Identity

As I walk the misty hill
All is languid, fogged, and still;
Not a note of any bird
Nor any motion's hint is heard,
Save from soaking thickets round
Trickle or water's rushing sound,
And from ghostly trees the drip
Of runnel dews or whispering slip
Of leaves, which in a body launch
Listlessly from the stagnant branch
To strew the marl, already strown,
With litter sodden as its own,

A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briars,
And from the clammy ground suspires
A sweet frail sick autumnal scent
Of stale frost furring weeds long spent;
And wafted on, like one who sleeps,
A feeble vapour hangs or creeps,
Exhaling on the fungus mould
A breath of age, fatigue, and cold.

Oozed from the bracken's desolate track,
By dark rains havock...

Ellen, you were thoughtless once
Of beauty or of grace,
Simple and homely in attire,
Careless of form and face;
Then whence this change? and wherefore now
So often smooth your hair?
And wherefore deck your youthful form
With such unwearied care?

Tell us, and cease to tire our ears
With that familiar strain,
Why will you play those simple tunes
So often, o'er again?
'Indeed, dear friends, I can but say
That childhood's thoughts are gone;
Each year its own new feelings brings,
And years move swiftly on:

'And for these little simple airs,
I love to play them o'er
So much, I dare not promise, now,
To play them never more.'
I answered, and it was enough;
They turned them to depart;
They could not read my secret thoughts,

O swarming city, city full of dreams,
Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks;
Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins
My story flows as flows the rising sap.

One morn, disputing with my tired soul,
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar
Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified
The houses either side of that sad street,
So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood
Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,
Unclean and yellow, inundated space
A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.
Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags
Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks
Should have brought alms in floods upon his head,
Without the misery gleaming in his eye,
Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed

[One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]

. . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth,
Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair,
And sang your praise in verses manifold
And delicate, with here and there a line
From end to end in blossom like a bough
The May breathes on, so rich it was.    Some thought
The workmanship more costly than the thing
Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments
Found at Mycaene.    And yet Nature's self
Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass,
Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush,
Lavishing endless patience.    He was born
Artist, not artisan, which some few saw
And many dreamed not.    As he wrote no odes
When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died,
And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows,
He missed the gla...

This morning is the morning of the day,
When I and Eustace from the city went
To see the Gardener’s Daughter; I and he,
Brothers in Art; a friendship so complete
Portion’d in halves between us, that we grew
The fable of the city where we dwelt.
My Eustace might have sat for Hercules;
So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.
He, by some law that holds in love, and draws
The greater to the lesser, long desired
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ’d up and closed in little;—Juliet, she
So light of foot, so light of spirit—oh, she
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of nothing! Know you not
Such touches are but embassies of love,
To tamper with the feelings,...

    'Oh, were I a heliotrope,
    I would play poet,
    And blow a breeze of fragrance
    To you; and none should know it.


    'Your form like the stately elm
    When Phoebus gilds the morning ray;
    Your cheeks like the ocean bed
    That blooms a rose in May.


    'Your words are wise and bright,
    I bequeath them to you a legacy given;
    And when your spirit takes its flight,
    May it bloom aflower in heaven.


    'My tongue in flattering language spoke,
    And sweeter silence never broke
    in busiest street or loneliest glen.
    I take you with the flashes of my pen.


    'Consider the lilies, how they grow;
    They toil not, yet are fair,
    Gems and flowers and Solomon's seal.
 ...

That which we had we still possess,
    Though leaves may drop and stars may fall;
No circumstance can make it less,
    Or take it from us, all in all.

That which is lost we did not own;
    We only held it for a day -
A leaf by careless breezes blown;
    No fate could take our own away.

I hold it as a changeless law
    From which no soul can sway or swerve,
We have that in us which will draw
    Whate'er we need or most deserve.

Even as the magnet to the steel
    Our souls are to our best desires;
The Fates have hearts and they can feel -
    They know what each true life requires.

We think we lose when we most gain;
    We call joys ended ere begun;
When stars fade out do skies complain,
    Or glory in the rising s...

The sandy spits, the shore-lock’d lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;
The soft Mediterranean breaks
At my feet, free.

Dotting the fields of corn and vine
Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl’d olives stand;
Behind, that lovely mountain-line!
While by the strand

Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away
To where the lighthouse beacons bright
Far in the bay.

Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone,
So moonlit, saw me once of yore
Wander unquiet, and my own
Vext heart deplore!

But now that trouble is forgot;
Thy memory, thy pain, to-night,
My brother! and thine early lot,
Possess me quite.

The murmur of this Midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave
There where Gibraltar’s cann...

The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream.
Surely reality cannot be this!
Somehow, somewhere this surely doth but seem!
The sky, the sea, this great extent disclosed
Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel,
Is not something, but something interposed.
Only what in this is not this is real.
If this be to have sense, if to be awake
Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,
For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take
And for truth commune with imaginings,
    Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse,
    This common sleep of men, the universe.

Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips, sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh.--O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul forever!

Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendors,
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium,--night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness.

Again I know forgotten dreams and longings;
Ideals lost; desires dead and buried
Beside the altar sacrific...

Where's the lamp that Hero lit
Once to call Leander home?
Equal Time hath shovelled it
'Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome.
Neither wait we any more
That worn sail which Argo bore.

Dust and dust of ashes close
All the Vestal Virgin's care;
And the oldest altar shows
But an older darkness there.
Age-encamped Oblivion
Tenteth every light that shone.

Yet shall we, for Suns that die,
Wall our wanderings from desire?
Or, because the Moon is high,
Scorn to use a nearer fire?
Lest some envious Pharaoh stir,
Make our lives our sepulcher?

Nay! Though Time with petty Fate
Prison us and Emperors,
By our Arts do we create
That which Time himself devours,
Such machines as well may run
'Gainst the Horses of the Sun.
...

        I scorn the man who builds his fame
        On ruins of another's name:
        As prudes, who prudishly declare
        They by a sister scandaled are;
        As scribblers, covetous of praise,
        By slandering, snatch themselves the bays;
        Beauties and bards, alike, are prone
        To snatch at honours not their own.
        As Lesbia listens, all the whister,
        To hear some scandal of a sister.
        How can soft souls, which sigh for sueings,
        Rejoice at one another's ruins?

        As, in the merry month of May,
        A bard enjoyed the break of day,
        And quaffed the fragrant scents ascending,
        He plucked a blossomed rose, transcending
        All blossoms else; it moved his tongue
        T...

She had a tall man's height or more;
Her face from summer's noontide heat
No bonnet shaded, but she wore
A mantle, to her very feet
Descending with a graceful flow,
And on her head a cap as white as new-fallen snow.

Her skin was of Egyptian brown:
Haughty, as if her eye had seen
Its own light to a distance thrown,
She towered, fit person for a Queen
To lead those ancient Amazonian files;
Or ruling Bandit's wife among the Grecian isles.

Advancing, forth she stretched her hand
And begged an alms with doleful plea
That ceased not; on our English land
Such woes, I knew, could never be;
And yet a boon I gave her, for the creature
Was beautiful to see, a weed of glorious feature.

I left her, and pursued my way;
And soon before me did...

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows.
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way?

Who has gone farthest? For lo! have not I gone farther?
And who has been just? For I would be the most just person of the earth;
And who most cautious? For I would be more cautious;
And who has been happiest? O I think it is I! I think no one was ever happier than I;
And who has lavish'd all? For I lavish constantly the best I have;
And who has been firmest? For I would be firmer;
And who proudest? For I think I have reason to be the proudest son alive--for I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city;
And who has been bold and true? For I would be the boldest and truest being of the universe;
And who benevolent? For I would show more benevolence than all the rest;
And who has projected beautiful words through the longest time? Have I not outvied him? have I not said the words that shall stret...

for Maxime du Camp

I.

The wide-eyed child in love with maps and plans
Finds the world equal to his appetite.
How grand the universe by light of lamps,
How petty in the memory's clear sight.

One day we leave, with fire in the brain,
Heart great with rancour, bitter in its mood;
Outward we travel on the rolling main,
Lulling infinity in finitude:

Some gladly flee their homelands gripped in vice,
Some, horrors of their childhood, others still
Astrologers lost in a woman's eyes
Some perfumed Circe with a tyrant's will.

Not to become a beast, each desperate one
Makes himself drunk on space and blazing skies;
The gnawing ice, the copper-burning sun
Efface the scars of kisses and of lies.

But the true voyagers set out to ...

The boom and blare of the big brass band is cheering to my heart
And I like the smell of the trampled grass and elephants and hay.
I take off my hat to the acrobat with his delicate, strong art,
And the motley mirth of the chalk-faced clown drives all my care away.

I wish I could feel as they must feel, these players brave and fair,
Who nonchalantly juggle death before a staring throng.
It must be fine to walk a line of silver in the air
And to cleave a hundred feet of space with a gesture like a song.

Sir Henry Irving never knew a keener, sweeter thrill
Than that which stirs the breast of him who turns his painted face
To the circling crowd who laugh aloud and clap hands with a will
As a tribute to the clown who won the great wheel-barrow race.

Now, one shall w...

Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.