Identity

Come, lovely Evening! with thy smile of peace
Visit my humble dwelling; welcomed in,
Not with loud shouts, and the thronged city's din,
But with such sounds as bid all tumult cease
Of the sick heart; the grasshopper's faint pipe
Beneath the blades of dewy grass unripe,
The bleat of the lone lamb, the carol rude
Heard indistinctly from the village green,
The bird's last twitter, from the hedge-row seen,
Where, just before, the scattered crumbs I strewed,
To pay him for his farewell song; all these
Touch soothingly the troubled ear, and please
The stilly-stirring fancies. Though my hours
(For I have drooped beneath life's early showers)
Pass lonely oft, and oft my heart is sad,
Yet I can leave the world, and feel most glad
To meet thee, Evening, here; here my ow...

Those silver clouds collected round the sun
His mid-day warmth abate not, seeming less
To overshade than multiply his beams
By soft reflection, grateful to the sky,
To rocks, fields, woods. Nor doth our human sense
Ask, for its pleasure, screen or canopy
More ample than the time-dismantled Oak
Spreads o'er this tuft of heath, which now, attired
In the whole fulness of its bloom, affords
Couch beautiful as e'er for earthly use
Was fashioned; whether, by the hand of Art,
That eastern Sultan, amid flowers enwrought
On silken tissue, might diffuse his limbs
In languor; or, by Nature, for repose
Of panting Wood-nymph, wearied with the chase.
O Lady! fairer in thy Poet's sight
Than fairest spiritual creature of the groves,
Approach; and, thus invited, crown wit...

Toward even, when the day leans down
    To kiss the upturned face of night,
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town
    I know a spot of calm delight.
Like crimson arrows from a quiver
    The red rays pierce the waters flowing,
    While we go dreaming, singing, rowing
To Leudemanns-on-the-River.

The hills, like some glad mocking-bird,
    Send back our laughter and our singing,
While faint - and yet more faint is heard
    The steeple bells all sweetly ringing.
Some message did the winds deliver
    To each glad heart that August night,
    All heard, but all heard not aright,
By Leudemanns-on-the-River.

Night falls as in some foreign clime,
    Between the hills that slope and rise.
So dusk the shades at landing-time,
    We could n...

Do you remember
Honey-melon moon
Dripping thick sweet light
Where Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?
And the faint decayed patchouli -
Fragrance of New Orleans
Like a dead tube rose
Upheld in the warm air...
Miraculously whole.

I.

Long vollies of wind and of rain
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the eve falls chill and murk;
But on yesterday's eve I know
How a horned moon's thorn-like bow
Stabbed rosy thro' gold and thro' glow,
Like a rich barbaric dirk.


II.

Now thick throats of the snapdragons, -
Who hold in their hues cool dawns,
Which a healthy yellow paints, -
Are filled with a sweet rain fine
Of a jaunty, jubilant shine,
A faery vat of rare wine,
Which the honey thinly taints.


III.

Now dabble the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
While the candytuft's damp crown
Droops dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;
And long spikes o' the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the dripping o' de...

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman’s gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.

Across the Eastern sky has glowed
The flicker of a blood-red dawn,
Once more the clarion cock has crowed,
Once more the sword of Christ is drawn.
A million burning rooftrees light
The world-wide path of Israel's flight.


Where is the Hebrew's fatherland?
The folk of Christ is sore bestead;
The Son of Man is bruised and banned,
Nor finds whereon to lay his head.
His cup is gall, his meat is tears,
His passion lasts a thousand years.


Each crime that wakes in man the beast,
Is visited upon his kind.
The lust of mobs, the greed of priest,
The tyranny of kings, combined
To root his seed from earth again,
His record is one cry of pain.


When the long roll of Christian guilt
Against his sires and kin is known,
The...

"Oh tell me once and tell me twice
And tell me thrice to make it plain,
When we who part this weary day,
When we who part shall meet again."

"When windflowers blossom on the sea
And fishes skim along the plain,
Then we who part this weary day,
Then you and I shall meet again."

"Yet tell me once before we part,
Why need we part who part in pain?
If flowers must blossom on the sea,
Why, we shall never meet again.

"My cheeks are paler than a rose,
My tears are salter than the main,
My heart is like a lump of ice
If we must never meet again."

"Oh weep or laugh, but let me be,
And live or die, for all's in vain;
For life's in vain since we must part,
And parting must not meet again

"Till windflowers blossom on the s...

Fast-anchor'd, eternal, O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied, or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation;
I ascend--I float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

Well, there's the brazier set by the temple door:
Blue flames run over the coals and flicker through.
There are cool spaces of sky between white clouds -
But what are flames and spaces but eyes of blue?

        *        *        *        *        *

And there's the harp on which great fingers play
Of gods who touch the wires, dreaming infinite things;
And there's a soul that wanders out when called
By a voice afar from the answering strings.

        *        *        *        *        *

And there's the wish of the deep fulfillment of tears,
Till the vision, the mad music are wept away.
One cannot have them and live, but if one die
It might be better than living - who can say?

        *        *        *        *        *

Why do we...

Petals that fall into a woodland pool
are servers at a banquet.
Each one dresses for the occasion
like an employee with regrets,
that leaves the house in a somber mood
the morning after his resignation.

After long labouring in the windy ways,
    On smooth and shining tides
    Swiftly the great ship glides,
        Her storms forgot, her weary watches past;
Northward she glides, and through the enchanted haze
        Faint on the verge her far hope dawns at last.

The phantom sky-line of a shadowy down,
    Whose pale white cliffs below
    Through sunny mist aglow,
        Like noon-day ghosts of summer moonshine gleam---
Soft as old sorrow, bright as old renown,
        There lies the home, of all our mortal dream.

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow),
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat,
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

He does not think that I haunt here nightly:
    How shall I let him know
That whither his fancy sets him wandering
    I, too, alertly go? -
Hover and hover a few feet from him
    Just as I used to do,
But cannot answer his words addressed me -
    Only listen thereto!

When I could answer he did not say them:
    When I could let him know
How I would like to join in his journeys
    Seldom he wished to go.
Now that he goes and wants me with him
    More than he used to do,
Never he sees my faithful phantom
    Though he speaks thereto.

Yes, I accompany him to places
    Only dreamers know,
Where the shy hares limp long paces,
    Where the night rooks go;
Into old aisles where the past is all to him,
    Close as his shad...

God gave him passions, splendid as the sun,
Meant for the lordliest purposes; a part
Of nature's full and fertile mother heart,
From which new systems and new stars are spun.
And now, behold, behold, what he has done!
    In Folly's court and carnal Pleasures' mart
    He flung the wealth life gave him at the start.
(This, of all mortal sins, the deadliest one.)

At dawn he stood, potential, opulent,
    With virile manhood, and emotions keen,
    And wonderful with God's creative fire.
At noon he stands, with Love's large fortune spent
    In petty traffic, unproductive, mean -
    A pauper, cursed with impotent desire.

Our floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crowned,
And stately Severn for her shore is praised;
The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned,
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliff is raised.
    Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee;
York many wonders of her Ouse can tell;
The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be;
And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.
    Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame;
Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood;
Our western parts extol their Wilis' fame;
And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.
    Arden's sweet Ankor, let thy glory be,
    That fair Idea only lives by thee!

When the evening broods quiescent
Over mountain, vale and lea,
And the moon uplifts her crescent
Far above the peaceful sea,
Little Rose, the fisher's daughter,
Passes in her cedar skiff
O'er the dreamy waste of water,
To the signal on the cliff.

Have a care, my merry maiden!
Young Adonis though he be,
Many hearts are secret-laden
That have trusted such as he.
Has he worth, and is he truthful?
Thoughtless maiden rarely knows;
But, "He's handsome, brave and youthful,"
Says the heart of little Rose.

Hark! the horn - its shrill vibrations
Tremble through the maiden's breast,
As the sweet reverberations
Dwindle to their whispered rest;
Sweeter far the honied sentence
Sealing up her mind's repose;
Love as yet needs no repen...

I love those spirits
That men stand off and point at,
Or shudder and hood up their souls -
Those ruined ones,
Where Liberty has lodged an hour
And passed like flame,
Bursting asunder the too small house.