Identity

Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt,
The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net;
So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue
Assail all Men for all that I can get.

Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues,
Lo! Salt a Lever that I dare not use,
Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal,
Surely my Kith and Kin will not refuse!

Pay, and I promise by the Dust of Spring,
Retrenchment. If my promises can bring
Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousandfold,
By Allah! I will promise Anything!

Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before
I sore, but did I mean it when I swore?
And then, and then, We wandered to the Hills,
And so the Little Less became Much More.

Whether a Boileaugunge or Babylon,
I know not how the wretched Thing is done,
The I...

From earth I seem to wing my flight,
And sun myself in Heaven's pure light,
When thy sweet gaze meets mine
I dream I quaff ethereal dew,
When my own form I mirrored view
In those blue eyes divine!

Blest notes from Paradise afar,
Or strains from some benignant star
Enchant my ravished ear:
My Muse feels then the shepherd's hour
When silvery tones of magic power
Escape those lips so dear!

Young Loves around thee fan their wings
Behind, the maddened fir-tree springs,
As when by Orpheus fired:
The poles whirl round with swifter motion,
When in the dance, like waves o'er Ocean,
Thy footsteps float untired!

Thy look, if it but beam with love,
Could make the lifeless marble move,
And hearts in rocks enshrine:
My visions to r...

The Fear Of Death.


Thou! whose superior, and aspiring mind
Can leave the weakness of thy sex behind;
Above its follies, and its fears can rise,
Quit the low earth, and gain the distant skies:
Whom strength of soul and innocence have taught
To think of death, nor shudder at the thought;
Say! whence the dread, that can alike engage
Vain thoughtless youth, and deep-reflecting age;
Can shake the feeble, and appal the strong;
Say! whence the terrors, that to death belong?
Guilt must be fearful: but the guiltless too
Start from the grave, and tremble at the view.
The blood-stained pirate, who in neighbouring climes,
Might fear, lest justice should o'ertake his crimes,
Wisely may bear the sea's tempestuous roar,
And rather wait the storm, than make the sh...

Lo! carpet-bag and bagger occupy the land,
    And prove the touring season actively begun;
His personnel and purpose can none misunderstand,
For each upon his frontlet bears his honest brand -
    The fool-ish one!

By caravan and car, from country and from town,
    A great grasshopper army fell foraging the land;
Like bumblebees that know not where to settle down,
Impossible it is to curb or scare or drown
    The tourist band.

With guidebook, camera, with rod and gun, to shoot,
    To lure the deer, the hare, the bird, the speckled trout,
The pauper or the prince unbidden they salute,
And everywhere their royal right dare none dispute -
    To roam about.

From dark immuring walls and dingy ways of trade,
    From high society's luxurious s...

The nearer camp fires lighted,
The distant beacons bright,
The horsemen on the skyline
Are closing in to-night!
My brothers, Oh my brothers!
Lie down and rest at last,
The Years of Reparation
Have rushed upon us fast.

Oh, ride and ride, you riders,
Who rode ere I was born,
While blink-and-blink the star-dust
That blinks before the morn.
And glow and glow you camp fires,
And flash, you beacons bright!
They’re riding round the wronged ones
And riding round the right!

My brothers, Oh my brothers!
With dried and haggard eyes,
In gaol for just blows stricken,
In gaol for women’s lies!
Lie down and pace no longer
But bathe your eyes in tears
For Years of Retribution
That shall be seven years!

Their lovers and...

    A woman in her youth, but lost to all
    The joys of innocence. Love she had known,
    Such love as leaves the soul filled full of shame.
    Passion was hers, hate and impurity,
    The gnawing of remorse, the longing vain
    To lose the mark of sin, the scarlet flush
    Of fallen womanhood, the envy of
    The spotless, the desire that they might sink
    Low in the mire as she.
            Oh, what a soul
    She carried on that day! The women drew
    Their robes back from her touch, men leered,
    And children seemed afraid to meet
    The devilish beauty of her form and face.
            Shunned and alone,
    Till One came to her side,
    And spake her name, and took her hand in His.
            And what He said
    Is past the telli...

Gloomily the clouds are sailing
O'er the dimly moonlit sky;
Dolefully the wind is wailing;
Not another sound is nigh;

Only I can hear it sweeping
Heathclad hill and woodland dale,
And at times the nights's sad weeping
Sounds above its dying wail.

Now the struggling moonbeams glimmer;
Now the shadows deeper fall,
Till the dim light, waxing dimmer,
Scarce reveals yon stately hall.

All beneath its roof are sleeping;
Such a silence reigns around
I can hear the cold rain steeping
Dripping roof and plashy ground.

No: not all are wrapped in slumber;
At yon chamber window stands
One whose years can scarce outnumber
The tears that dew his clasped hands.

From the open casement bending
He surveys the murky skies,

While from the purpling east departs
The star that led the dawn,
Blithe Flora from her couch upstarts,
For May is on the lawn.
A quickening hope, a freshening glee,
Foreran the expected Power,
Whose first-drawn breath, from bush and tree,
Shakes off that pearly shower.

All Nature welcomes Her whose sway
Tempers the year's extremes;
Who scattereth lustres o'er noon-day,
Like morning's dewy gleams;
While mellow warble, sprightly trill,
The tremulous heart excite;
And hums the balmy air to still
The balance of delight.

Time was, blest Power! when youth and maids
At peep of dawn would rise,
And wander forth, in forest glades
Thy birth to solemnize.
Though mute the song, to grace the rite
Untouched the hawthorn bough,
Thy S...

Shadder in de valley
Sunlight on de hill,
Sut'ny wish dat locus'
Knowed how to be still.
Don't de heat already
Mek a body hum,
'Dout dat insec' sayin'
Hottah days to come?

Fiel' 's a shinin' yaller
Wid de bendin' grain,
Guinea hen a callin',
Now's de time fu' rain;
Shet yo' mouf, you rascal,
Wha' 's de use to cry?
You do' see no rain clouds
Up dah in de sky.

Dis hyeah sweat's been po'in'
Down my face sence dawn;
Ain't hit time we 's hyeahin'
Dat ah dinnah ho'n?
Go on, Ben an' Jaspah,
Lif yo' feet an' fly,
Hit out fu' de shadder
Fo' I drap an' die.

Hongry, lawd a' mussy,
Hongry as a baih,
Seems lak I hyeah dinnah
Callin' evahwhaih;
Daih 's de ho'n a blowin'!
Let dat cradle swing,...

Oh thou, that prattling on thy pebbled way
Through my paternal vale dost stray,
Working thy shallow passage to the sea!
Oh, stream, thou speedest on
The same as many seasons gone;
But not, alas, to me
Remain the feelings that beguiled
My early road, when, careless and content,
(Losing the hours in pastimes innocent)
Upon thy banks I strayed a playful child;
Whether the pebbles that thy margin strew,
Collecting, heedlessly I threw;
Or loved in thy translucent wave
My tender shrinking feet to lave;
Or else ensnared your little fry,
And thought how wondrous skilled was I!
So passed my boyish days, unknown to pain,
Days that will ne'er return again.
It seems but yesterday
I was a child, to-morrow to be gray!
So years succeeding years steal sile...

I conquer the world with words,
conquer the mother tongue,
verbs, nouns, syntax.
I sweep away the beginning of things
and with a new language
that has the music of water the message of fire
I light the coming age
and stop time in your eyes
and wipe away the line
that separates
time from this single moment.

I opened the casement this morn at starlight,
And, the moment I got out of bed,
The daisies were quaking about in their white
And the cowslip was nodding its head.
The grass was all shivers, the stars were all bright,
And Robin that should come at e'en--
I thought that I saw him, a ghost by moonlight,
Like a stalking horse stand on the green.

I went bed agen and did nothing but dream
Of Robin and moonlight and flowers.
He stood like a shadow transfixed by a stream,
And I couldn't forget him for hours.
I'd just dropt asleep when I dreamed Robin spoke,
And the casement it gave such a shake,
As if every pane in the window was broke;
Such a patter the gravel did make.

So I up in the morning before the cock crew
And to strike me a light I sat down....

Here shunning idleness at once and praise,
This radiant pile nine rural sisters[130] raise;
The glittering emblem of each spotless dame,
Clear as her soul, and shining as her frame;
Beauty which nature only can impart,
And such a polish as disgraces art;
But Fate disposed them in this humble sort,
And hid in deserts what would charm a court.

I.

As a shadow He flew, but sorrow and wail
Came up from his path, like the moan of the gale.
His quiver was full, though his arrows fell fast
As the sharp hail of winter when urged by the blast.
He smiled on each shaft as it flew from the string,
Though feathered by fate, and the lightning its wing.
Unerring, unsparing, it sped to its mark,
As the mandate of destiny, certain and dark.
The mail of the warrior it severed in twain,
The wall of the castle it shivered amain:
No shield could shelter, no prayer could save,
And Love's holy shrine no immunity gave.
A babe in the cradle its mother bent o'er,
The arrow is sped, and that babe is no more!
At the faith-plighting altar, a lovely one bows,
The gem on her finger, in Heaven her vows;
Unseen is the b...

The sea coast of Bohemia
Is pleasant to the view
When singing larks spring from the grass
To fade into the blue,
And all the hawthorn hedges break
In wreaths of purest snow,
And yellow daffodils are out,
And roses half in blow.

The sea-coast of Bohemia
Is sad as sad can be,
The prince has ta’en our flower of maids
Across the violet sea;
Our Perdita has gone with him,
No more we dance the round
Upon the green in joyous play,
Or wake the tabor’s sound.

The sea-coast of Bohemia
Has many wonders seen,
The shepherd lass wed with a king,
The shepherd with a queen;
But such a wonder as my love
Was never seen before,
It is my joy and sorrow now
To love her evermore.

The sea-coast of Bohemia
Is haunted by a...

In ages dead, a troglodyte,
At the hollow roots of a monster height, -
That grew from the heart of the world to light, -
I dwelt in caverns: over me
Were mountains older than the moon;
And forests vaster than the sea,
And gulfs, that the earthquake's hand had hewn,
Hung under me. And late and soon
I heard the dæmon of change that sighed
A cosmic language of mystery;
While life sat silent, primeval-eyed,
With the infant spirit of prophecy.

Gaunt stars glared down on the Titan peaks;
And the gaunter glare of the cratered streaks
Of the sunset's ruin heard condor shrieks.
The roar of cataracts hurled in air,
And the hurricane laying his thunders bare,
And rush of battling beasts, - whose lair
Was the antechamber of nadir-gloom, -
Were my outw...

Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red:
Rouse Memnon’s mother from her Tithon’s bed
That she may thy career with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing:
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence the ugly night
Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn,
That day, long-wished day,
Of all my life so dark,
(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn,
And fates my hopes betray),
Which, purely white, deserves
An everlasting diamond should it mark.
This is the morn should bring unto this ...

Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals:
You roar like an organ, and in our condemned souls,
aisles of eternal mourning, where past death-rattles
sound, the echo of your De Profundis rolls.

I hate you, Ocean! My mind, in your tumultuous main,
sees itself: I hear the vast laughter of your seas,
the bitter laughter of defeated men,
filled with the sound of sobs and blasphemies.

How you would please me without your stars, O Night!
I know the language that their light employs!
Since I search for darkness, nakedness, the Void!

But the shadows themselves seem, to my sight
canvases, where thousands of lost beings, alive,
and with a familiar gaze, leap from my eyes.