Identity

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky;
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound,
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground.

A dark-haired woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight;
Her merry eye is full and black, her cheek is brown and bright;
Her gown is of the mid-sea blue, her belt with beads is strung,
And yet she speaks in gentle tones, and in the English tongue.

"It was an idle bolt I sent, against the villain crow;
Fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand; beshrew my erring bow!"
"Ah! would that bolt had not been spent! then, lady, might I wear
A lasting token on my hand of one so passing fair!"

"Thou art a flatterer like th...

The Eternal Female groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers and mutter across the ocean! France rend down thy dungeon;
Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,
And weep!
In her trembling hands she took the new, born terror howling;
On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and
[PL 26]hurl'd the new born wonder th...

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
--Goldsmith.


I fear the palace of the rich,
    I fear the hovel of the poor;
Though fortified by moat and ditch,
    The castle strong could not endure;
Nor can the squalid hovel be
    A source of strength, and those who cause
This widening discrepancy
    Infringe on God's eternal laws.

The heritage of man, the earth,
    Was framed for homes, not vast estates;
A lowering scale of human worth
    Each generation demonstrates,
Which feels the landlord's iron hand,
    And hopeless, plod with effort brave;
Who love no home can love no land;
    These own no home, until the grave.

The nation's strongest safeguards lie
In free...

To sit and dream in a shady nook
While the phantom clouds roll by;
To con some long-remembered book
When the pulse of youth beats high.

To thrill when the dying sunset glows
Through the heart of a mystic wood,
To drink the sweetness of some wild rose,
And to find the whole world good.

To bring unto others joy and mirth,
And keep what friends you can;
To learn that the rarest gift on earth
Is the love of your fellow man.

To hold the respect of those you know,
To scorn dishonest pelf;
To sympathize with another's woe,
And just be true to yourself.

To find that a woman's honest love
In this great world of strife
Gleams steadfast like a star, above
The dark morass of life.

To feel a baby's clinging hand,
To wa...

I came to you quietly when you were lying
In perfect midnight sleep.
Your dark soft hair was all about your pillow,
So black upon the white.
I could not see your face except the lovely
Curve of the pale cheek;
Your head was bent as though your stirless slumber
Was sea-like heavy and deep.
The wind came gently in at the wide window,
Shaking the candle-light
And shadows on the wall; and there was silence,
Or sound but far and weak.
By the bedside your daytime toys were gathered:
The bright bell-ringing wheel,
Dolls clad in violent yellow and vermilion,
Strings of gay-coloured beads....
But you were far and far from these beside you,
Entranced with other joys
In fresh fields, among other children running:
Your voice, I knew, must peal
Purely a...

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,
Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias’ cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,
Shore end of our western cable,
Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliffs off Beechey’s coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately Polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tu...

Dimmi di grazia, amor.


Nay, prithee tell me, Love, when I behold
        My lady, do mine eyes her beauty see
        In truth, or dwells that loveliness in me
        Which multiplies her grace a thousandfold?
Thou needs must know; for thou with her of old
        Comest to stir my soul's tranquillity;
        Yet would I not seek one sigh less, or be
        By loss of that loved flame more simply cold.--
The beauty thou discernest, all is hers;
        But grows in radiance as it soars on high
        Through mortal eyes unto the soul above:
'Tis there transfigured; for the soul confers
        On what she holds, her own divinity:
        And this transfigured beauty wins thy love.

Empty as death and slow as pain
The days went by on leaden feet;
And parson’s week had come again
As I walked down the little street.

Without, the weary doves were calling,
The sun burned on the banks of mud;
Within, old maids were caterwauling
A dismal tale of thorns and blood.

I thought of all the church bells ringing
In towns that Christian folks were in;
I heard the godly maidens singing;
I turned into the house of sin.

The house of sin was dark & mean,
With dying flowers round the door;
They spat their betel juice between
The rotten bamboos of the floor.

Why did I come, the woman cried,
So seldom to her beds of ease?
When I was not, her spirit died,
And would I give her ten rupees.

The weeks went by, a...

The moon begins her stately ride
Across the summer sky;
The happy wavelets lash the shore,--
The tide is rising high.

Beneath some friendly blade of grass
The lazy beetle cowers;
The coffers of the air are filled
With offerings from the flowers.

And slowly buzzing o'er my head
A swallow wings her flight;
I hear the weary plowman sing
As falls the restful night.

I heard a voice, that cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.

I saw the pallid corpse
Of the dead sun
Borne through the Northern sky.
Blasts from Niffelheim
Lifted the sheeted mists
Around him as he passed.

And the voice forever cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And died away
Through the dreary night,
In accents of despair.

Balder the Beautiful,
God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the Gods!
Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior's sword.

All things in earth and air
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones;<...

Dear absurd child - too dear to my cost I've found -
God made your soul for pleasure, not for use:
It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse,
Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound
Full upon life, and on the rind of things
Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore
And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings,
Content with that, nor wishes anything more.

A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice
Of peaches that flush bloody at the core,
Naked you bask upon a south-sea shore,
While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose.

The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round
With the song of wheeling planetary rings:
You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings
Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound.

You taste and smile, then...

    With kindly thought I'd give, Oh Censorinus,
        Bowls and bronze vases pleasing to each friend;
    Tripods I'd offer, prizes of brave Grecians,
        And not the worst of gifts to you I'd send
    Were I, forsooth, rich in such artist's treasure
        As Scopas and Parrhasius could convey,
    This one in stone, and that in liquid color,
        Skilled here a man, - a god there to portray.
    But mine no power like this, nor does your spirit
        Or your affairs need luxuries so choice.
    Songs we can give, and on the gift set value,
        Songs we can give, and you in songs rejoice.
    Not marble carved with popular inscriptions
        Whereby the spirit and the life return
    After their death unto our upright leaders,
        Nor Hannib...

Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay
Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam,
I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay
Most idly floating in the noontide beam.
Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway
Of ocean's giant pulsing, and the Dream,
Buoyed like the young moon on a level stream
Of greenish vapour at decline of day,
Swam airily, watching the distant flocks
Of sea-gulls, whilst a foot in careless sweep
Touched the clear-trembling cool with tiny shocks,
Faint-circling; till at last he dropt asleep,
Lull'd by the hush-song of the glittering deep,
Lap-lapping drowsily the heated rocks.

Ah God, life, law, so many names you keep,
You great, you patient Effort, and you Sleep
That does inform this various dream of living,
You sleep stretched out for ever, ever giving
Us out as dreams, you august Sleep
Coursed round by rhythmic movement of all time,

The constellations, your great heart, the sun
Fierily pulsing, unable to refrain;
Since you, vast, outstretched, wordless Sleep
Permit of no beyond, ah you, whose dreams
We are, and body of sleep, let it never be said
I quailed at my appointed function, turned poltroon

For when at night, from out the full surcharge
Of a day's experience, sleep does slowly draw
The harvest, the spent action to itself;
Leaves me unburdened to begin again;
At night, I say, when I am gone in sleep,
Does m...

I had no cause to be awake,
My best was gone to sleep,
And morn a new politeness took,
And failed to wake them up,

But called the others clear,
And passed their curtains by.
Sweet morning, when I over-sleep,
Knock, recollect, for me!

I looked at sunrise once,
And then I looked at them,
And wishfulness in me arose
For circumstance the same.

'T was such an ample peace,
It could not hold a sigh, --
'T was Sabbath with the bells divorced,
'T was sunset all the day.

So choosing but a gown
And taking but a prayer,
The only raiment I should need,
I struggled, and was there.

    You wrote:
    "Come over to Saugatuck
    And be with me on the warm sand,
    And under cool beeches and aromatic cedars."
    And just then no one could do a thing in the city
    For the lure of far places, and something that tugged
    At one's heart because of a June sky,
    And stretches of blue water,
    And a warm wind blowing from the south.
    What could I do but take a boat
    And go to meet you?

    And when to-day is not enough,
    But you must live to-morrow also;
    And when the present stands in the way
    Of something to come,
    And there is but one you would see,
    All the interval of waiting is a wall.
    And so it was I walked the landward deck
    With flapping coat and hat pulled down;
    And I sat o...

Why dost thou, darksome Nightingale,
Sing so distractingly--and here?
Dawn's preludings prick my ear,
Faint light is creeping up the vale,
While on these dead thy rarer
Song falls, dark night-farer.

Were it not better thou shouldst sing
Where the drenched lilac droops her plume,
Spreading frail banners of perfume?
Or where the easeless pines enring
The river-lullèd village
Whose lads the lilac pillage?

Oh, if aught songful these hid bones
Might reach, like the slow subtle rain,
Surely the dead had risen again
And listened, white by the white stones;
Back to rich life song-charmed,
By ghostly joys alarmed.

This may not be. And yet, oh still
Pour like night dew thy richer speech
Some late-lost youth perchance to reach,
...

    A child was born in sin and shame,
    Wronged by his very birth,
    Without a home, without a name,
    One over in the earth.

    No wifely triumph he inspired,
    Allayed no husband's fear;
    Intruder bare, whom none desired,
    He had a welcome drear.

    Heaven's beggar, all but turned adrift
    For knocking at earth's gate,
    His mother, like an evil gift,
    Shunned him with sickly hate.

    And now the mistress on her knee
    The unloved baby bore,
    The while the servant sullenly
    Prepared to leave her door.

    Her eggs are dear to mother-dove,
    Her chickens to the hen;
    All young ones bring with them their love,
    Of sheep, or goats, or men!

    This one lone child shall no...