Identity

    I

"Down cellar," said the cricket,
"Down cellar," said the cricket,
"Down cellar," said the cricket,
"I saw a ball last night,
In honor of a lady,
In honor of a lady,
In honor of a lady,
Whose wings were pearly-white.
The breath of bitter weather,
The breath of bitter weather,
The breath of bitter weather,
Had smashed the cellar pane.
We entertained a drift of leaves,
We entertained a drift of leaves,
We entertained a drift of leaves,
And then of snow and rain.
But we were dressed for winter,
But we were dressed for winter,
But we were dressed for winter,
And loved to hear it blow
In honor of the lady,
In honor of the lady,
In honor of the lady,
Who makes potatoes grow,
Our guest the Irish lady,
The t...

An euill spirit your beauty haunts me still,
Where-with (alas) I haue been long possest,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me vnto ill,
Nor giues me once but one pore minutes rest.
In me it speakes, whether I sleepe or wake,
And when by meanes to driue it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extreamity.
Before my face, it layes all my dispaires,
And hasts me on vnto a suddaine death;
Now tempting me, to drown my selfe in teares,
And then in sighing to giue vp my breath:
    Thus am I still prouok'd to euery euill,
    By this good wicked spirit, sweet Angel deuill.

Here in the shade of the tree
The hours go by
Silent and swift,
Lightly as birds fly.
Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,
Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.
Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,
And the day that he dreamed was gone
Is gone.

That summer sun, whose genial glow
Now cheers my drooping spirit so
Must cold and distant be,
And only light our northern clime
With feeble ray, before the time
I long so much to see.

And this soft whispering breeze that now
So gently cools my fevered brow,
This too, alas, must turn
To a wild blast whose icy dart
Pierces and chills me to the heart,
Before I cease to mourn.

And these bright flowers I love so well,
Verbena, rose and sweet bluebell,
Must droop and die away.
Those thick green leaves with all their shade
And rustling music, they must fade
And every one decay.

But if the sunny summer time
And woods and meadows in their prime
Are sweet to them that roam
Far sweeter is the winter bare
With long dark nigh...

Her planted eye to-day controls,
Is in the morrow most at home,
And sternly calls to being souls
That curse her when they come.

Last night, above the whistling wind,
I heard the welcome rain,
A fusillade upon the roof,
A tattoo on the pane:
The keyhole piped; the chimney-top
A warlike trumpet blew;
Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife,
A softer voice stole through.

“Give thanks, O brothers!” said the voice,
“That He who sent the rains
Hath spared your fields the scarlet dew
That drips from patriot veins:
I’ve seen the grass on Eastern graves
In brighter verdure rise;
But, oh! the rain that gave it life
Sprang first from human eyes.

“I come to wash away no stain
Upon your wasted lea;
I raise no banners, save the ones
The forest waves to me:
Upon the mountain side, where Spring
Her farthest picket sets,
My reveille awakes a host
Of gras...

(ASLEEP IN THE DAYTIME.)

All rough winds are hushed and silent, golden light the meadow steepeth,
    And the last October roses daily wax more pale and fair;
They have laid a gathered blossom on the breast of one who sleepeth
    With a sunbeam on her hair.

Calm, and draped in snowy raiment she lies still, as one that dreameth,
    And a grave sweet smile hath parted dimpled lips that may not speak;
Slanting down that narrow sunbeam like a ray of glory gleameth
    On the sainted brow and cheek.

There is silence! They who watch her, speak no word of grief or wailing,
    In a strange unwonted calmness they gaze on and cannot cease,
Though the pulse of life beat faintly, thought shrink back, and hope be failing,
    They, like Aaron, "hold their peace."

It was Sir John, the fair young Priest,
    He strode up off the strand;
But seven fisher maidens he left behind
    All dancing hand in hand.

He came unto the wise wife's house:
    'Now, Mother, to prove your art;
To charm May Carleton's merry blue eyes
    Out of a young man's heart.'

'My son, you went for a holy man,
    Whose heart was set on high;
Go sing in your psalter, and read in your books;
    Man's love fleets lightly by.'

'I had liever to talk with May Carleton,
    Than with all the saints in Heaven;
I had liever to sit by May Carleton
    Than climb the spheres seven.

'I have watched and fasted, early and late,
    I have prayed to all above;
But I find no cure save churchyard mould
    For the pain which ...

When my time is come to die,
I would shun the decent gloom,
Whispered word and weeping eye,
Fitful hum of knowing fly
Questing through the darkened room.

I would lay my skin and bone
Where no busy care could trace
Failing steps by bush and stone,
With my farewell dream alone
In a bird-frequented place.

So the sounds that bless my ear
When my weary eyelids close
Will be songs of hope and cheer;
So departing, I shall hear
How the tide of living flows.

So my memories shall not be
Blurred by griefs however true;
So my drowsy sense may see
Eyes that light in love on me;
So I’ll not be leaving you.

    O the waiting in the watches of the night!
    In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
    The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
    The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
    Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows -
    The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose -
    In the dreary, weary watches of the night!

    Dark - stifling dark - the watches of the night!
    With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
    With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight! -
    What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought that may not be redressed -
    Of tears we did not brush away - of lips we left unpressed,
    And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
    Ah! the empt...

When this, our rose, is faded,
And these, our days, are done,
In lands profoundly shaded
From tempest and from sun:
Ah, once more come together,
Shall we forgive the past,
And safe from worldly weather
Possess our souls at last?

Or in our place of shadows
Shall still we stretch an hand
To green, remembered meadows,
Of that old pleasant land?
And vainly there foregathered,
Shall we regret the sun?
The rose of love, ungathered?
The bay, we have not won?

Ah, child! the world's dark marges
May lead to Nevermore,
The stately funeral barges
Sail for an unknown shore,
And love we vow to-morrow,
And pride we serve to-day:
What if they both should borrow
Sad hues of yesterday?

Our pride! Ah, should we miss it,

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
    The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
    With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
    Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
    His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
    He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
    For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
    You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
    With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
    When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
    Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
    An...

"tired out!"    Yet face and brow
Do not look aweary now,
And the eyelids lie like two
Pure, white rose-leaves washed with dew.
Was her life so hard a task? -
Strange that we forget to ask
What the lips now dumb for aye
Could have told us yesterday!

"Tired out!"    A faded scrawl
Pinned upon the ragged shawl -
Nothing else to leave a clue
Even of a friend or two,
Who might come to fold the hands,
Or smooth back the dripping strands
Of her tresses, or to wet
Them anew with fond regret.

"Tired out!"    We can but guess
Of her little happiness -
Long ago, in some fair land,
When a lover held her hand
In the dream that frees us all,
Soon or later, from its thrall -
Be it either false or true,
We, at last, must tire, t...

Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.
When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
They make a won'erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
But 0, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

There's nothing Nineveh Town can give
(Nor being swallowed by whales between),
Makes up for the place where a man's folk live,
Which don't care nothing what he has been.
He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this,
But they love and they hate him for what he is.

With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,
Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine;
Those scentless wisps of straw, that miserably line
His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares,

Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars
With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchaunted wine,
And make his melancholy germane to the stars'?

O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,
Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me;
Half a fool's kingdom, far from men who sow and reap,
All their days, vanity? Better than mortal flowers,
Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep,
The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!

Love lit a beacon in thine eyes,
        And I out in the storm,
And lo! the night had taken wings;
        I dream me safe and warm.

Love lit a beacon in thine eyes,
        A wreckers’ light for me;
My heart is broken on the rocks;
        I perish in the sea.

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness"


The heart hath its moments of hopeless gloom,
As rayless as is the dark night of the tomb;
When the past has no spell, the future no ray,
To chase the sad cloud from the spirit away;
When earth, though in all her rich beauty arrayed,
Hath a gloom o'er her flowers - o'er her skies a dark shade,
And we turn from all pleasure with loathing away,
Too downcast, too spirit sick, even to pray!

Oh! where may the heart seek, in moments like this,
A whisper of hope, or a faint gleam of bliss?
When friendship seems naught but a cold, cheerless flame,
And love a still falser and emptier name;
When honors and wealth are a wearisome chain,
Each link interwoven with grief and with pain,
And each solace or joy that the spiri...

The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
Socrates taught what Meletus
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own mind
A benefactor to mankind.
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white.

Was Jesus gentle, or did He
Give any marks of gentility?
When twelve years old He ran away,
And left His parents in dismay.
When after three days’ sorrow found,
Loud as Sinai’s trumpet-sound:
‘No earthly parents I confess—
My Heavenly ...