Identity

She will not die, they say,
She will but put her beauty by
    And hie away.

Oh, but her beauty gone, how lonely
Then will seem all reverie,
    How black to me!

All things will sad be made
And every hope a memory,
    All gladness dead.

Ghosts of the past will know
My weakest hour, and whisper to me,
    And coldly go.

And hers in deep of sleep,
Clothed in its mortal beauty I shall see,
    And, waking, weep.

Naught will my mind then find
In man's false Heaven my peace to be:
    All blind, and blind.

Fell the snow on the festival's vigil
And surpliced the city in white;
I wonder who wove the pure flakelets?
Ask the Virgin, or God, or the night.

It fitted the Feast: 'twas a symbol,
And earth wore the surplice at morn,
As pure as the vale's stainless lily
For Mary, the sinlessly born;

For Mary, conceived in all sinlessness;
And the sun, thro' the clouds of the East,
With the brightest and fairest of flashes,
Fringed the surplice of white for the Feast.

And round the horizon hung cloudlets,
Pure stoles to be worn by the Feast;
While the earth and the heavens were waiting
For the beautiful Mass of the priest.

I opened my window, half dreaming;
My soul went away from my eyes,
And my heart began saying "Hail Marys"
Somewher...

Where are those honours, IDA! once your own,
When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne?
As ancient Rome, fast falling to disgrace,
Hail'd a Barbarian in her Cæsar's place,
So you, degenerate, share as hard a fate,
And seat Pomposus where your Probus sate.
Of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul,
Pomposus holds you in his harsh controul;
Pomposus, by no social virtue sway'd,
With florid jargon, and with vain parade;
With noisy nonsense, and new-fangled rules,
(Such as were ne'er before enforc'd in schools.)
Mistaking pedantry for learning's laws,
He governs, sanction'd but by self-applause;
With him the same dire fate, attending Rome,
Ill-fated Ida! soon must stamp your doom:
Like her o'erthrown, for ever lost to fame,
No trace...

Within a budding grove,
In April's ear sang every bird his best,
But not a song to pleasure my unrest,
Or touch the tears unwept of bitter love;
Some spake, methought, with pity, some as if in jest.
To every word
Of every bird
I listen'd, and replied as it behove.

Scream'd Chaffinch, 'Sweet, sweet, sweet!
Pretty lovey, come and meet me here!'
'Chaffinch,' quoth I, 'be dumb awhile, in fear
Thy darling prove no better than a cheat,
And never come, or fly when wintry days appear.'
Yet from a twig,
With voice so big,
The little fowl his utterance did repeat.

Then I, 'The man forlorn
Hears Earth send up a foolish noise aloft.'
'And what'll he do? What'll he do?' scoff'd
The Blackbird, standing, in an ancient thorn,
Then spread his so...

Old bamboos are about my house,
And the floor of my house is untidy with old books.
It is sweet to rest in the shade of it
And read the poems of the masters.

But I remember a delightful fisherman
Who played on the five-stringed dan in the evening.
In the day he allowed his reed canoe to float
Over the lakes and rivers,
Watching his nets and singing.

A sweet boy promised to marry me,
But he went away and left
Like a reed canoe that rolls adrift
In the middle of a river.

Song of Annam.

ADDRESSED TO J. ATKINSON, ESQ. M. R. I. A.


Though long at school and college dozing.
O'er books of verse and books of prosing,
And copying from their moral pages
Fine recipes for making sages;
Though long with' those divines at school,
Who think to make us good by rule;
Who, in methodic forms advancing,
Teaching morality like dancing,
Tell us, for Heaven or money's sake.
What steps we are through life to take:
Though thus, my friend, so long employed,
With so much midnight oil destroyed,
I must confess my searches past,
I've only learned to doubt at last
I find the doctors and the sages
Have differed in all climes and ages,
And two in fifty scarce agree
On what is pure morality.
'Tis like the rainbow's shifting zone,

(Paris, August, 1865.)


I stand at the break of day
In the Champs Elysées.
The tremulous shafts of dawning
As they shoot o'er the Tuileries early,
Strike Luxor's cold gray spire,
And wild in the light of the morning
With their marble manes on fire,
Ramp the white Horses of Marly.

But the Place of Concord lies
Dead hushed 'neath the ashy skies.
And the Cities sit in council
With sleep in their wide stone eyes.
I see the mystic plain
Where the army of spectres slain
In the Emperor's life-long war
March on with unsounding tread
To trumpets whose voice is dead.
Their spectral chief still leads them, -
The ghostly flash of his sword
Like a comet through mist shines far, -
And the noiseless host is poured,
For th...

Roses all the rosy way!
    Roses to the rosier west
Where the roses of the day
    Cling to night's unrosy breast!

Thou who mak'st the roses, why
    Give to every leaf a thorn?
On thy rosy highway I
    Still am by thy roses torn!

Pardon! I will not mistake
    These good thorns that make me fret!
Goads to urge me, stings to wake,
    For my freedom they are set.

Yea, on one steep mountain-side,
    Climbing to a fancied fold,
Roses grasped had let me slide
    But the thorns did keep their hold.

Out of darkness light is born,
    Out of weakness make me strong:
One glad day will every thorn
    Break into a rose of song.

Though like sparrow sit thy bird
    Lonely on the house-top dark,
By the rosy...

To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;

To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air --

This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates
Whose voices, trained below,

Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard!

I think of thee, whene'er the sun his beams

O'er ocean flings;
I think of thee, whene'er the moonlight gleams

In silv'ry springs.

I see thee, when upon the distant ridge

The dust awakes;
At midnight's hour, when on the fragile bridge

The wanderer quakes.

I hear thee, when yon billows rise on high,

With murmur deep.
To tread the silent grove oft wander I,

When all's asleep.

I'm near thee, though thou far away mayst be

Thou, too, art near!
The sun then sets, the stars soon lighten me.

Would thou wert here!

        [AFTER JAMES THOMSON.]

        As I came through the Valley of Despair,
    As I came through the valley, on my sight,
    More awful than the darkness of the night,
        Shone glimpses of a Past that had been fair,
    And memories of eyes that used to smile,
    And wafts of perfume from a vanished isle,
        As I came through the valley.

        As I came through the valley I could see,
    As I came through the valley, fair and far,
    As drowning men look up and see a star,
        The fading shore of my lost Used-to-be;
    And like an arrow in my heart I heard
    The last sad notes of Hope's expiring bird,
        As I came through the valley.

        As I came through the valley desolate,
    As I came through the vall...

        If many years should dim my inward sight,
            Till, stirred with no emotion,
        I might stand gazing at the fall of night
            Across the gloaming ocean;

        Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,
            Would seem an oft-told story,
        And the old sorrow of heroic wars
            Be faded of its glory;

        Till, hearing, while June's roses blew their musk,
            The noise of field and city,
        The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk,
            I felt no thrill of pity;

        Till dawn should come without her old desire,
            And day brood o'er her stages,--
        O let me die, too frail for nature's hire,
            And rest a million ages.

Hast ever tramped along the road
That has no end?
The far brown winding road, your one
Fast friend
A tattered weather-beaten swag,
A silent mate
To send
His dumb warm comfort to the heart,
A fount where dreams ascend.

There’s wondrous freedom on the road
That has no end;
A man’s heart glows, his spirit leaps
To blend
Its joy of life with fierce wind’s gust
Upon his face:
To lend
Its cry to Nature’s tumult, full
And shrill, as twilight shades descend.

The flowers bloom along the road
That has no end
Cool breezes blow, the gum trees sway
And bend;
The wild doves woo, and softly coo
Their soothing notes,
And mend
Heart’s throbbing pain to sweet content,
And peace lights on the mind’s sad trend

Once into a quiet village,
    Without haste and without heed,
In the golden prime of morning,
    Strayed the poet's winged steed.

It was Autumn, and incessant
    Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves,
And, like living coals, the apples
    Burned among the withering leaves.

Loud the clamorous bell was ringing
    From its belfry gaunt and grim;
'T was the daily call to labor,
    Not a triumph meant for him.

Not the less he saw the landscape,
    In its gleaming vapor veiled;
Not the less he breathed the odors
    That the dying leaves exhaled.

Thus, upon the village common,
    By the school-boys he was found;
And the wise men, in their wisdom,
    Put him straightway into pound.

Then the sombre village ...

No door has my house,

No house has my door;
And in and out ever

I carry my store.

No grate has my kitchen,

No kitchen my grate;
Yet roasts it and boils it

Both early and late.

My bed has no trestles,

My trestles no bed;
Yet merrier moments

No mortal e'er led.

My cellar is lofty,

My barn is full deep,
From top to the bottom,

There lie I and sleep.

And soon as I waken,

All moves on its race;
My place has no fixture,

My fixture no place.

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.

    The gleaming head of one fine friend
    Is bent above my little song,
    So through the treasure-pits of Heaven
    In fancy's shoes, I march along.

    I wander, seek and peer and ponder
    In Splendor's last ensnaring lair -
    'Mid burnished harps and burnished crowns
    Where noble chariots gleam and flare:

    Amid the spirit-coins and gems,
    The plates and cups and helms of fire -
    The gorgeous-treasure-pits of Heaven -
    Where angel-misers slake desire!

    O endless treasure-pits of gold
    Where silly angel-men make mirth -
    I think that I am there this hour,
    Though walking in the ways of earth!

FLIGHT THE FIRST

. . come i gru van cantando lor lai,
Facendo in aer di se lunga riga. -- DANTE


BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
    Against the southern sky;

And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelms
    The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
    And distant sounds seem near,

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
    Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
    They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry