Identity

Return to greet me, colours that were my joy,
Not in the woeful crimson of men slain,
But shining as a garden; come with the streaming
Banners of dawn and sundown after rain.

I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver,
Radiance through living roses, spires of green
Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood,
Where the hueless wind passes and cries unseen.

I am not sad; only I long for lustre, -
Tired of the greys and browns and the leafless ash.
I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers
Far from the angry guns that boom and flash.

Return, musical, gay with blossom and fleetness,
Days when my sight shall be clear and my heart rejoice;
Come from the sea with breadth of approaching brightness,
When the blithe wind laughs on the hills ...

S' il dissi mai, ch' i' venga in odio a quella.

HE VEHEMENTLY REBUTS THE CHARGE OF LOVING ANOTHER.


    Perdie! I said it not,
Nor never thought to do:
As well as I, ye wot
I have no power thereto.
And if I did, the lot
That first did me enchain
May never slake the knot,
But strait it to my pain.

And if I did, each thing
That may do harm or woe,
Continually may wring
My heart, where so I go!
Report may always ring
Of shame on me for aye,
If in my heart did spring
The words that you do say.

And if I did, each star
That is in heaven above,
May frown on me, to mar
The hope I have in love!
And if I did, such war
As they brought unto Troy,
Bring all my life afar
From all his lust and j...

A father once, whose sons were two,
For each a gift had much ado.
At last upon this course he fell:
'My sons,' said he, 'within our well
Two treasures lodge, as I am told;
The one a sunken piece of gold, -
A bowl it may be, or a pitcher, -
The other is a thing far richer.
These treasures if you can but find,
Each may be suited to his mind;
For both are precious in their kind.
To gain the one you'll need a hook;
The other will but cost a look.
But O, of this, I pray, beware! -
You who may choose the tempting share, -
Too eager fishing for the pitcher
May ruin that which is far richer.'

Out ran the boys, their gifts to draw:
But eagerness was check'd with awe,
How could there be a richer prize
Than solid gold beneath the skies?
Or,...

    Seen the whores in doorsteps,
    slack, crouched as packing crates
    behind their quiet wardrobe lamps,
    inset like a skeleton's crown
    there to bend our will,
    provide passageways to power and suggestion;
    the winding entrance to rouged
    light flickering with powdered flesh
    yellow of gold,
    then black to ivory
    a frightful circus in a palace of turn
    within the grate of execution.

Love built a crimson house,
I know it well,
That he might have a home
Wherein to dwell.

Poor Love that roved so far
And fared so ill,
Between the morning star
And the Hollow Hill,

Before he found the vale
Where he could bide,
With memory and oblivion
Side by side.

He took the silver dew
And the dun red clay,
And behold when he was through
How fair were they!

The braces of the sky
Were in its girth,
That it should feel no jar
Of the swinging earth;

That sun and wind might bleach
But not destroy
The house that he had builded
For his joy.

"Here will I stay," he said,
"And roam no more,
And dust when I am dead
Shall keep the door."

There trooping dreams by night

Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating;
Winking at the blushing trees,
And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease
Of the southward-flying swallow.
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden, Autumn days!

Shivering, quivering, tearful days,
Fretfully and sadly weeping;
Dreading still, with anxious gaze,
Icy fetters round thee creeping;
O'er the cheerless, withered plain,
Woefully and hoarsely calling;
Pelting hail and drenching rain
On thy scanty vestments falling.
Sad and mournful are thy ways,
Grieving, wailing, Autumn days!

My lids with grief were tumid yet,
And still my sullied cheek was wet
With briny dews profusely shed
For venerable Winton dead,[2]
When Fame, whose tales of saddest sound
Alas! are ever truest found,
The news through all our cities spread
Of yet another mitred head
By ruthless Fate to Death consign'd,
Ely, the honour of his kind.
At once, a storm of passion heav'd
My boiling bosom, much I grieved
But more I raged, at ev'ry breath
Devoting Death himself to death.
With less revenge did Naso[3] teem
When hated Ibis was his theme;
With less, Archilochus,[4] denied
The lovely Greek, his promis'd bride.
But lo! while thus I execrate,
Incens'd, the Minister of Fate,
Wondrous accents, soft, yet clear,
Wafted on...

Enter the temple beautiful! The house not made with hands!
Rain-washed and green, wind-swept and clean,
Beneath the blue it stands,
And no cathedral anywhere
Seemeth so holy or so fair.

It hath no heavy gabled roof, no door with lock and key,
No window-bars shut out the stars,
The aisles are wide and free -
Here through the night each altar-light
Is but a moon-beam, silver-white.

Silently as the temple grew at Solomon's command,
Still as things seem within a dream
This rose from out the land:
And all the pillars, grey and high,
Lifted their arches to the sky.

Here is the perfume of the leaves, the incense of the pines -
The magic scent that hath been pent
Within the tangled vines:
No censor filled with spices rare
E'er swung su...

Ah, help me! but her face and brow
Are lovelier than lilies are
Beneath the light of moon and star
That smile as they are smiling now -
White lilies in a pallid swoon
Of sweetest white beneath the moon -
White lilies, in a flood of bright
Pure lucidness of liquid light
Cascading down some plenilune,
When all the azure overhead
Blooms like a dazzling daisy-bed. -
So luminous her face and brow,
The luster of their glory, shed
In memory, even, blinds me now.

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
    Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
    And the menace of their wrath.

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
    Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
    Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and riverside
    The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing a of the stream
    And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
    In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the c...

    People with money but no fortune
    or stomach for the life of an albatross,
    watch him soar on self-made wings,
    fetch the dingy redness
    of morning's first catch with
    a long necked bottle
    he calls the captain

Beeny did not quiver,
    Juliot grew not gray,
Thin Valency's river
    Held its wonted way.
Bos seemed not to utter
    Dimmest note of dirge,
Targan mouth a mutter
    To its creamy surge.

Yet though these, unheeding,
    Listless, passed the hour
Of her spirit's speeding,
    She had, in her flower,
Sought and loved the places -
    Much and often pined
For their lonely faces
    When in towns confined.

Why did not Valency
    In his purl deplore
One whose haunts were whence he
    Drew his limpid store?
Why did Bos not thunder,
    Targan apprehend
Body and breath were sunder
    Of their former friend?

Here is a tale for men and women teachers:
There was a girl who'd ceased to be a maiden;
Who walked by night with heart like Lilith's laden;
A child of sin anathemaed of preachers.
She had been lovely once; but dye and scarlet,
On hair and face, had ravaged all her beauty;
Only her eyes still did her girl-soul duty,
Showing the hell that hounded her poor harlot!
One day a fisherman from out the river
Fished her pale body, (like a branch of willlow,
Or golden weed) self-murdered, drowned and broken:
The sight of it had made a strong man shiver;
And on her poor breast, as upon a pillow,
A picture smiled, a baby's, like some token

    Said the Bicycle to the Automobile:
    "How high and mighty and gay you feel;
    Yet I can remember the day when I
    Would let no other one pass me by
    Cart horse and roadster and racehorse too,
    Far ahead of them all I flew.
    Now my tires are unpumped and my warning bell
    The attention of nobody can compel.

    "Though you maim your thousands where I hurt one,
    Though ten times my farthest is your day's run,
    Still I have been learning while lying here,
    That a rival's coming for you to fear.
    I have heard them talk of a wonderful thing,
    That can fly in the air like a bird on the wing,
    That can carry a man over land, over sea;
    In a twinkling he is where he wishes to be.

    "So swiftly it speeds, in a we...

Dreaming for ever, vainly dreaming,
    Life to the last, pursues its flight;
Day hath its visions fairly beaming,
    But false as those of night.
The one illusion, the other real,
    But both the same brief dreams at last;
And when we grasp the bliss ideal,
    Soon as it shines, 'tis past.

Here, then, by this dim lake reposing,
    Calmly I'll watch, while light and gloom
Flit o'er its face till night is closing--
    Emblem of life's short doom!
But tho', by turns, thus dark and shining,
    'Tis still unlike man's changeful day,
Whose light returns not, once declining,
    Whose cloud, once come, will stay.

    The sky is red and comes
    from Montreal -
    you lied to me
    the hemlock of the wind
    is not this January's
    but is ringed with
    steel laughter of
    another winter.

    I saw you wringing sweat
    from the eyes of the road,
    lie down take the season's
    wetness in your mouth,
    push apart moist dampness
    'til one cavity was
    felled and another opened.

If you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o'er and o'er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.

If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,
I think I should not mind the chill baptismal spray,
Nor find my hand and heart and all the world so cold.

If you could walk with me upon the strand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would then be put away,
And I could give back laughter for the Ocean's moan!

My love she wears a cotton plaid,
A bonnet of the straw;
Her cheeks are leaves of roses spread,
Her lips are like the haw.
In truth she is as sweet a maid
As true love ever saw.

Her curls are ever in my eyes,
As nets by Cupid flung;
Her voice will oft my sleep surprise,
More sweet then ballad sung.
O Mary Bateman's curling hair!
I wake, and there is nothing there.

I wake, and fall asleep again,
The same delights in visions rise;
There's nothing can appear more plain
Than those rose cheeks and those bright eyes.
I wake again, and all alone
Sits Darkness on his ebon throne.

All silent runs the silver Trent,
The cobweb veils are all wet through,
A silver bead's on every bent,
On every leaf a bleb of dew.
I sighed, t...