Identity

        I

        I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
        After a year of silence, else I think
        I should not so have ventured forth alone
        At dusk upon this unfrequented road.


        II

        I am waylaid by Beauty.    Who will walk
        Between me and the crying of the frogs?
        Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
        That am a timid woman, on her way
        From one house to another!

Astounded, to the guardian of my steps
I turn'd me, like the chill, who always runs
Thither for succour, where he trusteth most,
And she was like the mother, who her son
Beholding pale and breathless, with her voice
Soothes him, and he is cheer'd; for thus she spake,
Soothing me: "Know'st not thou, thou art in heav'n?
And know'st not thou, whatever is in heav'n,
Is holy, and that nothing there is done
But is done zealously and well? Deem now,
What change in thee the song, and what my smile
had wrought, since thus the shout had pow'r to move thee.
In which couldst thou have understood their prayers,
The vengeance were already known to thee,
Which thou must witness ere thy mortal hour,
The sword of heav'n is not in haste to smite,
Nor yet doth linger, save unto ...

Dear little Hut by the rice-fields circled,
That cocoa-nuts shade above.
I hear the voices of children singing,
And that means love.

When shall the traveller's march be over,
When shall his wandering cease?
This little homestead is bare and simple,
And that means peace.

Nay! to the road I am not unfaithful;
In tents let my dwelling be!
I am not longing for Peace or Passion
From any one else but thee,
My Krishna,
Any one else but thee!

The storm hath blown thee a lover, sweet,
And laid him kneeling at thy feet.
But, - guerdon rich for favor rare!
The wind hath all thy holy hair
To kiss and to sing through and to flare
Like torch-flames in the passionate air,
About thee, O Miranda.

Eyes in a blaze, eyes in a daze,
Bold with love, cold with amaze,
Chaste-thrilling eyes, fast-filling eyes
With daintiest tears of love's surprise,
Ye draw my soul unto your blue
As warm skies draw the exhaling dew,
Divine eyes of Miranda.

And if I were yon stolid stone,
Thy tender arm doth lean upon,
Thy touch would turn me to a heart,
And I would palpitate and start,
- Content, when thou wert gone, to be
A dumb rock by the lonesome sea
Forever, O Miranda.


Baltimore...

High stretched upon the swinging yard,
I gather in the sheet;
But it is hard
And stiff, and one cries haste.
Then He that is most dear in my regard
Of all the crew gives aidance meet;
But from His hands, and from His feet,
A glory spreads wherewith the night is starred:
Moreover of a cup most bitter-sweet
With fragrance as of nard,
And myrrh, and cassia spiced,
He proffers me to taste.
Then I to Him: ‘Art Thou the Christ?’
He saith, ‘Thou say’st.’

Like to an ox
That staggers ’neath the mortal blow,
She grinds upon the rocks:
Then straight and low
Leaps forth the levelled line, and in our quarter locks
The cradle’s rigged; with swerving of the blast
We go,
Our Captain last,
Demands
‘Who fired that shot?’ Each silent stan...

But born, and like a short delight,
I glided by my parents' sight.
That done, the harder fates denied
My longer stay, and so I died.
If, pitying my sad parents' tears,
You'll spill a tear or two with theirs,
And with some flowers my grave bestrew,
Love and they'll thank you for't. Adieu.

    Life ne'er exulted in so rich a prize
    As Burnet, lovely from her native skies;
    Nor envious death so triumph'd in a blow,
    As that which laid th' accomplish'd Burnet low.

    Thy form and mind, sweet maid, can I forget?
    In richest ore the brightest jewel set!
    In thee, high Heaven above was truest shown,
    As by his noblest work, the Godhead best is known.

    In vain ye flaunt in summer's pride, ye groves;
        Thou crystal streamlet with thy flowery shore,
    Ye woodland choir that chant your idle loves,
        Ye cease to charm, Eliza is no more!

    Ye heathy wastes, immix'd with reedy fens;
        Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd;
    Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens,
        To you I fly, ...

'Tis not my voice now speaks; but a bird
In darkling forest hollows a sweet throat -
Pleads on till distant echo too hath heard
And doubles every note:
So love that shrouded dwells in mystery
Would cry and waken thee.

Thou Solitary, stir in thy still sleep;
All the night waits thee, yet thou still dream'st on.
Furtive the shadows that about thee creep,
And cheat the shining footsteps of the moon:
Unseal thine eyes, it is my heart that sings,
And beats in vain its wings.

Lost in heaven's vague, the stars burn softly through
The world's dark latticings, we prisoned stray
Within its lovely labyrinth, and know
Mute seraphs guard the way
Even from silence unto speech, from love
To that self's self it still is dreaming of.

What though the sun had left my sky;
To save me from despair
The blessed moon arose on high,
And shone serenely there.

I watched her, with a tearful gaze,
Rise slowly o'er the hill,
While through the dim horizon's haze
Her light gleamed faint and chill.

I thought such wan and lifeless beams
Could ne'er my heart repay,
For the bright sun's most transient gleams
That cheered me through the day:

But as above that mist's control
She rose, and brighter shone,
I felt her light upon my soul;
But now, that light is gone!

Thick vapours snatched her from my sight,
And I was darkling left,
All in the cold and gloomy night,
Of light and hope bereft:

Until, methought, a little star
Shone forth with trembling ray,
...

To Scythian and Cantabrian plots,
Pay them no heed, O Quintius!
So long as we
From care are free,
Vexations cannot cinch us.

Unwrinkled youth and grace, forsooth,
Speed hand in hand together;
The songs we sing
In time of spring
Are hushed in wintry weather.

Why, even flow'rs change with the hours,
And the moon has divers phases;
And shall the mind
Be racked to find
A clew to Fortune's mazes?

Nay; 'neath this tree let you and me
Woo Bacchus to caress us;
We're old, 't is true,
But still we two
Are thoroughbreds, God bless us!

While the wine gets cool in yonder pool,
Let's spruce up nice and tidy;
Who knows, old boy,
But we may decoy
The fair but furtive Lyde?

She can execute on her ivory...

I.

    My Love is a lady fair and free,
    A lady fair from over the sea,
    And she hath eyes that pierce my breast
    And rob my spirit of peace and rest.


II.

    A youthful warrior, warm and young,
    She takes me prisoner with her tongue,
    Aye! and she keeps me, - on parole, -
    Till paid the ransom of my soul.


III.

    I swear the foeman, arm'd for war
    From cap-à-pie, with many a scar,
    More mercy finds for prostrate foe
    Than she who deals me never a blow.


IV.

    And so 'twill be, this many a day;
    She comes to wound, if not to slay.
    But in my dreams, - in honied sleep, -
    'Tis I to smile, and she to weep!

There never breathed a man who, when his life
Was closing, might not of that life relate
Toils long and hard. The warrior will report
Of wounds, and bright swords flashing in the field,
And blast of trumpets. He who hath been doomed
To bow his forehead in the courts of kings,
Will tell of fraud and never-ceasing hate,
Envy and heart-inquietude, derived
From intricate cabals of treacherous friends.
I, who on shipboard lived from earliest youth,
Could represent the countenance horrible
Of the vexed waters, and the indignant rage
Of Auster and Bootes. Fifty years
Over the well-steered galleys did I rule:
From huge Pelorus to the Atlantic pillars,
Rises no mountain to mine eyes unknown;
And the broad gulfs I traversed oft and oft:
Of every cloud which in the ...

In the unquiet night,
With all her beauty bright,
She walketh my silent chamber to and fro;
Not twice of the same mind,
Sometimes unkind - unkind,
And again no cooing dove hath a voice so sweet and low.

Such madness of mirth lies
In the haunting hazel eyes,
When the melody of her laugh charms the listening night;
Its glamour as of old
My charmed senses hold,
Forget I earth and heaven in the pleasures of sense and sight.

With sudden gay caprice
Quaint sonnets doth she seize,
Wedding them unto sweetness, falling from crimson lips;
Holding the broidered flowers
Of those enchanted hours,
When she wound my will with her silk round her white finger-tips.

Then doth she silent stand,
Lifting her slender hand,
On which gleams the r...

She sang a song of May for me,
Wherein once more I heard
The mirth of my glad infancy -
The orchard's earliest bird -
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and bloom,
And there the happy honey-bees
In dewy gleam and gloom.

So purely, sweetly on the sense
Of heart and spirit fell
Her song of Spring, its influence -
Still irresistible, -
Commands me here - with eyes ablur -
To mate her bright refrain.
Though I but shed a rhyme for her
As dim as Autumn rain.

'We' have not passed into a doleful City,
We who were led to-day down a grim dell,
By some too boldly named "the Jaws of Hell:"
Where be the wretched ones, the sights for pity?
These crowded streets resound no plaintive ditty:
As from the hive where bees in summer dwell,
Sorrow seems here excluded; and that knell,
It neither damps the gay, nor checks the witty.
Alas! too busy Rival of old Tyre,
Whose merchants Princes were, whose decks were thrones;
Soon may the punctual sea in vain respire
To serve thy need, in union with that Clyde
Whose nursling current brawls o'er mossy stones,
The poor, the lonely, herdsman's joy and pride.

    There lives a goddess in the West,
        An island in death-lonesome seas;
    No towered towns are hers confessed,
        No castled forts and palaces.
    Hers, simple worshipers at best,
        The buds, the birds, the bees.

    And she hath wonder-worlds of song
        So heavenly beautiful, and shed
    So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
        The savage creatures, it is said,
    Hark marble-still their wilds among,
        And nightingales fall dead.

    I know her not, nor have I known;
        I only feel that she is there;
    For when my heart is most alone
        There broods communion on the air,
    Concedes an influence not its own,
        Miraculously fair.

    Then fain is it to sing and sing,
   ...

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.

The intoxicating laughter that fills his prison
with the absurd and the strange, swamps his reason.
Doubt surrounds him, and ridiculous fear,
hideous and multiform, circles near.

That genius pent up in a foul sty,
those spectres, those grimaces, the cries,
whirling, in a swarm, about his hair,

that dreamer, whom his lodging’s terrors bare,
such are your emblems, Soul, singer of songs obscure,
whom Reality suffocates behind four walls!

Fly, dearest, fly! He is not nigh!

He who found thee one fair morn in Spring

In the wood where thou thy flight didst wing.
Fly, dearest, fly! He is not nigh!
Never rests the foot of evil spy.

Hark! flutes' sweet strains and love's refrains

Reach the loved one, borne there by the wind,

In the soft heart open doors they find.
Hark! flutes' sweet strains and love's refrains,
Hark! yet blissful love their echo pains.

Erect his head, and firm his tread,

Raven hair around his smooth brow strays,

On his cheeks a Spring eternal plays.
Erect his head, and firm his tread,
And by grace his ev'ry step is led.

Happy his breast, with pureness bless'd,

And the dark eyes 'neath his eyebrows placed,

With fu...