Identity

What mortal, when he saw,
Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
‘I have kept uninfring’d my nature’s law;
The inly-written chart thou gayest me
To guide me, I have steer’d by to the end’?

Ah! let us make no claim
On life’s incognizable sea
To too exact a steering of our way!
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim
If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail’d us to keep company !

Aye, we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule!
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow’d in vain!
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance’s fool.

No! as the foaming swathe
Of torn-...

Oh that a Song would sing itself to me
    Out of the heart of Nature, or the heart
    Of man, the child of Nature, not of Art,
    Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea,
With just enough of bitterness to be
    A medicine to this sluggish mood, and start
    The life-blood in my veins, and so impart
    Healing and help in this dull lethargy!
Alas! not always doth the breath of song
    Breathe on us.    It is like the wind that bloweth
    At its own will, not ours, nor tarries long;
We hear the sound thereof, but no man knoweth
    From whence it comes, so sudden and swift and strong,
    Nor whither in its wayward course it goeth.

Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer,
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride; and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover, I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.

(HORACE'S ODES, III, I)

I hate the common, vulgar herd!
Away they scamper when I "booh" 'em!
But pretty girls and nice young men
Observe a proper silence when
I chose to sing my lyrics to 'em.

The kings of earth, whose fleeting pow'r
Excites our homage and our wonder,
Are precious small beside old Jove,
The father of us all, who drove
The giants out of sight, by thunder!

This man loves farming, that man law,
While this one follows pathways martial--
What moots it whither mortals turn?
Grim fate from her mysterious urn
Doles out the lots with hand impartial.

Nor sumptuous feasts nor studied sports
Delight the heart by care tormented;
The mightiest monarch knoweth not
The peace that to the lowly cot
Sleep bringeth to t...

They hear the bell of midnight toll,
And shiver in their flesh and soul;
They lie on hard, cold wood or stone,
Iron, and ache in every bone;
They hate the night: they see no eyes
Of loved ones in the starlit skies.
They see the cold, dark water near;
They dare not take long looks for fear
They'll fall like those poor birds that see
A snake's eyes staring at their tree.
Some of them laugh, half-mad; and some
All through the chilly night are dumb;
Like poor, weak infants some converse,
And cough like giants, deep and hoarse.

Great-hearted child, thy very being The Son,
    Who know'st the hearts of all us prodigals;--
For who is prodigal but he who has gone
    Far from the true to heart it with the false?--
    Who, who but thou, that, from the animals',
        Know'st all the hearts, up to the Father's own,
        Can tell what it would be to be alone!

Alone! No father!--At the very thought
    Thou, the eternal light, wast once aghast;
A death in death for thee it almost wrought!
    But thou didst haste, about to breathe thy last,
    And call'dst out Father ere thy spirit passed,
        Exhausted in fulfilling not any vow,
        But doing his will who greater is than thou.

That we might know him, thou didst come and live;
    That we might find him, ...

Beautiful Boy--thy heavenward thoughts
Are pictured in thine eyes,
Thou hast no taint of mortal birth,
Thy communing is not of earth,
Thy holy musings rise:
Like incense kindled from on high,
Ascending to its native sky.

And such a head might once have graced
The infant Samuel, when
Call'd by the favour of his God,
The youthful priest the Temple trod
Beloved of Heaven and men!
The same devotion on his brow
As brightens in thy forehead now.

Or, thou may'st seem to Fancy's eye
One borne by arms Divine;
One, whom on Earth a Saviour bless'd,
And on whose features left impress'd
The Contact's holy sign:
A light, a halo, and a grace,
So pure th' expression of that face.

Or, has the Painter's skill alone
Such gra...

"To Be Filed For Reference", Plain Tales From the Hills



By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the Sun
Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost,
So she fell from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Now the fall was ordained from the first
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
But the Stone
Knows only her life is accursed
As she sinks from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Oh Thou Who hast builded the World,
Oh Thou Who hast lighted the Sun,
Oh Thou Who hast darkened the Tarn,
Judge Thou
The sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the goat from the light of the Sun,
As she sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
Even now, even now, even now!

I love the little daisies on the lawn
Which contemplate with wide and placid eyes
The blue and white enamel of the skies -
The larks which sing their mattin-song at dawn,
High o'er the earth, and see the new Day born,
All stained with amethyst and amber dyes.
I love the shadowy woodland's hidden prize
Of fragrant violets, which the dewy morn

Doth open gently underneath the trees
To cast elusive perfume on each hour -
The waving clover, full of drowsy bees,
That take their murmurous way from flower to flower.
Who could but think - deep in some sun-flecked glade -
How God must love these things that He has made?

Eastchurch, 1916.

Prometheus, when first from heaven high
He brought down fire, till then on earth not seen;
Fond of delight, a satyr, standing by,
Gave it a kiss, as it like sweet had been.

Feeling forthwith the other burning power,
Wood with the smart, with shouts and shrieking shrill,
He sought his ease in river, field, and bower;
But, for the time, his grief went with him still.

So silly I, with that unwonted sight,
In human shape an angel from above,
Feeding mine eyes, th' impression there did light;
That since I run and rest as pleaseth love:
The difference is, the satyr's lips, my heart,
He for a while, I evermore, have smart.

Come now, my Muse, do thou inspire my pen,
To sing, with worthy strain, my country's praise,
But not to hide the faults within my ken,
By tricks of art, or studied, verbal maze,
To play on him who reads with careless gaze,
To whom each thought upon a printed page.
Is gospel truth, nor e'er with wile betrays;
From this, oh, steer me clear, nor let the rage
Of prejudic'd and narrow minds, my thoughts engage.

Oh, Canada! the land where first I saw
The blue of heav'n, and bursting light of day,
Where breezes warm and mild, and breezes raw,
First o'er my boyhood's eager face did play,
As o'er the hills I stepp'd my joyful way.
Held by a loving hand, I went along
Thro' shelter'd wood, or by some shaded bay,
And ever, as I went, I sang a song,
With sylvan ...

1

"There is no God," one said,
    And love is lust;
When I am dead I'm dead,
    And all is dust.

"Be merry while you can
    Before you're gray;
With some wild courtesan
    Drink care away."


2

One said, "A God there is,
    And God is love;
Death is not death, but bliss,
    And life above.

"Above all flesh is mind;
    And faith and truth
God's gifts to poor mankind
    That make life youth."


3

One from a harlot's side
Arose at morn;
One cursing God had died
That night forlorn.

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile;
‘T is hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on ...

I

Frost upon small rain the ebony-lacquered avenue
Reflecting lamps as a pool shows goldfish.
The sight suddenly emptied out of the young man's eyes
Entering upon it sideways.

II

In youth, by hazard, I killed an old man.
In age I maimed a little child.
Dead leaves under foot reproach not:
But the lop-sided cherry-branch whenever the sun rises,
How black a shadow!

Annie - Oh! what a weary while
It seems since that sad day;
When whispering a fond "good bye,"
I tore myself away.
And yet, 'tis only two short years;
How has it seemed to thee?
To me, those lonesome years appear
Like an eternity.

We loved, - Ah, me! how much we loved;
How happy passed the day
When pouring forth enraptured vows,
The charmed hours passed away.
In every leaf we beauty saw, -
In every song and sound,
Some sweet entrancing melody,
To soothe our hearts we found.

And now it haunts me as a dream, -
A thing that could not be! -
That one so pure and beautiful
Could ever care for me.
But I still have the nut-brown curl,
Which tells me it is true;
And in my fancy I can see
The brow where once it grew.
<...

His step was light, and his looks as bright
As the beams of the morning sun,
And his boyish dreams, as the rippling streams
That gently onward run,
Without a shock from rugged rock
To check their course of glee,
As they wound their way, day after day,
To their destin'd goal, the sea.

He had come from the schools brimful of rules,
His head and note-book cramm'd
With varied lore; from many a shore
Pack'd solid in, e'en jamm'd.

He'd learn'd a part of many an art,
Had studied mathematics,
And thought he knew how people grew,
In palaces or attics.

He'd scann'd the page of many a sage,
And did his mind adorn
With classic sweets, and varied treats,
Preserv'd ere he was born.
"And now," says he, "upon life's sea,
I'll steer m...

A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her ...

Begone, ye Critics, and restrain your spite,
Codrus writes on, and will for ever write,
The heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone,
As clocks run fastest when most lead is on;
What tho' no bees around your cradle flew,
Nor on your lips distill'd their golden dew;
Yet have we oft discover'd in their stead
When you, like Orpheus, strike the warbling lyre.
Attentive blocks stand round you and admire.
Wit pass'd through thee no longer is the same,
As meat digested takes a diff'rent name;
But sense must sure thy safest plunder be,
Since no reprisals can be made on thee.
Thus thou may'st rise, and in thy daring flight
(Though ne'er so weighty) reach a wondrous height.
So, forced from engines, lead itself can fly,
Sure Bavius copied Maevius to the full,
And ...