Identity

Between two kinds of food, both equally
Remote and tempting, first a man might die
Of hunger, ere he one could freely choose.
E'en so would stand a lamb between the maw
Of two fierce wolves, in dread of both alike:
E'en so between two deer a dog would stand,
Wherefore, if I was silent, fault nor praise
I to myself impute, by equal doubts
Held in suspense, since of necessity
It happen'd. Silent was I, yet desire
Was painted in my looks; and thus I spake
My wish more earnestly than language could.

As Daniel, when the haughty king he freed
From ire, that spurr'd him on to deeds unjust
And violent; so look'd Beatrice then.

"Well I discern," she thus her words address'd,
"How contrary desires each way constrain thee,
So that thy anxious thought is ...

The November sun invites me,
And although the chill wind smites me,
I will wander to the woodland
Where the laden trees await;
And with loud and joyful singing
I will set the forest ringing,
As if I were king of Autumn,
And Dame Nature were my mate,--

While the squirrel in his gambols
Fearless round about me ambles,
As if he were bent on showing
In my kingdom he'd a share;
While my warm blood leaps and dashes,
And my eye with freedom flashes,
As my soul drinks deep and deeper
Of the magic in the air.

There's a pleasure found in nutting,
All life's cares and griefs outshutting,
That is fuller far and better
Than what prouder sports impart.
Who could help a carol trilling
As he sees the baskets filling?
Why, the flow of ...

On nights like this, when bayou and lagoon
Dream in the moonlight's mystic radiance,
I seem to walk like one deep in a trance
With old-world myths born of the mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose
Smile into mine; and breasts of luring light,
And tresses streaming golden to the night,
Persuade me onward where the forest glows.

And then it seems along the haunted hills
There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

And then I feel her limbs will be revealed
Like some great snow-white moth among the trees;
Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seize
And dance me downward where my doom is sealed.

The shepherd calls,
How these great niountain walls
Re-echo! See his dog
Come limping from the bog!
How far he holds him
With that thin clamour! Scolds him?
Or cheers him, which?
Say both, most like. The pitch
Is steep, poor fellow!
And still that bellow;
Ya, ya!
Whoop ‘ tittivat
And Echo from her niche
Shrieks challenged. Shout,
O shepherd! flout
The irritable Echo till she raves
As man behaves,
So God apportions, doing what is best
For you, and for the rest.
As man behaves! You do not help me much,
Nay, sir, nor touch
The central point at all,
Retributive, mechanical,
I see it. But outside all this
I miss . . . I miss . . .
Sir, know you Death?
Permit me introduce
No? What’s the use?
The use! . . . ...

After the event the rockslide
realized,
in a still diversity of completion,
grain and fissure,
declivity
&
force of upheaval,
whether rain slippage,
ice crawl, root
explosion or
stream erosive undercut:

well I said it is a pity:
one swath of sight will never
be the same: nonetheless,
this
shambles has
relived a bind, a taut of twist,
revealing streaks &
scores of knowledge
now obvious and quiet.

[In the vale of Grasmere, by the side of an old highway
leading to Ambleside, is a gate, which, from time out of
mind, has been called the Wishing-gate, from a belief that
wishes formed or indulged there have a favorable issue.]

Hope rules a land forever green:
All powers that serve the bright-eyed Queen
Are confident and gay;
Clouds at her bidding disappear;
Points she to aught? the bliss draws near,
And Fancy smooths the way.

Not such the land of Wishes there
Dwell fruitless day-dreams, lawless prayer,
And thoughts with things at strife;
Yet how forlorn, should ye depart
Ye superstitions of the heart,
How poor, were human life!

When magic lore abjured its might,
Ye did not forfeit one dear right,
One tender claim abate;
Witne...

In noi dal senno.


Valour and mind form real nobility,
        The which bears fruit and shows a fair increase
        By doughty actions: these and nought but these
        Confer true patents of gentility.
Money is false and light unless it be
        Bought by a man's own worthy qualities;
        And blood is such that its corrupt disease
        And ignorant pretence are foul to see.
Honours that ought to yield more true a type,
        Europe, thou measurest by fortune still,
        To thy great hurt; and this thy foe perceives:
He rates the tree by fruits mature and ripe,
        Not by mere shadows, roots, and verdant leaves:--
        Why then neglect so grave a cause of ill?

        They locked him in a prison cell,
                Murky and mean.
        She kissed him there a wife's farewell
                The bars between.
        And when she turned to go, the crowd,
        Thinking to see her shamed and bowed,
        Saw her pass out as calm and proud
                As any queen.

        She passed a kinsman on the street,
                To whose sad eyes
        She made reply with smile as sweet
                As April skies.
        To one who loved her once and knew
        The sorrow of her life, she threw
        A gay word, ere his tale was due
                Of sympathies.

        She met a playmate, whose red rose
                Had never a thorn,
        Whom fortune guided when she cho...

Come back again, my olden heart!
Ah, fickle spirit and untrue,
I bade the only guide depart
Whose faithfulness I surely knew:
I said, my heart is all too soft;
He who would climb and soar aloft
Must needs keep ever at his side
The tonic of a wholesome pride.

Come back again, my olden heart!
Alas, I called not then for thee;
I called for Courage, and apart
From Pride if Courage could not be,
Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find
In thee a power to lift the mind
This low and grovelling joy above
’Tis but the proud can truly love.

Come back again, my olden heart!
With incrustations of the years
Uncased as yet, as then thou wert,
Full-filled with shame and coward fears
Wherewith amidst a jostling throng
Of deeds, that each and ...

(See Note 43)

    When Norse nature's dower
    Tones will paint with power,
There is more than mountain-heights that tower, -
    Plains spread wide-extending,
    Whereon at their wending
Summer nights soft dews are sending.

    Forests great are growing,
    And in long waves going
Glommen's valley fill to overflowing, -
    There are green slopes vernal,
    Glad with joy fraternal,
Open to the light supernal.

    For revealing wholly
    All things fine and holy -
As in sunshine birds are soaring slowly,
    Or, their spells transmitting,
    Northern Lights are flitting, -
None but maiden-hands are fitting.

    Your hands came, and playing,
    O'er their secrets straying
Picture after picture are p...

I

Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind!

II

Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

III

Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by . . . what you call
. . . Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England, it’s as if I saw it all.

IV

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,

The noble Column, the green Laurel-tree
Are fall'n, that shaded once my weary mind.
Now I have lost what I shall never find,
From North to South, from Red to Indian Sea.
My double treasure Death has filched from me,
Which made me proud and happy midst my kind.
Nor may all empires of the world combined,
Nor Orient gems, nor gold restore the key.
But if this be according to Fate's will,
What may I do, but wander heavy-souled,
With ever downcast head, eyes weeping still?
O life of ours, so lovely to behold,
In one brief morn how easily dost thou spill
That which we toiled for years to gain and hold!

Who beckons the green ivy up
Its solitary tower of stone?
What spirit lures the bindweed's cup
    Unfaltering on?
Calls even the starry lichen to climb
By agelong inches endless Time?

Who bids the hollyhock uplift
Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high;
Fling wide her petals - silent, swift,
    Lovely to the sky?
Since as she kindled, so she will fade,
Flower above flower in squalor laid.

Ever the heavy billow rears
All its sea-length in green, hushed wall;
But totters as the shore it nears,
    Foams to its fall;
Where was its mark? on what vain quest
Rose that great water from its rest?

So creeps ambition on; so climb
Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high,
Forgets his birth, small space, brief time,
    That he sh...

Within a vale in distant Saxony,
    In time uncertain, though 'twas long ago.
There dwelt a woman, most unhappily,
    From borrowed trouble, and imagined woe.

Hers was a husband generous, and kind,
    Her children, three, were not of uncouth mold;
Hers was a thatch which mocked at rain and wind;
    Within her secret purse were coins of gold.

The drouth had ne'er descended on her field,
    Nor had distemper sore distressed her kine;
The vine had given its accustomed yield,
    So that her casks were filled with ruddy wine.

Her sheep and goats waxed fat, and ample fleece
    Rewarded every harvest of the shear;
Her lambs all bleated in sequestered peace,
    Nor prowling wolf occasioned nightly fear.

With all she fretted, pined, and ...

With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps' flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.

I leaned to catch the words he said
That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
The words my heart was calling.

And on we walked and on we walked
Past the fiery lights of the picture shows
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
On the errand each man knows.

And on we walked and on we walked,
At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
My heart's unuttered cry.

With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps' flare
But oh, the girls who can ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's, he takes the lead
In summer luxury, he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

The dim verbena drugs the dusk
With lemon-heavy odours where
The heliotropes breathe drowsy musk
Into the jasmine-dreamy air;
The moss-rose bursts its dewy husk
And spills its attar there.

The orange at thy casement swings
Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;
The clematis, long-petalled, clings
In clusters of dark purple blooms;
With flowers, like moons or sylphide wings,
Magnolias light the glooms.

Awake, awake from sleep!
Thy balmy hair,
Down-fallen, deep on deep,
Like blossoms there'
That dew and fragrance weep'
Will fill the night with prayer.
Awake, awake from sleep!

And dreaming here it seems to me
A dryad's bosom grows confessed,
Bright in the moss of yonder tree,
That rustles with the murmurous West
Or...

    I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
    If I saw a soul that was strong
    I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
    The shelters of friendship knew my cunning
    For where I could steal a friend I did so.
    And wherever I could enlarge my power
    By undermining ambition, I did so,
    Thus to make smooth my own.
    And to triumph over other souls,
    Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
    Was with me a delight,
    The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
    Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
    But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,
    With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
    Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
    I collapsed at last with a shriek.
    Remember t...