Identity

(ISABELLA STEWART)


Since ere I left my native isle,
My childhood's home, life's happy smile
And crossed the separating seas,
Nothing my lonely heart could please
Till now--and oh, I cannot tell
How I admire thee, Isabel!

There are, in my dear island green,
Most lovely faces to be seen,
Beautiful eyes, with kindly glee,
Beamed there in laughing love on me
Now I'm alone from day to day,
They're all three thousand miles away.

A stranger's face each face I see,
And every eye is cold to me,
No friendly voice, no kind caress,
No spell to break the loneliness,
Until I fell beneath the spell
Of thy rare beauty, Isabel

I watch thee from my window pane
In hopes a stolen glimpse to gain
I know that purely lovely face...

Io son già stanco di pensar siccome.

HE WONDERS AT HIS LONG ENDURANCE OF SUCH TOIL AND SUFFERING.


    I weary me alway with questions keen
How, why my thoughts ne'er turn from you away,
Wherefore in life they still prefer to stay,
When they might flee this sad and painful scene,
And how of the fine hair, the lovely mien,
Of the bright eyes which all my feelings sway,
Calling on your dear name by night and day,
My tongue ne'er silent in their praise has been,
And how my feet not tender are, nor tired,
Pursuing still with many a useless pace
Of your fair footsteps the elastic trace;
And whence the ink, the paper whence acquired,
Fill'd with your memories: if in this I err,
Not art's defect but Love's own fault it were.

MACGREGOR.

1.
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.

2.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

Soft as a cloud is yon blue Ridge, the Mere
Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear,
And motionless; and, to the gazer's eye,
Deeper than ocean, in the immensity
Of its vague mountains and unreal sky!
But, from the process in that still retreat,
Turn to minuter changes at our feet;
Observe how dewy Twilight has withdrawn
The crowd of daisies from the shaven lawn,
And has restored to view its tender green,
That, while the sun rode high, was lost beneath their dazzling sheen.

An emblem this of what the sober Hour
Can do for minds disposed to feel its power!
Thus oft, when we in vain have wished away
The petty pleasures of the garish day,
Meek eve shuts up the whole usurping host
(Unbashful dwarfs each glittering at his post)
And leaves the dise...

Even the moral world its nobility boasts vulgar natures
Reckon by that which they do; noble, by that which they are.

When Cupid sees how thickly now,
The snows of Time fall o'er my brow,
Upon his wing of golden light.
He passes with an eaglet's flight,
And flitting onward seems to say,
"Fare thee well, thou'st had thy day!"

Cupid, whose lamp has lent the ray,
That lights our life's meandering way,
That God, within this bosom stealing,
Hath wakened a strange, mingled feeling.
Which pleases, though so sadly teasing,
And teases, though so sweetly pleasing!

            *            *            *            *            *

Let me resign this wretched breath
    Since now remains to me
No other balm than kindly death,
    To soothe my misery!

            *            *            *            *            *

I know thou lovest a brimming meas...

These are the flowers of sleep
That nod in the heavy noon,
Ere the brown shades eastward creep
To a drowsy and dreamful tune,
These are the flowers of sleep.

Love’s lilies are passion-pale,
But these on the sun-kissed flood
Of the corn, that rolls breast deep,
Burn redder than drops of blood
On a dead king’s golden mail.

Heart’s dearest, I would that we
These blooms of forgetfulness
Might bind on our brows, and steep
Our love in Lethe ere less
Grow its flame with thee or me.

When Time with his evil eye
The beautiful Love has slain,
There is nought to gain or keep
Thereafter, and all is vain.
Should we wait to see Love die?

Sweetheart, of the joys men reap
We have reaped; ’tis time to rest.
Why should we wak...

How shall she know the worship we would do her?
The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,
To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,
Who dowered us with walth of love and pity.
Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing,
"I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,
But old in grief, and very wise in tears;
Say that we, being desolate, entreat her
That she forget us not in after years;
For we have seen the light, and it were griev...

    Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale,
    On sunny days have found you weak and still,
    Though I have often held your girlish head
    Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill: -

    Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
    I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
    So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad: -
    And all the winds of war are now unheard.

    My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands
    With touch most delicate so circling round,
    That for an hour I dream that God is good.
    And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound.

    I thought myself the guard of your frail state,
    And yet I come to-night a helpless guest,
    Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings,
    Against the pallor of your wondrous...

One with the ruined sunset,
The strange forsaken sands,
What is it waits, and wanders,
And signs with desparate hands?

What is it calls in the twilight -
Calls as its chance were vain?
The cry of a gull sent seaward
Or the voice of an ancient pain?

The red ghost of the sunset,
It walks them as its own,
These dreary and desolate reaches . . .
But O, that it walked alone!

The long finger of blackness is holding its head for us.
Dingy bue is its shade,
comatose in movement, hazarding a slow swiftness,
it inches toward us.

Relief comes fitfully.
The dragon alone, an upstart
crowned with drunken spending,
has horse colours as ribbons with his eyes.
It cradles a breast of trembling bone.

Misercorde, Misercorde.
I dreamt I saw skeletal slackness
dangling;
the poverty of touch is a casket
with love in rumbling sockets.
Craziness is the passion of the engulfed,
dribbling pleasantly.

Presentations extended beyond and into themselves.
Slackness schemes with invalid awareness
in a brothel of hope.

Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi.

TO RIENZI, BESEECHING HIM TO RESTORE TO ROME HER ANCIENT LIBERTY.


    Spirit heroic! who with fire divine
Kindlest those limbs, awhile which pilgrim hold
On earth a Chieftain, gracious, wise, and bold;
Since, rightly, now the rod of state is thine
Rome and her wandering children to confine,
And yet reclaim her to the old good way:
To thee I speak, for elsewhere not a ray
Of virtue can I find, extinct below,
Nor one who feels of evil deeds the shame.
Why Italy still waits, and what her aim
I know not, callous to her proper woe,
Indolent, aged, slow,
Still will she sleep? Is none to rouse her found?
Oh! that my wakening hands were through her tresses wound.

So grievous is the spell, the trance...

"A noteless stream, the Birchbrook runs
Beneath its leaning trees;
That low, soft ripple is its own,
That dull roar is the sea's.

Of human signs it sees alone
The distant church spire's tip,
And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray,
The white sail of a ship.

No more a toiler at the wheel,
It wanders at its will;
Nor dam nor pond is left to tell
Where once was Birchbrook mill.

The timbers of that mill have fed
Long since a farmer's fires;
His doorsteps are the stones that ground
The harvest of his sires.

Man trespassed here; but Nature lost
No right of her domain;
She waited, and she brought the old
Wild beauty back again.

By day the sunlight through the leaves
Falls on its moist, green sod,
And wakes the v...

Scarlet coats, and crash o' the band,
The grey of a pauper's gown,
A soldier's grave in Zululand,
And a woman in Brecon Town.

My little lad for a soldier boy,
(Mothers o' Brecon Town!)
My eyes for tears and his for joy
When he went from Brecon Town,
His for the flags and the gallant sights
His for the medals and his for the fights,
And mine for the dreary, rainy nights
At home in Brecon Town.

They say he's laid beneath a tree,
(Come back to Brecon Town!)
Shouldn't I know?,I was there to see:
(It's far to Brecon Town!)
It's me that keeps it trim and drest
With a briar there and a rose by his breast,
The English flowers he likes the best
That I bring from Brecon Town.

And I sit beside him, him and me,
(We're back to Bre...

My Polly's varry bonny,
Her een are black an breet;
They shine under her raven locks,
Like stars i'th' dark o'th' neet.

Her little cheeks are like a peach,
'At th' sun has woo'd an missed;
Her lips like cherries, red an sweet,
Seem moulded to be kissed.

Her breast is like a drift o' snow,
Her little waist's soa thin,
To clasp it wi' a careless arm
Wod ommost be a sin.

Her little hands an tiny feet,
Wod mak yo think shoo'd been
Browt up wi' little fairy fowk
To be a fairy queen.

An when shoo laffs, it saands as if
A little crystal spring,
Wor bubblin up throo silver rocks,
Screened by an angel's wing.

It saands soa sweet, an yet soa low,
One feels it forms a part
Ov what yo love, an yo can hear
It...

The night is hung above us, love,
With heavy stars that love us, love,
With clouds that curl in purple and pearl,
And winds that whisper of us, love:
On burly hills and valleys, that lie dimmer,
The amber foot-falls of the moon-sylphs glimmer.

The moon is still a crescent, love;
And here with thee 'tis pleasant, love,
To sit and dream in its thin gleam,
And list thy sighs liquescent, love:
To see thy eyes and fondle thy dark tresses,
Set on warm lips imperishable kisses.

The sudden-glaring fire-flies
Swim o'er the hollow gyre-wise,
And spurt and shine like jostled wine
At lips on which desire lies:
Or like the out-flashed hair of elf or fairy
In rapid morrice whirling feat and airy.

Up, - all the blue West sundering, -
A creamy...

He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him.
He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold
To question his veracity, this is the tale he told.

"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust;
I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen crust;
Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my mark;
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth - I go to seek the Ark.

"I prospected the Pelly bed, I prospected the White;
The Nordenscold for love of gold I piked from morn till night;
Afar and near for many a year I led the wild stampede,
Until I guessed that all my quest was vanity and greed.

"Then came I to a land I knew no man had ever seen,
A haggard land, forlornly spa...

(At the Exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum, March, 1910.)

So sharp the sword, so airy the defence!
As 'twere a play, or delicate pretence!
So fine and strange, so subtly poised, too
The egoist, that looks forever through!

That little spirit, air and grace and fire,
A-flutter at your frame, is your desire;
No, it is you, who never knew the net.
Exquisite, vain, whom we shall not forget!