Inspirational

Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew,--I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers
Who the road had surely kept;
They saw not my fine revellers,--
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleete...

Down in the deeps of dark despair and woe; -
Of Death expectant; - Hope I put aside;
Counting the heartbeats, slowly, yet more slow, -
Marking the lazy ebb of life's last tide.
Sweet Resignation, with her opiate breath,
Spread a light veil, oblivious, o'er the past,
And all unwilling handmaid to remorseless Death,
Shut out the pain of life's great scene, - the last.

When, lo! from out the mist a slender form
Took shape and forward pressed and two bright eyes
Shone as two stars that gleam athwart the storm,
Grandly serene, amid the cloud-fleck'd skies.
"Not yet," she said, "there are some sands to run,
Ere he has reached life's limit, and no grain
Shall lie unused. Then, when his fight is done,
Pronounce the verdict, - be it loss or gain."

I felt he...

                Leave the early bells at chime,
                Leave the kindled hearth to blaze,
        Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time,
        Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,
        Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days.

                Pass them by! even while our soul
                Yearns to them with keen distress.
        Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole.
        Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press;
        Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness.

                We have felt the ancient swaying
                Of the earth before the sun,
        On the darkened marge of midnight heard ...

My soul beheld a vision of the Master:
    Methought He stood with grieved and questioning eyes,
Where Freedom drove its chariot to disaster
    And toilers heard, unheeding, toilers' cries.
Where man withheld God's bounties from his neighbour,
    And fertile fields were sterilised by greed;
Where Labour's hand was lifted against labour,
    And suffering serfs to despots turned when freed.

Majestic rose tall steeple after steeple;
    Imperious bells called worshippers to prayer;
But as they passed, the faces of the people
    Were marred by envy, anger and despair.
'Christ the Redeemer of the world has risen,
    Peace and good will,' so rang the major strain;
But forth from sweat-shops, tenement and prison
    Wailed minor protests, redolent with pain.

The gods are dead; but still for me
Lives on in wildwood brook and tree
Each myth, each old divinity.

For me still laughs among the rocks
The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks
Drop perfume on the wildflower flocks.

The Satyr's hoof still prints the loam;
And, whiter than the wind-blown foam,
The Oread haunts her mountain home.

To him, whose mind is fain to dwell
With loveliness no time can quell,
All things are real, imperishable.

To him whatever facts may say
Who sees the soul beneath the clay,
Is proof of a diviner day.

The very stars and flowers preach
A gospel old as God, and teach
Philosophy a child may reach;

That cannot die; that shall not cease;
That lives through idealities
Of Beauty, ev'n as Rome and...

A cold, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky;--
Thus cold and colorless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.

Full late they slept.    They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,
Disdainful of the rain outside,
Was strutting with a martial stride,
As if upon his t...

There never was a valley without a faded flower,
There never was a heaven without some little cloud;
The face of day may flash with light in any morning hour,
But evening soon shall come with her shadow-woven shroud.

There never was a river without its mists of gray,
There never was a forest without its fallen leaf;
And joy may walk beside us down the windings of our way,
When, lo! there sounds a footstep, and we meet the face of grief.

There never was a seashore without its drifting wreck,
There never was an ocean without its moaning wave;
And the golden gleams of glory the summer sky that fleck,
Shine where dead stars are sleeping in their azure-mantled grave.

There never was a streamlet, however crystal clear,
Without a shadow resting in the ripples of i...

    If but one spark of honest zeal
    Flashes to life within his breast -
    A feeble, flick'ring spark at best;
    If for a moment he doth feel
    A dim desire to throw aside
    The bonds that idleness has wrought,
    To do, to be the man he ought,
    The tyrant thing he calls his pride -

    The curse of all things good on earth -
    Takes on the cruel midwife's role,
    And each high impulse of the soul
    Is strangled in the hour of birth.
    "To dig I am ashamed," quoth he;
    "Mine is the pride of name and race
    That scorns to fill such humble space -
    Life's lowly tasks are not for me."

    Oh, he can flatter with his tongue,
    Can toady to the rich and great,
    Can fawn on those he feels to hate,
    Un...

I

Flutt'ring spread thy purple Pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my Heart;
I a Slave in thy Dominions;
Nature must give Way to Art.

II

Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your Flocks,
See my weary Days consuming,
All beneath yon flow'ry Rocks.

III

Thus the Cyprian Goddess weeping,
Mourn'd Adonis, darling Youth:
Him the Boar in Silence creeping,
Gor'd with unrelenting Tooth.

IV

Cynthia, tune harmonious Numbers;
Fair Discretion, string the Lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking Slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy Choir.

V

Gloomy Pluto, King of Terrors,
Arm'd in adamantine Chains,
Lead me to the Crystal Mirrors,
Wat'ring soft Elysian Plains.

VI

Mournful...

Not in the lucid intervals of life
That come but as a curse to party-strife;
Not in some hour when Pleasure with a sigh
Of languor puts his rosy garland by;
Not in the breathing-times of that poor slave
Who daily piles up wealth in Mammon's cave
Is Nature felt, or can be; nor do words,
Which practiced talent readily affords,
Prove that her hand has touched responsive chords;
Nor has her gentle beauty power to move
With genuine rapture and with fervent love
The soul of Genius, if he dare to take
Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake;
Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent
Of all the truly great and all the innocent.

But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! we are thine,
Through good and evil thine, in just deg...

Here, pent about by office walls
And barren eyes all day,
’Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!

I would not ask you, friends, to brook
An old, old truth from me,
If I could shut a Poet’s book
Which haunts me like the Sea!

He saith to me, this Poet saith,
So many things of light,
That I have found a fourfold faith,
And gained a twofold sight.

He telleth me, this Poet tells,
How much of God is seen
Amongst the deep-mossed English dells,
And miles of gleaming green.

From many a black Gethsemane,
He leads my bleeding feet
To where I hear the Morning Sea
Round shining spaces beat!

To where I feel the wind, which brings
A sound of running creeks,
And blows those dark, unpleasant things,<...

Half god, half brute, within the self-same shell,
Changers with every hour from dawn till even,
Who dream with angels in the gate of heaven,
And skirt with curious eyes the brinks of hell,
Children of Pan, whom some, the few, love well,
But most draw back, and know not what to say,
Poor shining angels, whom the hoofs betray,
Whose pinions frighten with their goatish smell.

Half brutish, half divine, but all of earth,
Half-way 'twixt hell and heaven, near to man,
The whole world's tangle gathered in one span,
Full of this human torture and this mirth:
Life with its hope and error, toil and bliss,
Earth-born, earth-reared, ye know it as it is.

The morn arrived; his footstep quickly scared

The gentle sleep that round my senses clung,
And I, awak'ning, from my cottage fared,

And up the mountain side with light heart sprung;
At every step I felt my gaze ensnared

By new-born flow'rs that full of dew-drops hung;
The youthful day awoke with ecstacy,
And all things quicken'd were, to quicken me.

And as I mounted, from the valley rose

A streaky mist, that upward slowly spread,
Then bent, as though my form it would enclose,

Then, as on pinions, soar'd above my head:
My gaze could now on no fair view repose,

in mournful veil conceal'd, the world seem'd dead;
The clouds soon closed around me, as a tomb,
And I was left alone in twilight gloom.

At once the sun his ...

All roads that lead to God are good;
    What matters it, your faith, or mine;
    Both centre at the goal divine
Of love's eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street;
    The life of prayer, and mystic rite;
    The student's search for truth and light;
These paths at one great junction meet.

Before the oldest book was writ,
    Full many a prehistoric soul
    Arrived at this unchanging goal,
Through changeless love, that led to it.

What matters that one found his Christ
    In rising sun, or burning fire;
    If faith within him did not tire,
His longing for the truth sufficed.

Before our 'Christian' hell was brought
    To edify a modern world,
    Full many a hate-filled soul was hurled
In lakes of fire ...

The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing
Vex the air of our vales-no more;
The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning,
The share is the sword the soldier wore!

Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river,
Under thy banks of laurel bloom;
Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth,
Sing us the songs of peace and home.

Let all the tenderer voices of nature
Temper the triumph and chasten mirth,
Full of the infinite love and pity
For fallen martyr and darkened hearth.

But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes,
And the oil of joy for mourning long,
Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters
Break into jubilant waves of song!

Bring us the airs of hills and forests,
The sweet aroma of birch and pine,
Give us a waft of the north-wind laden

I cannot forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame.
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,
When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of ...

On yonder verdant hilloc laid,
Where oaks and elms, a friendly shade,
O'erlook the falling stream,
O master of the Latin lyre,
Awhile with thee will i retire
From summer's noontide beam.
And, lo, within my lonely bower,
The industrious bee from many a flower
Collects her balmy dews:
“For me,” she sings, “the gems are born,
“For me their silken robe adorn,
“Their fragrant breath diffuse.”
Sweet murmurer! may no rude storm
This hospitable scene deform,
Nor check thy gladsome toils;
Still may the buds unsullied spring,
Still showers and sunshine court thy wing
To these ambrosial spoils.
Nor shall my Muse hereafter fail
Her fellow-labourer thee to hail;
And lucky be the strains!
For long ago did nature frame
Your seasons and your arts...

I am the voice of the voiceless;
    Through me the dumb shall speak;
Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear
    The cry of the wordless weak.
From street, from cage, and from kennel,
    From jungle and stall, the wail
Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin
    Of the mighty against the frail.

I am a ray from the centre;
    And I will feed God's spark,
Till a great light glows in the night and shows
    The dark deeds done in the dark.
And full on the thoughtless sleeper
    Shall flash its glaring flame,
Till he wakens to see what crimes may be
    Cloaked under an honoured name.

The same Force formed the sparrow
    That fashioned man, the king;
The God of the Whole gave a spark of soul
    To furred and to feathered thing.