Identity

All I can say is, I saw it!
The room was as bare as your hand.
I locked in the swarth little lady, I swear,
From the head to the foot of her, well, quite as bare!
“No Nautch shall cheat me,” said I, “taking my stand
At this bolt which I draw!” And this bolt, I withdraw it,
And there laughs the lady, not bare, but embowered
With, who knows what verdure, o’erfruited, o’erflowered?
Impossible! Only, I saw it!

All I can sing is, I feel it!
This life was as blank as that room;
I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed?
Walls, ceiling and floor, not a chance for a weed!
Wide opens the entrance: where’s cold now, where’s gloom?
No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal it,
Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bringing,
These fruits of your bearing, na...

Great dignity ever attends great grief,
And silently walks beside it;
And I always know when I see such woe
That Invisible Helpers guide it.
And I know deep sorrow is like a tide,
It cannot ever be flowing;
The high-water mark in the night and the dark -
Then dawn, and the outward going.

But the people who pull at my heart-strings hard
Are the ones whom destiny hurries
Through commonplace ways to the end of their days,
And pesters with paltry worries.
The peddlers who trudge with a budget of wares
To the door that is slammed unkindly;
The vendor who stands with his shop in his hands
Where the hastening hosts pass blindly;

The woman who holds in her poor flat purse
The price of her rent-room only,
While her starved eye feeds on the comfort...

'Tis time to dress.    Dost hear the music surging
    Like sobbing waves that roll up from the sea?
Yes, yes, I hear -I yield -no need of urging;
    I know your wishes, -send Lisette to me.

I hate the ballroom; hate its gilded pleasure;
    I hate the crowd within it, well you know;
But what of that?    I am your lawful treasure -
    And when you would display me I must go.

You bought me with a mother's pain and trouble.
    I've been a great expense to you alway.
And now, if you can sell me, and get double
    The sum I cost -why, what have I to say?

You've done your duty: kept me in the fashion,
    And shown me off at every stylish place.
'Twas not your fault I had a heart of passion;
    'Twas not your fault I ever saw his face.

Nay, let us gaze, ev'n till the sense is full,
Upon the rich creation, shadowed so
That not great Nature, in her loftiest pomp
Of living beauty, ever on the sight
Rose more magnificent; nor aught so fair
Hath Fancy, in her wildest, brightest mood,
Imaged of things most lovely, when the sounds
Of this cold cloudy world at distance sink,
And all alone the warm idea lives
Of what is great, or beautiful, or good,
In Nature's general plan.
So the vast scope,
O Rubens! of thy mighty mind, and such
The fervour of thy pencil, pouring wide
The still illumination, that the mind
Pauses, absorbed, and scarcely thinks what powers
Of mortal art the sweet enchantment wrought.
She sees the painter, with no human touch,
Create, embellish, animate at will,
The mi...

Great clouds of sullen seal and gold
Bar bleak the tawny west,
From which all day the-thunder rolled,
And storm streamed, crest on crest.

Now silvery in its deeps of bronze
The new moon fills its sphere;
And point by point the darkness dons
Its pale stars there and here.

But still behind the moon and stars,
The peace of heaven, remains
Suspicion of the wrath that wars,
That Nature now restrains.

As, lined 'neath tiger eyelids, glare
The wild-beast eyes that sleep,
So smoulders in its sunset lair
The rage that rent the deep.

Who veileth love should first have vanquished fate.
    She folded up the dream in her deep heart,
    Her fair full lips were silent on that smart,
Thick fringèd eyes did on the grasses wait.
What good? one eloquent blush, but one, and straight
    The meaning of a life was known; for art
    Is often foiled in playing nature's part,
And time holds nothing long inviolate.
Earth's buried seed springs up - slowly, or fast:
The ring came home, that one in ages past
    Flung to the keeping of unfathomed seas:
    And golden apples on the mystic trees
Were sought and found, and borne away at last,
    Though watched of the divine Hesperides.

Because he had sinned and suffered, because he loved the land,
And because of his wonderful sympathy, he held men’s hearts in his hand.
Born and bred of the people, he knew their every whim,
And because he had struggled through poverty he could draw the poor to him:
Speaker and leader and poet, tall and handsome and strong,
With the eyes of a dog for faith and truth that blazed at the thought of a wrong.

They thought in his country’s crisis that his time had come at last,
For they measured his brilliant future by the light of his brilliant past.
At every monster meeting the thousands called his name,
And a burst of triumphant cheering greeted him when he came.
They had faith in the strength of a single man, when their fighting lines were weak,
And a pregnant silence fell on all ...

As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet
Breathes soft the Alpine rose,
So through life's desert springing sweet
The flower of friendship grows;
And as where'er the roses grow
Some rain or dew descends,
'T is nature's law that wine should flow
To wet the lips of friends.
Then once again, before we part,
My empty glass shall ring;
And he that has the warmest heart
Shall loudest laugh and sing.

They say we were not born to eat;
But gray-haired sages think
It means, Be moderate in your meat,
And partly live to drink.
For baser tribes the rivers flow
That know not wine or song;
Man wants but little drink below,
But wants that little strong.
Then once again, etc.

If one bright drop is like the gem
That decks a monarch's crown,

He was born far east of the Rockies
    Of a pet in society's van;
A wine-soaked daughter of pleasure
    Bred back and threw a man;
A man-child who grew up a stranger,
    Who never could learn the way
Of a people who gauge their pleasure
    On a line with the price they pay.

Just a shred of an education--
    A few years of college life,
A course in the card and wine room,
    A year with a chorus-girl wife,
Then disgust with a life unnatural
    Spurred on with the curse of the go,
He quitted that life forever
    For the land of the gold and snow.

The Lure of the Land had gripped him,
    The Land where you die if you fail;
The Land of the fabled fortunes,
    The Land of the endless trail.
The Land of the lonely silence,

Whoe'er thou art, approach, and, with a sigh,
Mark where the small remains of Greatness lie.[2]
There sleeps the dust of Him for ever gone;
How near the Scene where once his Glory shone!
And, tho' no more ascends the voice of Prayer,
Tho' the last footsteps cease to linger there,
Still, like an awful Dream that comes again,
Alas, at best, as transient and as vain,
Still do I see (while thro' the vaults of night
The funeral-song once more proclaims the rite)
The moving Pomp along the shadowy Isle,
That, like a Darkness, fill'd the solemn Pile;
The illustrious line, that in long order led,
Of those that lov'd Him living, mourn'd Him dead;
Of those, the Few, that for their Country stood
Round Him who dar'd be singularly good;
All, of all ranks, that claim'd Him f...

Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay
Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape;
Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape,
Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day;
Which stopped that band of travellers on their way,
Ere they were lost within the shady wood;
And showed the Bark upon the glassy flood
For ever anchored in her sheltering bay.
Soul-soothing Art! whom Morning, Noontide, Even,
Do serve with all their changeful pageantry;
Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime,
Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given
To one brief moment caught from fleeting time
The appropriate calm of blest eternity.

All round they murmur, 'O profane,
Keep thy heart's secret hid as gold';
But I, by God, would sooner be
Some knight in shattering wars of old,

In brown outlandish arms to ride,
And shout my love to every star
With lungs to make a poor maid's name
Deafen the iron ears of war.

Here, where these subtle cowards crowd,
To stand and so to speak of love,
That the four corners of the world
Should hear it and take heed thereof.

That to this shrine obscure there be
One witness before all men given,
As naked as the hanging Christ,
As shameless as the sun in heaven.

These whimperers--have they spared to us
One dripping woe, one reeking sin?
These thieves that shatter their own graves
To prove the soul is dead within.

They ...

I said: “I leave my bit of land,
In khaki they've entwined me,
I go abroad to lend a hand.”
Said she: “My love, I understand.
I will be true, and though we part
A thousand years you hold my heart",
The girl I left behind me.

I went away to fight the Huns,
No coward thought could bind me,
I sizzled n the tropic suns,
I faced the bayonets and the guns.
And when in daring deeds I shone
One little woman spurred me on,
The girl I left behind me.

Out there, in grim Gallipoli.
Hard going they assigned me,
I pricked the Turk up from the sea;
I riddled him, he punctured me;
And, bleeding in my rags, I said:
“She'll meet me somewhere if I'm dead,
The girl I left behind me.

In France we broke the German's face,
They tried w...

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how sh...

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.

See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet.

(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was ...

What thou thinkest, belongs to all; what thou feelest, is thine only.
Wouldst thou make him thine own, feel thou the God whom thou thinkest!

Of the dark past
A child is born;
With joy and grief
My heart is torn.

Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!

Young life is breathed
On the glass;
The world that was not
Comes to pass.

A child is sleeping:
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!

'Tis night: in silence looking down,
The Moon, from cloudless ether, sees
A Camp, and a beleaguered Town,
And Castle, like a stately crown
On the steep rocks of winding Tees;
And southward far, with moor between,
Hill-top, and flood, and forest green,
The bright Moon sees that valley small
Where Rylstone's old sequestered Hall
A venerable image yields
Of quiet to the neighbouring fields;
While from one pillared chimney breathes
The smoke, and mounts in silver wreaths.
The courts are hushed; for timely sleep
The greyhounds to their kennel creep;
The peacock in the broad ash tree
Aloft is roosted for the night,
He who in proud prosperity
Of colours manifold and bright
Walked round, affronting the daylight;
And higher still, above the bower