Identity

Play to the tender stops, though cheerily:
Gently, my soul, my song: let no one hear:
Sing to thyself alone; thine ecstasy
Rising in silence to the inward ear
That is attuned to silence: do not tell
A friend, a bird, a star, lest they should say -
He danced in woods and meadows all the day,
Waving his arms, and cried as evening fell,
'O, do not come,' and cried, 'O, come, thou queen,
And walk with me unwatched upon the green
    Under the sky.'

1711-12

This day (the year I dare not tell)
    Apollo play'd the midwife's part;
Into the world Corinna fell,
    And he endued her with his art.

But Cupid with a Satyr comes;
    Both softly to the cradle creep;
Both stroke her hands, and rub her gums,
    While the poor child lay fast asleep.

Then Cupid thus: "This little maid
    Of love shall always speak and write;"
"And I pronounce," the Satyr said,
    "The world shall feel her scratch and bite."

Her talent she display'd betimes;
    For in a few revolving moons,
She seem'd to laugh and squall in rhymes,
    And all her gestures were lampoons.

At six years old, the subtle jade
    Stole to the pantry-door, and found
The butler with my lady's maid:

Sir Launcelot rode overthwart and endlong in a wide forest, and held no path but as wild adventure led him... And he returned and came again to his horse, and took off his saddle and his bridle, and let him pasture; and unlaced his helm, and ungirdled his sword, and laid him down to sleep upon his shield before the cross.- Age of Chivalary

Grant

What shall we say of the soldier. Grant,
His sword put by and his great soul free?
How shall we cheer him now or chant
His requiem befittingly?
The fields of his conquest now are seen
Ranged no more with his armed men -
But the rank and file of the gold and green
Of the waving grain is there again.

Though his valiant life is a nation's pride,
And his death heroic and half divine,
And our grief as great as the worl...

    Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast
    The breast that fed thee - Death, disguiseless, stern;
    Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn,
    The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast
    Was once as thou, and fed with lips made fast
    On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn.
    Kingdoms debased, and thrones that starward yearn,
    All are but ghouls that batten on the past.

    Monstrous and dread, must it fore'er abide,
    This unescapable alternity?
        Must loveliness find root within decay,
        And night devour its flaming hues alway?
    Sickening, will Life not turn eventually,
    Or ravenous Death at last be satisfied?

Two little children sit by my side,
    I call them Lily and Daffodil;
I gaze on them with a mother's pride,
    One is Edna, the other is Will.

Both have eyes of starry light,
    And laughing lips o'er teeth of pearl.
I would not change for a diadem
    My noble boy and darling girl.

To-night my heart o'erflows with joy;
    I hold them as a sacred trust;
I fain would hide them in my heart,
    Safe from tarnish of moth and rust.

What should I ask for my dear boy?
    The richest gifts of wealth or fame?
What for my girl? A loving heart
    And a fair and a spotless name?

What for my boy? That he should stand
    A pillar of strength to the state?
What for my girl? That she should be
    The friend of the poor and desol...

On the bleakness of my lot
Bloom I strove to raise.
Late, my acre of a rock
Yielded grape and maize.

Soil of flint if steadfast tilled
Will reward the hand;
Seed of palm by Lybian sun
Fructified in sand.

White in the moonlight,
Wet with dew,
We have known the languor
Of being two.

We have been weary
As children are,
When over them, radiant,
A stooping star,

Bends their Good-Night,
Kissed and smiled:--
Each was mother,
Each was child.

Child, from your forehead
I kissed the hair,
Gently, ah, gently:
And you were

Mistress and mother
When on your breast
I lay so safely
And could rest.

    There is a wood where the fairies dance
    All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily,
    By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole,
    And the moon through the branches darts.

    Light on the grass their slim limbs glance,
    Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison,
    And the moon discovers that they all have lovers,
    But they never break their hearts.

    They never grieve at all for sands that run,
    They never know regret for a deed that's done,
    And they never think of going to a shed with a gun
    At the rising of the sun.

I.

Masks

Death rides black-masked to-night; and through the land
Madness beside him brandishes a torch.
The peaceful farmhouse with its vine-wreathed porch
Lies in their way. Death lifts a bony hand
And knocks, and Madness makes a wild demand
Of fierce Defiance: then the night's deep arch
Reverberates, and under beech and latch
A dead face stares; shot where one took his stand.
Then down the night wild hoofs; the darkness beats;
And like a torrent through the startled town
Destruction sweeps; high overhead a flame;
And Violence that shoots amid the streets.
A piercing whistle: one who gallops down:
And Death and Madness go the way they came.

II.

The Raid

Rain and black night. Beneath the covered bridge
The rushing F...

In summer, when the Cuckoo sings,
And clouds like greater moons can shine;
When every leafy tree doth hold
A loving heart that beats with mine:
Now, when the Brook has cresses green,
As well as stones, to check his pace;
And, if the Owl appears, he's forced
By small birds to some hiding-place:
Then, like red Robin in the spring,
I shun those haunts where men are found;
My house holds little joy until
Leaves fall and birds can make no sound;
Let none invade that wilderness
Into whose dark green depths I go,
Save some fine lady, all in white,
Comes like a pillar of pure snow.

As Love and I late harboured in one inn,
With Proverbs thus each other entertain.
"In love there is no lack," thus I begin:
"Fair words make fools," replieth he again.
    "Who spares to speak, doth spare to speed," quoth I.
"As well," saith he, "too forward as too slow."
"Fortune assists the boldest," I reply.
"A hasty man," quoth he, "ne'er wanted woe!"
    "Labour is light, where love," quoth I, "doth pay."
Saith he, "Light burden's heavy, if far born."
Quoth I, "The main lost, cast the by away!"
    "You have spun a fair thread," he replies in scorn.
    And having thus awhile each other thwarted,
    Fools as we met, so fools again we parted.

Flowers of France in the Spring,
Your growth is a beautiful thing;
But give us your fragrance and bloom -
Yea, give us your lives in truth,
Give us your sweetness and grace
To brighten the resting-place
Of the flower of manhood and youth,
Gone into the dust of the tomb.

This is the vast stupendous hour of Time,
When nothing counts but sacrifice and faith,
Service and self-forgetfulness.    Sublime
And awful are these moments charged with death
And red with slaughter.    Yet God's purpose thrives
In all this holocaust of human lives.

I say God's purpose thrives.    Just in the measure
That men have flung away their lust for gain,
Stopped in their mad pursuit of worldly pleasure,
And boldly faced unprecedented pain
And dangers, without thin...

Every thought is public,
Every nook is wide;
Thy gossips spread each whisper,
And the gods from side to side.

It's such a little thing to weep,
So short a thing to sigh;
And yet by trades the size of these
We men and women die!

    Here am I, little jumping Joan;
    When nobody's with me,
    I'm always alone.

The fields lie bare before me now,
The fruit is gathered in,
Not even seen a grazing cow,
Nor heard the blackbird's din.
The heath is brown, and ivy pale,
The woodbine berries red,
And withered leaves borne on the gale
Sink down on peaty bed.

At morn the fence was covered o'er
With a pale sheet of rime;
The earth was like a marble floor,
But now is turned to grime.
For Autumn rains are falling fast,
And swells the running brook;
The Indian Summer, too, is past;
For snowfall soon we look.

Io sentia dentr' al cor già venir meno.

HE DESIRES AGAIN TO GAZE ON THE EYES Of LAURA.


    I now perceived that from within me fled
Those spirits to which you their being lend;
And since by nature's dictates to defend
Themselves from death all animals are made,
The reins I loosed, with which Desire I stay'd,
And sent him on his way without a friend;
There whither day and night my course he'd bend,
Though still from thence by me reluctant led.
And me ashamed and slow along he drew
To see your eyes their matchless influence shower,
Which much I shun, afraid to give you pain.
Yet for myself this once I'll live; such power
Has o'er this wayward life one look from you:--
Then die, unless Desire prevails again.

ANON., OX., 1795.
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She laid her docile crescent down,
And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
The news that she is gone.

So constant to its stolid trust,
The shaft that never knew,
It shames the constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew.