny memories,
    thoughts evoking the
    approach of time or
    footsteps about to open graves.
    More things than the troubled
    single entities we attach to them;
    things marbled with the elasticity of rain,
    rumours of war, pitch black leaves in the
    bottom of a pond where the whelp of a dog
    tries to outrun night.

A fire of fierce and laughing light
That clove the shuddering heart of night
Leapt earthward, and the thunder's might
That pants and yearns
Made fitful music round its flight:
And earth saw Burns.
The joyous lightning found its voice
And bade the heart of wrath rejoice
And scorn uplift a song to voice
The imperial hate
That smote the God of base men's choice
At God's own gate.
Before the shrine of dawn, wherethrough
The lark rang rapture as she flew,
It flashed and fired the darkling dew:
And all that heard
With love or loathing hailed anew
A new day's word.
The servants of the lord of hell,
As though their lord had blessed them, fell
Foaming at mouth for fear, so well
They knew the lie
Wherewith they sought to scan and spell

Hallo, Metropolitan -
Ubiquitous windows staring all ways,
Red eye notching the darkness.
No use to ogle that slip of a moon.
This midnight the moon,
Playing virgin after all her encounters,
Will break another date with you.
You fuss an awful lot,
You flight of ledger books,
Overrun with multiple ant-black figures
Dancing on spindle legs
An interminable can-can.
But I'd rather... like the cats in the alley... count time
By the silver whistle of a moonbeam
Falling between my stoop-shouldered walls,
Than all your tally of the sunsets,
Metropolitan, ticking among stars.

Raise the light a little, Jim,
For it's getting rather dim,
And, with such a storm a-howlin', 'twill not do to douse the glim.
Hustle down the curtains, Lu;
Poke the fire a little, Su;
This is somethin' of a flurry, mother, somethin' of a - whew!

Goodness gracious, how it pours!
How it beats ag'in the doors!
You will have a hard one, Jimmy, when you go to do the chores!
Do not overfeed the gray;
Give a plenty to the bay;
And be careful with your lantern when you go among the hay.

See the horses have a bed
When you've got 'em fairly fed;
Feed the cows that's in the stable, and the sheep that's in the shed;
Give the spotted cow some meal,
Where the brindle can not steal;
For she's greedy as a porker, and as slipp'ry as an eel.

Hang yo...

I.

White-shrouded, latest-born of all the year,
    In thy cold hands no bud or floweret bearing,
Thou comest now to wail above the bier
    Of thy dead sisters--on thy bosom wearing
The icy jewel and the frosted gem--
But on thy marble brow the Star of Bethlehem!


II.

Beneath thy foot-prints lie the Autumn leaves,
    Mould'ring and hast'ning to decay;
And where the drifting snow its mantle weaves
    The Summer songsters sang the happy hours away.
What tho' the birds have flown the blighted stem?
There's in thy jeweled crown the Star of Bethlehem!