Inspirational

The sea that is life everlasting
And death everlasting as life
Abides not a pilot's forecasting,
Foretells not of peace or of strife.
The might of the night that was hidden
Arises and darkens the day,
A glory rebuked and forbidden,
Time's crown, and his prey.
No sweeter, no kindlier, no fairer,
No lovelier a soul from its birth
Wore ever a brighter and rarer
Life's raiment for life upon earth
Than his who enkindled and cherished
Art's vestal and luminous flame,
That dies not when kingdoms have perished
In storm or in shame.
No braver, no trustier, no purer,
No stronger and clearer a soul
Bore witness more splendid and surer
For manhood found perfect and whole
Since man was a warrior and dreamer
Than his who in hatred of wrong
Woul...

Among the happy wits this age hath shown
Great, dear, sweet Bartas thou art matchless known;
My ravished Eyes and heart with faltering tongue,
In humble wise have vow'd their service long,
But knowing th' task so great, & strength but small,
Gave o're the work before begun withal,
My dazled sight of late review'd thy lines,
Where Art, and more than Art, in nature shines,
Reflection from their beaming Altitude,
Did thaw my frozen hearts ingratitude;
Which Rayes darting upon some richer ground
Had caused flours and fruits soon to abound;
But barren I, my Dasey here do bring,
A homely flour in this my latter Spring,
If Summer, or my Autumm age do yield,
Flours, fruits in Garden, Orchard, or in Field,
They shall be consecrated in my Verse,
And prostrate o...

        An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,
        Where every beam that broke the leaden sky
        Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;
        Some clustered graves where half our memories lie;
        And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh:
            And this was Life.

        Wherein we did another's burden seek,
        The tired feet we helped upon the road,
        The hand we gave the weary and the weak,
        The miles we lightened one another's load,
        When, faint to falling, onward yet we strode:
            This too was Life.

        Till, at the upland, as we turned to go
        Amid fair meadows, dusky in the night,
        The mists fell back upon the road below;
        Broke on our tired eyes the western...

An old man's thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot.

Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass!

And these I see--these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning--these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships--immortal ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul's voyage.

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a Public School?

Ah more--infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais'd his warning cry, "Is it this pile of brick and mortar--these dead floors, windows, rails--you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all--the Church is living, ever living Souls.")

On the river of life, as I float along,
    I see with the spirit's sight
That many a nauseous weed of wrong
    Has root in a seed of right.
For evil is good that has gone astray,
    And sorrow is only blindness,
And the world is always under the sway
    Of a changeless law of kindness.

The commonest error a truth can make
    Is shouting its sweet voice hoarse,
And sin is only the soul's mistake
    In misdirecting its force.
And love, the fairest of all fair things
    That ever to man descended,
Grows rank with nettles and poisonous things
    Unless it is watched and tended.

There could not be anything better than this
    Old world in the way it began;
And though some matters have gone amiss
    From the great original plan,<...

What you give me, I cheerfully accept,
A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money these, as I rendezvous with my poems;
A traveler's lodging and breakfast as I journey through The States,
Why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? Why to advertise for them?
For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman;
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe.

    O, gentle shade of quiet woods,
        Where nature dwells in leafy halls,
        I love the sacred voice that falls
    In music o'er thy solitudes!
    Within thine arms the weary heart
        Is hidden from the toils of men,
    And pleasure makes ambition start
        Into a nobler life again.

    Among the fragrant shadows throng
        With all the riches of their truth,
        Glad echoes from the days of youth
    And mingle into laughing song;
    While angel fingers touch the keys
        That slumber in the silent breast,
    Till mem'ry wakes her lullabies
        And childhood fancies rock to rest.

    Again the hours of early joy
        Upon the aged years intrude,
        And dance amid the summer wood
    T...

Before my window, in days of winter hoar
Huddled a mournful wood:
Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,
In stony sleep they stood:
But you, unhappy elm, the angry west
Had chosen from the rest,
Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare,
And left you leaning there
So dead that when the breath of winter cast
Wild snow upon the blast,
The other living branches, downward bowed,
Shook free their crystal shroud
And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath
Their livery of death....

On windless nights between the beechen bars
I watched cold stars
Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily
Wondered if any life lay locked in thee:
If still the hidden sap secretly moved
As water in the icy winterbourne
Floweth unheard:
And half I ...

There was a Boy, long years ago,
Who hour by hour awake would lie,
And watch the white moon gliding slow
Along her pathway in the sky.

And every night as thus he lay
Entranced in lonely fantasy,
Borne swiftly on a bright moon-ray
There came to him a Golden Key.

And with that Golden Key the Boy
Oped every night a magic door
That to a melody of Joy
Turned on its hinges evermore.

Then, trembling with delight and awe,
When he the charmèd threshold crossed,
A radiant corridor he saw,
Its end in dazzling distance lost.

Great windows shining in a row
Lit up the wondrous corridor,
And each its own rich light did throw
In stream resplendent on the floor.

One window showed the Boy a scene
Within a forest old and dim...

"Turn me a rhyme," said Fate,
"Turn me a rhyme:
A swift and deadly hate
Blows headlong towards thee in the teeth of Time.
Write! or thy words will fall too late."

"Write me a fold," said Fate,
"Write me a fold,
Life to conciliate,
Of words red with thine heart's blood, hotly told.
Then, kings may envy thine estate!"

"Make thee a fame," said Fate,
"Make thee a fame
To storm the heaven-hung gate,
Unbarred alone to the victorious name
Which has Art's conquerors to mate."

"Die in thy shame," said Fate,
"Die in thy shame!
Naught here can compensate
But the proud radiance of that glorious flame,
Genius: fade, thou, unconsecrate!"

I.

Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced the crescent,
Up and far up and over, the heaven grew erubescent,
Vibrant with rose and with ruby from hands of the harpist Dawn,
Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbition;
And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems,
And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems
Of the glittering robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst,
Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud and mist.

II.

Then out of the splendour and richness, that burned like a magic stone,
The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone,
The pomp and the pageant of colour, triumphal procession of glare,
The sun, like a king in armour, breathing splendour from...

I said that I would see
Her once, to curse her fair, deceitful grace,
To curse her for my life-long agony;
But when I saw her face,
I said, "Sweet Christ, forgive both her and me."

High swelled the chanted hymn,
Low on the marble swept the velvet pall,
I bent above, and my eyes grew dim,
My sad heart saw it all -
She loved me, loved me though she wedded him.

And then shot through my soul
A thrill of fierce delight, to think that he
Must yield her form, his all, to Death's control,
The while her love for me
Would live, when sun and stars had ceased to roll.

But no, on the white brow,
Graved in its marble, was deep calm impressed,
Saying that peace had come to her through woe;
Saying, she had found rest
At last, and I, I must not...

Yea, she hath looked Truth grimly face to face,
    And drained unto the lees the proffered cup.
This silence is not patience, nor the grace
    Of recognition, meekly offered up,
But mere acceptance fraught with keenest pain,
Seeing that all her struggles must be vain.


Her future clear and terrible outlies, -
    This burden to be borne through all her days,
This crown of thorns pressed down above her eyes,
    This weight of trouble she may never raise.
No reconcilement doth she ask nor wait;
Knowing such things are, she endures her fate.


No brave endeavor of the broken will
    To cling to such poor stays as will abide
(Although the waves be wild and angry still)
    After the lapsing of the swollen tide.
No fear of further loss, no ...

INSTRUCTIONS TO A PAINTER[1]

Happiest of the spaniel race,
Painter, with thy colours grace:
Draw his forehead large and high,
Draw his blue and humid eye;
Draw his neck so smooth and round,
Little neck with ribbons bound!
And the muscly swelling breast,
Where the Loves and Graces rest;
And the spreading even back,
Soft, and sleek, and glossy black;
And the tail that gently twines,
Like the tendrils of the vines;
And the silky twisted hair,
Shadowing thick the velvet ear;
Velvet ears, which, hanging low,
O'er the veiny temples flow.
    With a proper light and shade,
Let the winding hoop be laid;
And within that arching bower,
(Secret circle, mystic power,)
In a downy slumber place
Happiest of the spaniel race;
While the...

To the heart of trusting childhood life is all a gilded way,
Wherein a beam of sunny bliss forever seems to play;
It roams about delightedly through pleasure's roseate bower,
And gaily makes a playmate, too, of every bird and flower;
Holds with the rushing of the winds companionship awhile,
And, on the tempest's darkest brow, discerns a brightening smile,
Converses with the babbling waves, as on their way they wend,
And sees, in everything it meets, the features of a friend.
"To-day" is full of rosy joy, "to-morrow" is not here:
When, for an uncreated hour, was childhood known to fear?
Not until hopes, warm hopes, its heart a treasure-house have made,
Like summer flowers to bloom awhile, like them, alas, to fade;
Cherished too fondly and too long, for ah! the rich parterre,
...

Beside me, in the golden light
That slants upon the floor,
She twines the many-colored silks
Her dimpled fingers o'er;
Uplifting now and then her eye,
Or praise or blame in mine to spy.

For her sweet sake I've cast aside
The books I've loved so well,
And given up my being to
Affection's mighty spell;
Ambition's visions vanish all,
Before the music of her call.

The fancy of the past, that lent
To jewels bright and rare
Ascendency at every birth
In this our planet's air,
Hath to October's children given
The opal with its hues of Heaven.

The golden sunlight in the sky,
The red leaf on the plain;
Beneath the opal's changeful light
Hope and Misfortune reign;
And mid gay leaves of wondrous dyes,
My darling first u...

The Fate Of Bass1 - (A Fancy)

On the snow-line of the summit stood the Spaniard’s English slave;
And the frighted condor westward flew afar,
Where the torch of Cotopaxi2 lit the wide Pacific wave,
And the tender moon embraced a new-born star.

Blanched the cheek that Austral breezes off Van Diemen’s coast3 had tanned,
Bent the form that on the deck stood stalwart there;
Slim and pallid as a woman’s was the sailor’s sunburnt hand,
And untimely silver streaked the strong man’s hair.

From the forest far beneath him came the baffled bloodhound’s bay,
From the gusty slope the camp-fire’s fitful glow;
But the pass the Indian told of o’er the cliff beside him lay,
And beyond, the Mighty River’s4 eastward flow.

“Mine...

The wasting thistle whitens on my crest,
The barren grasses blow upon my spear,
A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith
And love of fruitless things: yea, of my love,
Among the golden loves of all the knights,
Alone: most hopeless, sweet, and blasphemous,
The love of God:
I hear the crumbling creeds
Like cliffs washed down by water, change, and pass;
I hear a noise of words, age after age,
A new cold wind that blows across the plains,
And all the shrines stand empty; and to me
All these are nothing: priests and schools may doubt
Who never have believed; but I have loved.
Ah friends, I know it passing well, the love
Wherewith I love; it shall not bring to me
Return or hire or any pleasant thing--
Ay, I have tried it: Ay, I know its roots.
Earthquak...