Inspirational

If to Tradition faith be due,
And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek Saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west,
A land where gentle manners ruled
O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war:
Yet peaceful Arts did entrance gain
Where haughty Force had striven in vain;
And, 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman Gown;
The Fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland Broach is seen,
The silver Broach of massy frame,
Worn at the breast of some grave Dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of f...

If to Tradition faith be due,
And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek Saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west,
A land where gentle manners ruled
O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war:
Yet peaceful Arts did entrance gain
Where haughty Force had striven in vain;
And, 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman Gown;
The Fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland Broach is seen,
The silver Broach of massy frame,
Worn at the breast of some grave Dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of f...

    I would enshrine in silvern song
    The charm that bore our souls along,
        As in the sun-flushed days of summer
    We felt the pulsings of nature's throng;

    When flecks of foam of flying spray
    Smote white the red sun's torrid ray,
        Or wimpling fogs toyed with the mountain,
    Aërial spirits of dew at play;

    When hovering stars, poised in the blue,
    Came down and ever closer drew;
        Or, in the autumn air astringent,
    Glimmered the pearls of the moonlit dew.


    We talked of bird and flower and tree,
    Of God and man and destiny.
        The years are wise though days be foolish,
    We said, as swung to its goal the sea.

    Our spirits knew keen fellowship
    Of light and shadow, h...

'Tis a little room, my friend;
A baby-walk from end to end;
All the things look sadly real,
This hot noontide's Unideal.
Seek not refuge at the casement,
There's no pasture for amazement
But a house most dim and rusty,
And a street most dry and dusty;
Seldom here more happy vision
Than water-cart's blest apparition,
We'll shut out the staring space,
Draw the curtains in its face.

Close the eyelids of the room,
Fill it with a scarlet gloom:
Lo! the walls on every side
Are transformed and glorified;
Ceiled as with a rosy cloud
Furthest eastward of the crowd,
Blushing faintly at the bliss
Of the Titan's good-night kiss,
Which her westward sisters share,--
Crimson they from breast to hair.
'Tis the faintest lends its dye
To...

Because this man fulfilled his days,
Like one who walks with steadfast gaze
Averted from forbidden ways
With lures of fair, false flowerage deep,
Behold the Lord whose throne is dim
With fires of flaming seraphim
The Christ that suffered sent for him:
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

Think not that souls whose deeds august
Put sin to shame and make men just
Become at last the helpless dust
That wintering winds through waste-lands sweep!
The higher life within us cries,
Like some fine spirit from the skies,
“The Father’s blessing on us lies
‘He giveth His beloved sleep.’”

Not human sleep the fitful rest
With evil shapes of dreams distressed,
But perfect quiet, unexpressed
By any worldly word we keep.
The dim Hereafter framed in cre...

Bush and vale thou fill'st again

With thy misty ray,
And my spirit's heavy chain

Castest far away.

Thou dost o'er my fields extend

Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching like a gentle friend,

O'er my destiny.

Vanish'd days of bliss and woe

Haunt me with their tone,
Joy and grief in turns I know,

As I stray alone.

Stream beloved, flow on! flow on!

Ne'er can I be gay!
Thus have sport and kisses gone,

Truth thus pass'd away.

Once I seem'd the lord to be

Of that prize so fair!
Now, to our deep sorrow, we

Can forget it ne'er.

Murmur, stream, the vale along,

Never cease thy sighs;
Murmur, whisper to my song

Answering melodies!

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: “The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

“Look where we will o’er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

“Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

“This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older.”

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

The summer warmth has left the sky,
The summer songs have died away;
And, withered, in the footpaths lie
The fallen leaves, but yesterday
With ruby and with topaz gay.

The grass is browning on the hills;
No pale, belated flowers recall
The astral fringes of the rills,
And drearily the dead vines fall,
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.

Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
Against the dusk of fir and pine,
Last of their floral sisterhood,
The hazel’s yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold of Afric’s mine!

Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail;
But, in the season’s saddest hour,
To skies that weep and winds that wail
Its glad surprisals never fail.

O days grown cold! O life grown ol...

In the deepest nights of Winter
To the Muses kind oft cried I:
"Not a ray of morn is gleaming,
Not a sign of daylight breaking;
Bring, then, at the fitting moment,
Bring the lamp's soft glimm'ring lustre,
'Stead of Phoebus and Aurora,
To enliven my still labours!"
Yet they left me in my slumbers,
Dull and unrefreshing, lying,
And to each late-waken'd morning
Follow'd days devoid of profit.

When at length return'd the spring-time,
To the nightingales thus spake I:
"Darling nightingales, oh, beat ye
Early, early at my window,
Wake me from the heavy slumber
That chains down the youth so strongly!"
Yet the love-o'erflowing songsters
Their sweet melodies protracted
Through the night before my window,
Kept awake my loving spirit,
...

Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes,
Not with flatteries, but truths,
Which tarnish not, but purify
To light which dims the morning's eye.
I have come from the spring-woods,
From the fragrant solitudes;--
Listen what the poplar-tree
And murmuring waters counselled me.

If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye;
Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold;
Though...

I have been pondering what our teachers call
    The mystery of Pain; and lo! my thought
    After it's half-blind reaching out has caught
This truth and held it fast. We may not fall
    Beyond our mounting; stung by life's annoy,
    Deeper we feel the mystery of Joy.

Sometimes they steal across us like a breath
    Of Eastern perfume in a darkened room,
    These joys of ours; we grope on through the gloom
Seeking some common thing, and from its sheath
    Unloose, unknowing, some bewildering scent
    Of spice-thronged memories of the Orient.

Sometimes they dart across our turbid sky
    Like a quick flash after a heated day.
    A moment, where the sombrous shadows lay
We see a glory. Though it passed us by
    No earthly power can filch that ...

Her younger sister, that Speranza hight.

England puts on her purple, and pale, pale
    With too much light, the primrose doth but wait
To meet the hyacinth; then bower and dale
    Shall lose her and each fairy woodland mate.
April forgets them, for their utmost sum
Of gift was silent, and the birds are come.

The world is stirring, many voices blend,
    The English are at work in field and way;
All the good finches on their wives attend,
    And emmets their new towns lay out in clay;
Only the cuckoo-bird only doth say
Her beautiful name, and float at large all day.

Everywhere ring sweet clamours, chirrupping,
    Chirping, that comes before the grasshopper;
The wide woods, flurried with the pulse of spring,
    Shake out their wrink...

From The Purgatorio Of Dante, Canto 28, Lines 1-51.


And earnest to explore within - around -
The divine wood, whose thick green living woof
Tempered the young day to the sight - I wound

Up the green slope, beneath the forest's roof,
With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain's steep,
And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof

Against the air, that in that stillness deep
And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,
The slow, soft stroke of a continuous...

In which the ... leaves tremblingly were
All bent towards that part where earliest
The sacred hill obscures the morning air.

Yet were they not so shaken from the rest,
But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,
Incessantly renewing their blithe quest,

With per...

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
Of far-off woodland water-heads,
And shining ends of April days
Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.

Stoop closer to the ruined wall,
Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps,
As if its home were waterfall
By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps.

A little waif, whose beauty takes
A touching tone because it dwells
So far away from mountain lakes,
And lily leaves, and lightening fells.

Deep hidden in delicious floss
It nestles, sister, from the heat
A gracious growth of tender moss
Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.

Swift gleams across its petals run
With winds that hum a pleasant tune,
Serene surprises of the sun,
And whispers from the lips of noon.

The evening-coloured apple-tree...

I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.

There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled on,
There one that ruffled in a manly pose
For all his timid heart, there that slow man,
That meditative man, John Synge, and those
Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane,
Found pride established in humility,
A scene well Set and excellent company.

They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman's powerful character
Could keep ...

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes,
Which, star-like, sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud, that you can see
All hearts your captives, yours, yet free;
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the love-sick air;
When as that ruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone,
When all your world of beauty's gone.

I see the starting buds, I catch the gleam
    In the near distance of a sun-kissed pool,
    The blessed April air blows soft and cool,
Small wonder if all sorrow grows a dream,
    And we forget that close around us lie
    A city's poor, a city's misery.

Of every outward vision there is some
    Internal counterpart. To-day I know
    The blessedness of living, and the glow
Of life's dear spring-tide. I can bid thee come
    In thought and wander where the fields are fair
    With bursting life, and I, rejoicing, there.

Yet have I passed, Beloved, through the vale
    Of dark dismay, and felt the dews of death
    Upon my brow, have measured out my breath
Counting my hours of joy, as misers quail
    At every footfall in the quiet night
   ...

As leaves are to the tree whereon they grow
And wither, every human generation
Is, to the Being of a mighty nation,
Locked in our world's embrace through weal and woe;
Thought that should teach the zealot to forego
Rash schemes, to abjure all selfish agitation,
And seek through noiseless pains and moderation
The unblemished good they only can bestow.
Alas! with most, who weigh futurity
Against time present, passion holds the scales:
Hence equal ignorance of both prevails,
And nations sink; or, struggling to be free,
Are doomed to flounder on, like wounded whales
Tossed on the bosom of a stormy sea.