Identity

Hush'd be the camps to-day;
And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons;
And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate,
Our dear commander's death.

No more for him life's stormy conflicts;
Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing, poet, in our name;
Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there;
Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse,
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

    Small is the new-born plant scarce seen
    Amid the soft encircling green,
        Where yonder budding acorn rears,
    Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head:
        Slow pass along the train of years,
    And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed.
        Anon it rears aloft its giant form,
        And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet the storm.
    Beneath its boughs far shadowing o'er the plain,
From summer suns, repair the grateful village train.

        Nor BEDFORD will my friend survey
    The book of Nature with unheeding eye;
        For never beams the rising orb of day,
        For never dimly dies the refluent ray,
    But as the moralizer marks the sky,
He broods with strange delight upon futurity.

    ...

The eyes that mock me sign the way
Whereto I pass at eve of day.

Grey way whose violet signals are
The trysting and the twining star.

Ah star of evil! star of pain!
Highhearted youth comes not again

Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know
The signs that mock me as I go.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars ‘light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Stiff scholars and the hody amorous
Will in their ripeness equally admire
Powerful, gende cats, pride of the house,
Who, like them, love to sit around the fire.

Friends both of sciences and of l'amour,
They seek the silent horror of the night;
Erebus wants them for his funeral corps,
But in their pride they'd never choose that fate.

They take in sleeping noble attitudes
Great sphinxes in the desert solitudes,
Who seem to be entranced by endless dreams;

Within their potent loins are magic sparks,
And flakes of gold, fine sand, are vaguely seen
Behind their mystic eyes, gleaming like stars.

    The blast of common censure could I fear,
    Before your play my name should not appear;
    For 'twill be thought, and with some colour too,
    I pay the bribe I first received from you;
    That mutual vouchers for our fame we stand,
    And play the game into each other's hand;
    And as cheap pen'orths to ourselves afford,
    As Bessus[1] and the brothers of the sword.
    Such libels private men may well endure,
    When states and kings themselves are not secure:
    For ill men, conscious of their inward guilt,
    Think the best actions on by-ends are built.
    And yet my silence had not 'scaped their spite;
    Then, envy had not suffer'd me to write;
    For, since I could not ignorance pretend,
    Such merit I must envy or commend.

Now the Four-way Lodge is opened, now the Hunting Winds are loose,
Now the Smokes of Spring go up to clear the brain;
Now the Young Men's hearts are troubled for the whisper of the Trues,
Now the Red Gods make their medicine again!
Who hath seen the beaver busied?
Who hath watched the black-tail mating?
Who hath lain alone to hear the wild-goose cry?
Who hath worked the chosen water where the ouananiche is waiting,
Or the sea-trout's jumping-crazy for the fly?
He must go, go, go away from here!
On the other side the world he's overdue.
'Send your road is clear before you when the old
Spring-fret comes o'er you,
And the Red Gods call for you!
So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the bow,
And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust;
And...

Even as a dragon's eye that feels the stress
Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp
Suddenly glaring through sepulchral damp,
So burns yon Taper 'mid a black recess
Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless:
The lake below reflects it not; the sky,
Muffled in clouds, affords no company
To mitigate and cheer its loneliness.
Yet, round the body of that joyless Thing
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated in domestic ring
A gay society with faces bright,
Conversing, reading, laughing; or they sing,
While hearts and voices in the song unite.

Twilight, a timid fawn, went glimmering by,
And night, the dark blue hunter, followed fast:
Ceaseless pursuit and flight were in the sky,
But the long chase had ceased for us at last.

We watched together while the driven fawn
Hid in the golden thicket of the day:
We from whose hearts pursuit and flight were gone
Knew on the hunter's breast her refuge lay.

SPOKEN BY MR HART.


    Poets, your subjects have their parts assign'd
    To unbend, and to divert their sovereign's mind:
    When tired with following nature, you think fit
    To seek repose in the cool shades of wit,
    And, from the sweet retreat, with joy survey
    What rests, and what is conquer'd, of the way.
    Here, free yourselves from envy, care, and strife
    You view the various turns of human life:
    Safe in our scene, through dangerous courts you go,
    And, undebauch'd, the vice of cities know.
    Your theories are here to practice brought,
    As in mechanic operations wrought;
    And man, the little world, before you set,
    As once the sphere[1] of crystal show'd the great.
    Blest, sure, are you above all mort...

When down the west the new moon slipped,
A curved canoe that dipped and tipped,
When from the rose the dewdrop dripped,
As if it shed its heart's blood slow;
As softly silent as a star
I climbed a lattice that I know,
A window lattice, held ajar
By one slim hand as white as snow:
The hand of her who set me here,
A rose, to bloom from year to year.

I, who have heard the bird of June
Sing all night long beneath the moon;
I, who have heard the zephyr croon
Soft music 'mid spring's avenues,
Heard then a sweeter sound than these,
Among the shadows and the dews
A heart that beat like any bee's,
Sweet with a name and I know whose:
Her heart that, leaning, pressed on me,
A rose, she never looked to see.

O star and moon! O wind and bird!...

It is of Corca Dubhne she was, and she had her youth seven times over, and every man that had lived with her died of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races. And through a hundred years she wore upon her head the veil Cuimire had blessed. Then age and weakness came upon her and it is what she said:

Ebb-tide to me as to the sea; old age brings me reproach; I used to wear a shift that was always new; to-day, I have not even a cast one.

It is riches you are loving, it is not men; it was men we loved in the time we were living.

There were dear men on whose plains we used to be driving; it is good the time we passed with them; it is little we were broken afterwards.

When my arms are seen it is long and thin they are; once they used to be fondling, they used to be around g...

Chattering finch and water-fly
Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.

While Celia's Tears make sorrow bright,
Proud Grief sits swelling in her eyes;
The Sun, next those the fairest light,
Thus from the Ocean first did rise:
And thus thro' Mists we see the Sun,
Which else we durst not gaze upon.

These silver drops, like morning dew,
Foretell the fervour of the day:
So from one Cloud soft show'rs we view,
And blasting lightnings burst away.
The Stars that fall from Celia's eye
Declare our Doom in drawing nigh.

The Baby in that sunny Sphere
So like a Phaeton appears,
That Heav'n, the threaten'd World to spare,
Thought fit to drown him in her tears;
Else might th' ambitious Nymph aspire,
To set, like him, Heav'n too on fire.

"O Songs!" I said:
"Stop sounding in my soul
Just for a little while and let me sleep,
Resting my head on the breast
Of Silence;" but the rhythmic roll
Of a thousand songs swept on and on,
And a far Voice said:
"When thou art dead
Thy restless heart shall rest."

And the songs will never let me sleep.
I plead with them; but o'er the deep
They still will roll
On, and on, and on,
Their music never gone.
Ah! world-tired soul!
Just for a little while,
Just like a poor, tired child
Beneath its Mother's smile --
Only to fall asleep!
Silence! be mother to me!
But -- No! No! No!
The waves will ebb and flow.
I wonder is it best
To never, never rest
Down on the shores of this strange Below?

Nature, when she made thee, dear,
Begged the treasures of the year.
For thy cheeks, all pink and white,
Spring gave apple blossoms light;
Summer, for thy matchless eyes,
Gave the azure of her skies;
Autumn spun her gold and red
In a mass of silken thread,
Gold and red and sunlight rare
For the wonder of thy hair!
Surly Winter would impart
But his coldness, for thy heart.

Dearest, let the love I bring
Turn thy Winter into Spring.
What are Summer, Spring and Fall,
If thy Winter chills them all?

O years!and age!    farewell:
Behold I go,
Where I do know
Infinity to dwell.

And these mine eyes shall see
All times, how they
Are lost i' th' sea
Of vast eternity:

Where never moon shall sway
The stars; but she,
And night, shall be
Drown'd in one endless day.

Down in the mud I lay,
Tired out by my long day
Of five damned days and nights,
Five sleepless days and nights, ...
Dream-snatched, and set me where
The dungeon of Despair
Looms over Desolate Sea,
Frowning and threatening me
With aspect high and steep,
A most malignant keep.
My foes that lay within
Shouted and made a din,
Hooted and grinned and cried:
"Today we've killed your pride;
Today your ardour ends.
We've murdered all your friends;
We've undermined by stealth
Your happiness and your health.
We've taken away your hope;
Now you may droop and mope
To misery and to Death."
But with my spear of Faith,
Stout as an oaken rafter,
With my round shield of laughter,
With my sharp, tongue-like sword
That speaks a bitter ...