Identity

O rustic herald of the spring,
At length in yonder woody vale
Fast by the brook i hear thee sing;
And, studious of thy homely tale,
Amid the vespers of the grove,
Amid the chanting choir of love,
Thy sage responses hail.
The time has been when i have frown'd
To hear thy voice the woods invade;
And while thy solemn accent drown'd
Some sweeter poet of the shade,
Thus, thought i, thus the sons of care
Some constant youth or generous fair
With dull advice upbraid.

I said, "While Philomela's song"
"Proclaims the passion of the grove",
"It ill beseems a cuckow's tongue"
"Her charming language to reprove",
Alas, how much a lover's ear
Hates all the sober truth to hear,
The sober truth of love!
When hearts are in each other bless'd,

Poet, whose words are like the tight-packed seed
    Sealed in the capsule of a silver flower,
Still at your art we wonder as we read,
    The art dynamic charging each word with power.

Seeds of the silver flower of Emerson:
    One, on the winds to Scotland brought, did sink
In Carlyle's heart; and one was lately blown
    To Belgium, and flowered in - Maeterlinck.

Now to my lips lift then some opiate
Of black forgetfulness! while in thy gaze
Still lures the loveless beauty that betrays,
And in thy mouth the music that is hate.
No promise more hast thou to make me wait;
No smile to cozen my sick heart with praise!
Far, far behind thee stretch laborious days,
And far before thee, labors soon and late.
Thine is the fen-fire that we deem a star,
Flying before us, ever fugitive,
Thy mocking policy still holds afar:
And thine the voice, to which our longings give
Hope's siren face, that speaks us sweet and fair,
Only to lead us captives to Despair.

Yorktown

From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,
Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill:
Who curbs his steed at head of one?
Hark! the low murmur: Washington!
Who bends his keen, approving glance,
Where down the gorgeous line of France
Shine knightly star and plume of snow?
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!
The earth which bears this calm array
Shook with the war-charge yesterday,
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,
Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel;
October's clear and noonday sun
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun,
And down night's double blackness fell,
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines;
While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,<...

And thus it came my feet were led
To wizard walls that hairy hung
Old as their rock the moss made dead;
And, like a ditch of fire flung
Around it, uncouth flowers red
Thrust spur and fang and tongue.

And here I harped. Did dead men list?
Or was it hollow hinges gnarred
Huge, iron scorn in donjon-twist?
And when I thought a face sword-scarred
Would curse me, lo! a woman kissed
At me hands ringed and starred.

And so I sang; for she had leaned
Rare beauty to me, dark and tall;
I sang of Love, whose Court is queened
Of Aliénor the virginal,
Nor saw how rolled on me a fiend
Wolf-eyeballs from the wall.

Oh, how I sang! until she laughed
Red lips that made lute harmony;
I sang of knights who fought and quaffed
To Love's own ...

I will remember what I was. I am sick of rope and chain,
I will remember my old strength and all my forest-affairs.
I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugarcane.
I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.

I will go out until the day, until the morning break,
Out to the winds 'untainted kiss, the waters' clean caress.
I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake.
I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!

I dreamed a dream: I dreamt that I espied,
Upon a stone that was not rolled aside,
A Shadow sit upon a grave, a Shade,
As thin, as unsubstantial, as of old
Came, the Greek poet told,
To lick the life-blood in the trench Ulysses made,
As pale, as thin, and said:
‘I am the Resurrection of the Dead.
The night is past, the morning is at hand,
And I must in my proper semblance stand,
Appear brief space and vanish, listen, this is true,
I am that Jesus whom they slew.’

And shadows dim, I dreamed, the dead apostles came,
And bent their heads for sorrow and for shame,
Sorrow for their great loss, and shame
For what they did in that vain name.

And in long ranges far behind there seemed
Pale vapoury angel forms; or was it cloud? that kept
Strange w...

Once Love grew bold and arrogant of air,
Proud of the youth that made him fresh and fair;
So unto Grief he spake, "What right hast thou
To part or parcel of this heart?" Grief's brow
Was darkened with the storm of inward strife;
Thrice smote he Love as only he might dare,
And Love, pride purged, was chastened all his life.

When Want, with wasted mien and haggard eye,
Retires in silence to her cell to die;
When o'er her child she hangs with speechless dread,
Faint and despairing of to-morrow's bread;
Who shall approach to bid the conflict cease,
And to her parting spirit whisper peace!
Who thee, poor infant, that with aspect bland
Dost stretch forth innocent thy helpless hand,
Shall pitying then protect, when thou art thrown
On the world's waste, unfriended and alone!
O hapless Infancy! if aught could move
The hardest heart to pity and to love
'Twere surely found in thee: dim passions mark
Stern manhood's brow, where age impresses dark
The stealing line of sorrow; but thine eye
Wears not distrust, or grief, or perfidy.
Though fortune's storms with dismal shadow lower,
Thy he...

        Father

Have you spent the money I gave you to-day?

        John

    Ay, father I have.
A fourpence on cakes, two pennies that away
    To a beggar I gave.

        Father

The lake of yellow brimstone boil for you in Hell,
    Such lies that you spin.
Tell the truth now, John, ere the falsehood swell,
    Say, where have you been?

        John

I'll lie no more to you, father, what is the need?
    To the Play I went,
With sixpence for a near seat, money's worth indeed,
    The best ever spent.

Grief to you, shame or grief, here is the story,
    My splendid night!
It was colour, scents, music, a tragic glory,
    Fear with delight.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, title of the tale:

    The hours are past, love,
    Oh, fled they not too fast, love!
Those happy hours, when down the mountain side,
We saw the rosy mists of morning glide,
And, hand in hand, went forth upon our way,
Full of young life and hope, to meet the day.

    The hours are past, love,
    Oh, fled they not too fast, love!
Those sunny hours, when from the mid-day heat,
We sought the waterfall with loitering feet,
And o'er the rocks that lock the gleaming pool,
Crept down into its depths, so dark and cool.

    The hours are past, love,
    Oh, fled they not too fast, love!
Those solemn hours, when through the violet sky,
Alike without a cloud, without a ray,
The round red autumn moon came glowingly,
While o'er the leaden waves our boat made way.

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep ...

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.

Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.

I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.

I heard a boy that climbed up Dover's Hill
Singing Sweet England, sweeter for his song.
The notes crept muffled through the copse, but still
Sharply recalled the things forgotten long,
The music that my own boy's lips had known,
Singing, and old airs on a wild flute blown;

And other hills, more grim and lonely far,
And valleys empty of these orchard trees;
A sheep-pond filled with the moon, a single star
I had watched by night searching the wreckful seas;
And all the streets and streets that childhood knew
In years when London streets were all my view.

And I remembered how that song I heard,
Sweet England, sung by children on May-day,
Nor any song was sweeter of a bird
Than that half-grievous air from children gay--
For then, as now, ...

I bear a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry, - sweets for bitter.

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar's gardens blow, -
And a quince in hand, - not one
Is set upon your boughs below;
Not set, because their buds not spring;
Spring not, 'cause world is wintering.

But these were found in the East and South
Where Winter is the clime forgot. -
The dewdrop on the larkspur's mouth
O should it then be quenchèd not?
In starry water-meads they drew
These drops: which be they? stars or dew?

Had she a quince in hand? Yet gaze:
Rather it is the sizing moon.
Lo, linked heavens with milky w...

The struggling Rill insensibly is grown
Into a Brook of loud and stately march,
Crossed ever and anon by plank or arch;
And, for like use, lo! what might seem a zone
Chosen for ornament, stone matched with stone
In studied symmetry, with interspace
For the clear waters to pursue their race
Without restraint. How swiftly have they flown,
Succeeding, still succeeding! Here the Child
Puts, when the high-swoln Flood runs fierce and wild,
His budding courage to the proof; and here
Declining Manhood learns to note the sly
And sure encroachments of infirmity,
Thinking how fast time runs, life's end how near!

Lifelong to be
Seemed the fair colour of the time;
That there was standing shadowed near
A spirit who sang to the gentle chime
Of the self-struck notes, I did not hear,
I did not see.

Thus did it sing
To the mindless lyre that played indoors
As she came to listen for me without:
"O value what the nonce outpours -
This best of life - that shines about
Your welcoming!"

I had slowed along
After the torrid hours were done,
Though still the posts and walls and road
Flung back their sense of the hot-faced sun,
And had walked by Stourside Mill, where broad
Stream-lilies throng.

And I descried
The dusky house that stood apart,
And her, white-muslined, waiting there
In the porch with high-expectant heart,
While still the ...

    "I write about the butterfly,
    It is a pretty thing;
    And flies about like the birds,
    But it does not sing.

    "First it is a little grub,
    And then it is a nice yellow cocoon,
    And then the butterfly
    Eats its way out soon.

    "They live on dew and honey,
    They do not have any hive,
    They do not sting like wasps, and bees, and hornets,
    And to be as good as they are we should strive.