Identity

I see, as one in dreaming,
A broad, bright, quiet sea;
Beyond it lies a haven
The only home for me.
Some men grow strong with trouble,
But all my strength is past,
And tired and full of sorrow,
I long to sleep at last.
By force of chance and changes
Man’s life is hard at best;
And, seeing rest is voiceless,
The dearest thing is rest.

Beyond the sea behold it,
The home I wish to seek
The refuge of the weary,
The solace of the weak!
Sweet angel fingers beckon,
Sweet angel voices ask
My soul to cross the waters;
And yet I dread the task.
God help the man whose trials
Are tares that he must reap;
He cannot face the future
His only hope is sleep.

Across the main a vision
Of sunset coasts and skies,
And w...

Amid the forest verdant shade,
        A peaceful river flowed:
Wild flowers their home on its banks had made,
The sunbeam's rays on its breast were laid,
        When the light of morning glowed.

By its marge the wolf had found a lair,
        He roamed through each lonely spot;
That deep designer, the beaver, there
Built his palace; the shaggy bear
        In the tall tree had his cot.

And voices sweet were heard on the bank
        Of the river's gentle flow;
The whip-poor-will sang when the sun had sank,
And the hum-drum bee to his home had shrank,
        When the wind of eve did blow.

The tree-frog joined with his sonorous call,
        The grasshopper chirped along,
The dormice came out of their underground hole,
The squirrel...

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell,
Our hearts are all thy own;
To-day we bid thee welcome
Not for ourselves alone.

In the long years of thy absence
Some of us have grown old,
And some have passed the portals
Of the Mystery untold;

For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
For the voices that are dumb,
For each and all I bid thee
A grateful welcome home!

For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
To the nine-fold Muses dear;
For the Seer the winding Concord
Paused by his door to hear;

For him, our guide and Nestor,
Who the march of song began,
The white locks of his ninety years
Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!

For him who, to the music
Her pines and hemlocks played,
Set the old and tender story
Of the lorn Acadia...

That nose is out of drawing. With a gasp,
She pants upon the passionate lips that ache
With the red drain of her own mouth, and make
A monochord of colour. Like an asp,
One lithe lock wriggles in his rutilant grasp.
Her bosom is an oven of myrrh, to bake
Love's white warm shewbread to a browner cake.
The lock his fingers clench has burst its hasp.
The legs are absolutely abominable.
Ah! what keen overgust of wild-eyed woes
Flags in that bosom, flushes in that nose?
Nay! Death sets riddles for desire to spell,
Responsive. What red hem earth's passion sews,
But may be ravenously unripped in hell?

So she who doth imparadise my soul,
Had drawn the veil from off our pleasant life,
And bar'd the truth of poor mortality;
When lo! as one who, in a mirror, spies
The shining of a flambeau at his back,
Lit sudden ore he deem of its approach,
And turneth to resolve him, if the glass
Have told him true, and sees the record faithful
As note is to its metre; even thus,
I well remember, did befall to me,
Looking upon the beauteous eyes, whence love
Had made the leash to take me. As I turn'd;
And that, which, in their circles, none who spies,
Can miss of, in itself apparent, struck
On mine; a point I saw, that darted light
So sharp, no lid, unclosing, may bear up
Against its keenness. The least star we view
From hence, had seem'd a moon, set by its side,
As...

    'Tis noon, the meadow stretches in the sun,
    And every little spear of grass uplifts its slimness to the glow
    To let the heavy-laden bees pass out.

    A stream comes at a snail's pace through the gloom
    Of shrub and fern and brake,
    Leaps o'er a wall, goes singing on to find
    The coolness of the lake.

    A wild rose spreads her greenness on a hedge,
    And flings her tinted blossoms in the air;
    The sweetbriar neighbors with that porcupine
    Of shrubs, the gooseberry; with parasol
    Of white the elderberry shades her head
    And dreams of purple fruit and wine-press chill.

    From off her four warm eggs of mottled shade,
    A bird flies with a call of love and joy
    That wins an answer straight
    From that...

He thought he saw an Elephant
That practiced on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
“At length I realize,” he said,
“The bitterness of life!”

He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister’s Husband’s Niece.
“Unless you leave this house,” he said,
“I’ll send for the police!”

he thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
“The one thing I regret,” he said,
“Is that it cannot speak!”

He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
“If this should stay to dine,” he said,
“There won’t be much for us!...

I, the man with the red scarf,
    Will give thee what I have, this last week's earnings.
Take them, and buy thee a silver ring
    And wed me, to ease my yearnings.

For the rest, when thou art wedded
    I'll wet my brow for thee
With sweat, I'll enter a house for thy sake,
    Thou shalt shut doors on me.

My Juggins, see: the pasture green,
    Obeying Nature's kindly law,
Renews its mantle; there has been
    A thaw.

The frost-bound earth is free at last,
    That lay 'neath Winter's sullen yoke
'Till people felt it getting past
    A joke.

Now forth again the Freshers fare,
    And get them tasty summer suits
Wherein they flaunt afield and scare
    The brutes.

Again the stream suspects the keel;
    Again the shrieking captain drops
Upon his crew; again the meal
    Of chops

Divides the too-laborious day;
    Again the Student sighs o'er Mods,
And prompts his enemies to lay
    Long odds.

Again the shopman spreads his wiles;
    Again the organ-pipes, unbound,
Distract the populace for miles
  ...

Where has Maid Quiet gone to,
Nodding her russet hood?
The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
O how could I be so calm
When she rose up to depart?
Now words that called up the lightning
Are hurtling through my heart.

Rains have left the sea-banks ill to climb:
Waveward sinks the loosening seaboard’s floor:
Half the sliding cliffs are mire and slime.
Earth, a fruit rain-rotted to the core,
Drops dissolving down in flakes, that pour
Dense as gouts from eaves grown foul with grime.
One sole rock which years that scathe not score
Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Time were even as even the rainiest clime,
Life were even as even this lapsing shore,
Might not aught outlive their trustless prime:
Vainly fear would wail or hope implore,
Vainly grief revile or love adore
Seasons clothed in sunshine, rain, or rime
Now for me one comfort held in store
Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Once, by fate’s default or chance’s crime,
Each apart, our burdens each we bore;

Here on the pale beach, in the darkness;
With the full moon just to rise;
They sit alone, and look over the sea,
Or into each other’s eyes. . .
She pokes her parasol into the sleepy sand,
Or sifts the lazy whiteness through her hand.
‘A lovely night,’ he says, ‘the moon,
Comes up for you and me.
Just like a blind old spotlight there,
Fizzing across the sea!’
She pays no heed, nor even turns her head:
He slides his arm around her waist instead.
‘Why don’t we do a sketch together,
Those songs you sing are swell.
Where did you get them, anyway?
They suit you awfully well.’
She will not turn to him, will not resist.
Impassive, she submits to being kissed.
‘My husband wrote all four of them.
You know, my husband drowned.
He was always sickly, so...

I.

Upon a rock, high on a mountain side,
    Thousands of feet above the lake-sea's lip,
    A rock in which old waters' rise and dip,
Plunge and recoil, and backward eddying tide
Had, age-long, worn, while races lived and died,
    Involved channels, where the sea-weed's drip
    Followed the ebb; and now earth-grasses sip
Fresh dews from heaven, whereby on earth they bide--
    I sat and gazed southwards. A dry flow
Of withering wind blew on my drooping strength
From o'er the awful desert's burning length.
    Behind me piled, away and upward go
Great sweeps of savage mountains--up, away,
Where panthers roam, and snow gleams all the day.


II.

Ah, God! the world needs many hours to make;
    Nor hast thou ceased the making of it ye...

L. H. Recalls Her Romance


He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed,
My window every day,
And when I smiled on him he blushed,
That youth, quite as a girl might; aye,
In the shyest way.

Thus often did he pass hereby,
That youth of bounding gait,
Until the one who blushed was I,
And he became, as here I sate,
My joy, my fate.

And now he passes by no more,
That youth I loved too true!
I grieve should he, as here of yore,
Pass elsewhere, seated in his view,
Some maiden new!

If such should be, alas for her!
He'll make her feel him dear,
Become her daily comforter,
Then tire him of her beauteous gear,
And disappear!

Between the two perplexed I go,
A shuttlecock, tossed to and fro.
I gaze on one, and know that she
Is all that womankind can be;
I seek the other, and she seems
The perfect idol of my dreams;
And so between the charming pair
My heart is ever in the air.
And yet, although it be my fate
To hover indeterminate,
I rest content, nor ask for more
Than this sweet game of battledore.

"Why sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;
"So long enjoy'd, so oft misused,
Alternate, in thy fickle pride,
Desired, neglected, and accused!

"Before my breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away!
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay,

"Redeem mine hours, the space is brief,
While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,
And measureless thy joy or grief,
When Time and thou shalt part for ever!"

Come close to me, dear Annie, while I bind a lover's knot.
A tale of burning love between a kettle and a pot.
The pot was stalwart iron and the kettle trusty tin,
And though their sides were black with smoke they bubbled love within.

Forget that kettle, Jamie, and that pot of boiling broth,
I know a dismal story of a candle and a moth.
For while your pot is boiling and while your kettle sings
My moth makes love to candle flame and burns away his wings.

Your moth, I envy, Annie, that died by candle flame,
But here are two more lovers, unto no damage came.
There was a cuckoo loved a clock and found her always true.
For every hour they told their hearts, "Ring! ting!    Cuckoo!    Cuckoo!"

As the pot boiled for the kettle, as the kettle for the pot,
So boils m...

"What, you are stepping westward?" "Yea."
'Twould be a 'wildish' destiny,
If we, who thus together roam
In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;
And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of 'heavenly' destiny:
I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake:
The salutation had to me
The very sound of courtesy:
Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was...