Identity

I dreamt I was in love again
With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain
Of that innocent young past.

But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten
Were Hell in Nineteen-five.

The boy's woe was as keen and clear,
The boy's love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear,
Hurt quite as much as you.

* * * * *

Sickly I pondered how the lover
Wrongs the unanswering tomb,
And sentimentalizes over
What earned a better doom.

Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,
Strews pinkish dust above,
And sighs, "The dear dead boyish pastime!
But THIS, ah, God! is Love!"

Better oblivion hide dead true loves,
Better the night...

Fly swift, my light gazelle,
    To her who now lies waking,
To hear thy silver bell
    The midnight silence breaking.
And, when thou com'st, with gladsome feet,
    Beneath her lattice springing,
Ah, well she'll know how sweet
    The words of love thou'rt bringing.

Yet, no--not words, for they
    But half can tell love's feeling;
Sweet flowers alone can say
    What passion fears revealing.
A once bright rose's withered leaf,
    A towering lily broken,--
Oh these may paint a grief
    No words could e'er have spoken.

Not such, my gay gazelle,
    The wreath thou speedest over
Yon moonlight dale, to tell
    My lady how I love her.
And, what to her will sweeter be
    Than gems the richest, rarest,--
From Truth's i...

Tune - "Deil tak the wars."



I.

    Mark yonder pomp of costly fashion
        Round the wealthy, titled bride:
    But when compar'd with real passion,
        Poor is all that princely pride.
            What are the showy treasures?
            What are the noisy pleasures?
    The gay gaudy glare of vanity and art:
            The polish'd jewel's blaze
            May draw the wond'ring gaze,
            And courtly grandeur bright
            The fancy may delight,
    But never, never can come near the heart.

II.

    But did you see my dearest Chloris
        In simplicity's array;
    Lovely as yonder sweet opening flower is,
        Shrinking from the gaze of day;
            O then the heart al...

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

When my heart was sad and lonely,
    And had closed its inmost cell
Over the impulsive feelings
    That rule my nation's hearts too well.

When the tie was cut asunder,
    That had bound me to a home,
And I felt the desolation
    Of being in the world alone;

When I first, the veil assuming,
    Masked before a treacherous world,
And the hopes romance expanded
    Reality had sternly furled;

And the touch of disappointment,
    Blighted what was green and fair,
And the spirit's bright revealings
    Are not so hopeful as they were.

Precious are the words of kindness,
    Falling on the heart like dew,
Freshening though, alas for weakness,
    They cannot make things new.

Thoughts come warm from that deep foun...

"Who is Blackmouth?" Well, that's hard to say.
Mebbe he might ha' told you, 't other day,
If you'd been here. Now, - he's gone away.
Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use
If you'd called here earlier. His excuse
Always was, whenever folks would ask him
Where he hailed from, an' would tease an' task him; -
What d' you s'pose? He just said, "I don' know."

That was truth. He came here long ago;
But, before that, he'd been born somewhere:
The conundrum started first, right there.
Little shaver - afore he knew his name
Or the place from whereabouts he came -
On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him.
Killed the old folks! But this cus' - they brought him
Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows.
So'thin' 'bout him must have touched their marrows:...

        Nancy

"Edward back from the Indian Sea,
What have you brought for Nancy?"

        Edward

"A rope of pearls and a gold earring,
And a bird of the East that will not sing.
A carven tooth, a box with a key, "

        Nancy

"God be praised you are back," says she,
"Have you nothing more for your Nancy?"

        Edward

"Long as I sailed the Indian Sea
I gathered all for your fancy:
Toys and silk and jewels I bring,
And a bird of the East that will not sing:
What more can you want, dear girl, from me?"

        Nancy

"God be praised you are back," said she,
"Have you nothing better for Nancy?"

        Edward

"Safe and home from the Indian Sea,
And nothing to take your f...

I.

Life and Thought have gone away
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide;
Careless tenants they!



II.

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.



III.

Close the door, the shutters close,
Or thro’ the windows we shall see
The nakedness and vacancy
Of the dark deserted house.



IV.

Come away; no more of mirth
Is here or merry-making sound.
The house was builded of the earth,
And shall fall again to ground.



V.

Come away; for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell,
But in a city glorious–
A great and distant city–have bought
A mansion incorruptib...

She's all my fancy painted him
(I make no idle boast);
If he or you had lost a limb,
Which would have suffered most?

He said that you had been to her,
And seen me here before;
But, in another character,
She was the same of yore.

There was not one that spoke to us,
Of all that thronged the street:
So he sadly got into a 'bus,
And pattered with his feet.

They sent him word I had not gone
(We know it to be true);
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?

They gave her one, the gave me two,
They gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as...

Glad sight wherever new with old
Is joined through some dear homeborn tie;
The life of all that we behold
Depends upon that mystery.
Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field and grove,
Unless, while with admiring eye
We gaze, we also learn to love.

I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch,
Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.

Let the wild red-rose bloom.    Though not to thee
    So delicately perfect as the white
    And unwed lily drooping in the light,
Though she has known the kisses of the bee
    And tells her amorous tale to passers-by
In perfumed whispers and with untaught grace,
Still let the red-rose bloom in her own place;
    She could not be the lily should she try.

Why to the wondrous nightingale cry hush
    Or bid her cease her wild heart-breaking lay,
    And tune her voice to imitate the way
The whip-poor-will makes music, or the thrush?
    All airs of sorrow to one theme belong,
And passion is not copyrighted yet.
Each heart writes its own music.    Why not let
    The nightingale unchided sing her song?

Hard by the Indian lodges, where the bush
    Breaks in a clearing, through ill-fashioned fields,
She comes to labour, when the first still hush
    Of autumn follows large and recent yields.

Age in her fingers, hunger in her face,
    Her shoulders stooped with weight of work and years,
But rich in tawny colouring of her race,
    She comes a-field to strip the purple ears.

And all her thoughts are with the days gone by,
    Ere might's injustice banished from their lands
Her people, that to-day unheeded lie,
    Like the dead husks that rustle through her hands.

Somewhere is music from the linnets' bills,
And thro' the sunny flowers the bee-wings drone,
And white bells of convolvulus on hills
Of quiet May make silent ringing, blown
Hither and thither by the wind of showers,
And somewhere all the wandering birds have flown;
And the brown breath of Autumn chills the flowers.

But where are all the loves of long ago?
O little twilight ship blown up the tide,
Where are the faces laughing in the glow
Of morning years, the lost ones scattered wide.
Give me your hand, O brother, let us go
Crying about the dark for those who died.

One day the Chinese Bird of Royalty, FUM,
Thus accosted our own Bird of Royalty, HUM,
In that Palace or China-shop (Brighton, which is it?)
Where FUM had just come to pay HUM a short visit.--
Near akin are these Birds, tho' they differ in nation
(The breed of the HUMS is as old as creation);
Both, full-crawed Legitimates--both, birds of prey,
Both, cackling and ravenous creatures, half way
'Twixt the goose and the vulture, like Lord Castlereagh.
While FUM deals in Mandarins Bonzes, Bohea,
Peers, Bishops and Punch, HUM.--are sacred to thee
So congenial their tastes, that, when FUM first did light on
The floor of that grand China-warehouse at Brighton,
The lanterns and dragons and things round the dome
Where so like what he left, "Gad," says FUM, "I'm at home,"--
And...

Like coral insects multitudinous
    The minutes are whereof our life is made.
    They build it up as in the deep's blue shade
It grows, it comes to light, and then, and thus
For both there is an end. The populous
    Sea-blossoms close, our minutes that have paid
    Life's debt of work are spent; the work is laid
Before our feet that shall come after us.
We may not stay to watch if it will speed,
    The bard if on some luter's string his song
Live sweetly yet; the hero if his star
Doth shine. Work is its own best earthly meed,
    Else have we none more than the sea-born throng
Who wrought those marvellous isles that bloom afar.

I.

The rainy smell of a ferny dell,
Whose shadow no sunray flaws,
When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds
Telling her beads
Of haws.


II.

The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed,
On hills where the trees are thinned,
When Autumn leans at the oak-root's scarp,
Playing a harp
Of wind.


III.

The crickets' chirr 'neath brier and burr,
By leaf-strewn pools and streams,
When Autumn stands 'mid the dropping nuts,
With the book, she shuts,
Of dreams.


IV.

The gray "alas" of the days that pass,
And the hope that says "adieu,"
A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower,
And one ghost's hour
With you.

His art was loving; Eres set his sign
    Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew
    The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew.
Love feeds love's thirst as wine feeds love of wine;
Nor is there any potion from the vine
    Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew
    Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew
Inebriated with that draught divine.

Yet in his sober moments, when the sun
    Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall,
    And passion's sea had grown an ebbing tide,
From out the many, Memory singled one
    Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all -
    The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied.