Inspirational

I.

Though savage force and subtle schemes,
And alien rule, through ages lasting,
Have swept your land like lava streams,
Its wealth and name and nature blasting;
Rot not, therefore, in dull despair,
Nor moan at destiny in far lands!
Face not your foe with bosom bare,
Nor hide your chains in pleasure's garlands.
The wise man arms to combat wrong,
The brave man clears a den of lions,
The true man spurns the Helot's song;
The freeman's friend is Self-Reliance!


II.

Though France that gave your exiles bread,
Your priests a home, your hopes a station,
Or that young land where first was spread
The starry flag of Liberation,--
Should heed your wrongs some future day,
And send you voice or sword to plead 'em,
With helpful lov...

O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast--
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen!
When shall I see such rest again?

I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injure...

i(Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!)
i(Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:)
i(Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;)
i(The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,)
i(Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;)
i(And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old)
i(In dancing silver-sandaled on the sea,)
i(Sing in their high and lonely melody.)
i(Come near, that no more blinded hy man's fate,)
i(I find under the boughs of love and hate,)
i(In all poor foolish things that live a day,)
i(Eternal beauty wandering on her way.)
i(Come near, come near, come near -- Ah, leave me still)
i(A little space for the rose-breath to fill!)
i(Lest I no more bear common things that crave;)
i(The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,)
i(The field-m...

When you will the mountains roam
And your pack are making,
Put therein not much from home,
Light shall be your taking!
Drag no valley-fetters strong
To those upland spaces,
Toss them with a joyous song
To the mountains' bases!

Birds sing Hail! from many a bough,
Gone the fools' vain talking,
Purer breezes fan your brow,
You the heights are walking.
Fill your breast and sing with joy!
Childhood's mem'ries starting,
Nod with blushing cheeks and coy,
Bush and heather parting.
If you stop and listen long,
You will hear upwelling
Solitude's unmeasured song
To your ear full swelling;
And when now there purls a brook,
Now stones roll and tumble,
Hear the duty you forsook
In a world-wide rumble.

Fear, but pray, you a...

A void is in the sky!
A light has ceased the seaman's path to cheer,
A star has left its ruby throne on high,
A world forsook its sphere.
Thy sisters bright pursue their circling way,
But thou, lone wanderer! thou hast left our vault for aye.

Did Sin invade thy bowers,
And Death with sable pinion sweep thine air,
Blasting the beauty of thy fairest flowers,
And God admit no prayer?
Didst thou, as fable saith, wax faint and dim
With the first mortal breath between thy zone and Him?

Did human love, with all
Its passionate might and meek endurance strong,--
The love that mocks at Time and scorns the pall,
Through conflict fierce and long,--
Live in thy soul, yet know no future's ray?
Then, mystic world! 't was well that thou shouldst pass away.

A thousand summers ere the time of Christ
From out his ancient city came a Seer
Whom one that loved, and honour’d him, and yet
Was no disciple, richly garb’d, but worn
From wasteful living, follow’d—in his hand
A scroll of verse—till that old man before
A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour’d
From darkness into daylight, turn’d and spoke.

This wealth of waters might but seem to draw
From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher,
Yon summit half-a-league in air—and higher,
The cloud that hides it—higher still, the heavens
Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout
The cloud descended. Force is from the heights.
I am wearied of our city, son, and go
To spend my one last year among the hills.
What hast thou there? Some deathsong for the Ghouls

I, who was always counted, they say,
Rather a bad stick any way,
Splintered all over with dodges and tricks,
Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six;"
I, the truant, saucy and bold,
The one black sheep in my father's fold,
"Once on a time," as the stories say,
Went over the hill on a winter's day -
Over the hill to the poor-house.

Tom could save what twenty could earn;
But givin' was somethin' he ne'er would learn;
Isaac could half o' the Scriptur's speak -
Committed a hundred verses a week;
Never forgot, an' never slipped;
But "Honor thy father and mother" he skipped;
So over the hill to the poor-house.

As for Susan, her heart was kind
An' good - what there was of it, mind;
Nothin' too big, an' nothin' too nice,
Nothin' she w...

In former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life,
But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death.

And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death,
To you, O freedom, purport of all!
(You that elude me most - refusing to be caught in songs of mine,)
I offer all to you.

'Tis not for nothing, Death,
I sound out you, and words of you, with daring tone - embodying you,
In my new Democratic chants - keeping you for a close,
For last impregnable retreat - a citadel and tower,
For my last stand - my pealing, final cry.

You shall not be overbold
When you deal with arctic cold,
As late I found my lukewarm blood
Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood.
How should I fight? my foeman fine
Has million arms to one of mine:
East, west, for aid I looked in vain,
East, west, north, south, are his domain.
Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home;
Must borrow his winds who there would come.
Up and away for life! be fleet!--
The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence.
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,--
The punctual stars will vigil keep,--
Embalmed by purifying cold;
The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
...

The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.

I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,

And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.

Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made...

Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,
Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,
As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories,
Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,
Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,
Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,
Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or pleasant,
Is it thither the wind’s wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?
For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the water,
Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter
Venus thy mother, in years when the w...

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provenial song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leav...

I bear in youth the sad infirmities
That use to undo the limb and sense of age;
It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss
Which lit my onward way with bright presage,
And my unserviceable limbs forego.
The sweet delight I found in fields and farms,
On windy hills, whose tops with morning glow,
And lakes, smooth mirrors of Aurora's charms.
Yet I think on them in the silent night,
Still breaks that morn, though dim, to Memory's eye,
And the firm soul does the pale train defy
Of grim Disease, that would her peace affright.
Please God, I'll wrap me in mine innocence,
And bid each awful Muse drive the damned harpies hence.

CAMBRIDGE, 1827.

Singing, as if enamour'd, she resum'd
And clos'd the song, with "Blessed they whose sins
Are cover'd." Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp'd
Singly across the sylvan shadows, one
Eager to view and one to 'scape the sun,
So mov'd she on, against the current, up
The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step
Observing, with as tardy step pursued.

Between us not an hundred paces trod,
The bank, on each side bending equally,
Gave me to face the orient. Nor our way
Far onward brought us, when to me at once
She turn'd, and cried: "My brother! look and hearken."
And lo! a sudden lustre ran across
Through the great forest on all parts, so bright
I doubted whether lightning were abroad;
But that expiring ever in the spleen,
That doth unfold it, and this during st...

In words like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
    Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
    But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
                        - TENNYSON.

The bells that lift their yawning throats
    And lolling tongues with wrangling cries
Flung up in harsh, discordant notes,
    As though in anger, at the skies, -
Are filled with echoings replete,
    With purest tinkles of delight -
So I would have a something sweet
    Ring in the song I sing to-night.

As when a blotch of ugly guise
    On some poor artist's naked floor
Becomes a picture in his eyes,
    And he forgets that he is poor, -
So I look out upon the night,
    That ushers in the dawning year,
And in a vacant blur of light

How fond the rustic's ear at leisure dwells
On the soft soundings of his village bells,
As on a Sunday morning at his ease
He takes his rambles, just as fancies please,
Down narrow balks that intersect the fields,
Hid in profusion that its produce yields:
Long twining peas, in faintly misted greens;
And wing'd-leaf multitudes of crowding beans;
And flighty oatlands of a lighter hue;
And speary barley bowing down with dew;
And browning wheat-ear, on its taper stalk,
With gentle breezes bending o'er the balk,
Greeting the parting hand that brushes near
With patting welcomes of a plenteous year.
Or narrow lanes, where cool and gloomy-sweet
Hedges above-head in an arbour meet,
Meandering down, and resting for awhile
Upon a moss-clad molehill or a stile;
...

I.

    My Lord, I know your noble ear
        Woe ne'er assails in vain;
    Embolden'd thus, I beg you'll hear
        Your humble slave complain,
    How saucy Phoebus' scorching beams
        In flaming summer-pride,
    Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,
        And drink my crystal tide.

II.

    The lightly-jumpin' glowrin' trouts,
        That thro' my waters play,
    If, in their random, wanton spouts,
        They near the margin stray;
    If, hapless chance! they linger lang,
        I'm scorching up so shallow,
    They're left the whitening stanes amang,
        In gasping death to wallow.

III.

    Last day I grat wi' spite and teen,
        As Poet Burns came by,
    That to a bard I shou...

I

Dear Love, you ask if I be true,
If other women move
The heart that only beats for you
With pulses all of love.

Out in the chilly dew one morn
I plucked a wild sweet rose,
A little silver bud new-born
And longing to unclose.

I took it, loving new-born things,
I knew my heart was warm,
'O little silver rose, come in
And shelter from the storm.'

And soon, against my body pressed,
I felt its petals part,
And, looking down within my breast
I saw its golden heart.

O such a golden heart it has,
Your eyes may never see,
To others it is always shut,
It opens but for me.

But that is why you see me pass
The honeysuckle there,
And leave the lilies in the grass,
Although they be so fair;