Life

Wilful we are in our infirmity
Of childish questioning and discontent.
Whate'er befalls us is divinely meant -
Thou Truth the clearer for thy mystery!
Make us to meet what is or is to be
With fervid welcome, knowing it is sent
To serve us in some way full excellent,
Though we discern it all belatedly.
The rose buds, and the rose blooms and the rose
Bows in the dews, and in its fulness, lo,
Is in the lover's hand, - then on the breast
Of her he loves, - and there dies. - And who knows
Which fate of all a rose may undergo
Is fairest, dearest, sweetest, loveliest?

Nay, we are children: we will not mature.
A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears
Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears
In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor
We seem when we...

Three years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

‘She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.

‘The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that s...

Thou arrant robber, Death!
Couldst thou not find
Some lesser one than he
To rob of breath,--
Some poorer mind
Thy prey to be?

His mind was like the sky,--
As pure and free;
His heart was broad and open
As the sea.
His soul shone purely through his face,
And Love made him her dwelling place.

Not less the scholar than the friend,
Not less a friend than man;
The manly life did shorter end
Because so broad it ran.

Weep not for him, unhappy Muse!
His merits found a grander use
Some other-where. God wisely sees
The place that needs his qualities.
Weep not for him, for when Death lowers
O'er youth's ambrosia-scented bowers
He only plucks the choicest flowers.

1.
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead -
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

2.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute: -
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

3.
When hearts have once mingled
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, yo...

Let mine not be that saddest fate of all
    To live beyond my greater self; to see
    My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall.
Let me hear rather the imperious call,
    Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
    And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall.
The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast
    Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
    Unhappy witness of its own decay.
    May no man ever look on me and say,
"She lives, but all her usefulness is past."

    Are you my songs, importunate of praise?
    Be still, remember for your comforting
    That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing
    Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

    Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring
    Rubies far redder thrust their eager rays
    Into the blindfold dark for many days
    Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

    Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not
    The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due -
    Men's summer-sweet unrecognition - grieve not:
    Oh, stoop not to them!    Better far that you
    Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,
    Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.

The time has been that these wild solitudes,
Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me
Oftener than now; and when the ills of life
Had chafed my spirit, when the unsteady pulse
Beat with strange flutterings, I would wander forth
And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path
Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills,
The quiet dells retiring far between,
With gentle invitation to explore
Their windings, were a calm society
That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant
Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress
Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget
The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began
To gather simples by the fountain's brink,
And lose myself in day-dreams. While I stood
In nature's loneliness, I was with one
With whom I early grew familiar, ...

I cannot look upon thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
The stillness round a star?

Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
This madness of the heart.

And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
Had oped and closed again.

And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
Then turn away to peace.

But oh, for evermore thy look,
Thy laugh, thy charm, thy tone,
Thy sweet and wayward earthlin...

Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine;
And magic words lay ripening in my soul
Till their much-whispered music turned a wine
Whose subtlest power was all in my control.

These things were mine, and they were real for me
As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast:
For I could love a phrase, a melody,
Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed.

I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes
Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid;
Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise
Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed.

But a time came when, turning full of hate
And weariness from my remembered themes,
I wished my poet's pipe could modulate
Beauty more palpable than words and dreams.

All loveliness with which an act informs

The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.

He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill,
He saw thro’ his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,

Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded
The secretest walks of fame:
The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
And wing’d with flame,

Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue,
And of so fierce a flight,
From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung,
Filling with light

And vagrant melodies the winds which bore
Them earthward till they lit;
Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower,
The fruitful wit

Cleaving took root, and springing forth anew

Fain would my Muse the flow'ry Treasures sing,
And humble glories of the youthful Spring;
Where opening Roses breathing sweets diffuse,
And soft Carnations show'r their balmy dews;
Where Lilies smile in virgin robes of white,
The thin Undress of superficial Light,
And vary'd Tulips show so dazzling gay,
Blushing in bright diversities of day.
Each painted flow'ret in the lake below
Surveys its beauties, whence its beauties grow;
And pale Narcissus on the bank, in vain
Transformed, gazes on himself again.
Here aged trees Cathedral Walks compose,
And mount the Hill in venerable rows:
There the green Infants in their beds are laid,
The Garden's Hope, and its expected shade.
Here Orange-trees with blooms and pendantis shine,
And vernal honours to their autumn ...

The beauty of this rainy day,
All silver-green and dripping gray,
Has stolen quite my heart away
From all the tasks I meant to do,
Made me forget the resolute blue
And energetic gold of things . . .
So soft a song the rain-bird sings.

Yet am I glad to miss awhile
The sun's huge domineering smile,
The busy spaces mile on mile,
Shut in behind this shimmering screen
Of falling pearls and phantom green;
As in a cloister walled with rain,
Safe from intrusions, voices vain,
And hurry of invading feet,
Inviolate in my retreat:
Myself, my books, my pipe, my fire -
So runs my rainy-day desire.

Or I old letters may con o'er,
And dream on faces seen no more,
The buried treasure of the years,
Too visionary now for tears;
Open old ...

Dream days of fond delight and hours
As rosy-hued as dawn, are mine.
Love's drowsy wine,
Brewed from the heart of Passion flowers,
Flows softly o'er my lips
And save thee, all the world is in eclipse.

There were no light if thou wert not;
The sun would be too sad to shine,
And all the line
Of hours from dawn would be a blot;
And Night would haunt the skies,
An unlaid ghost with staring dark-ringed eyes.

Oh, love, if thou wert not my love,
And I perchance not thine--what then?
Could gift of men
Or favor of the God above,
Plant aught in this bare heart
Or teach this tongue the singer's soulful art?

Ah, no! 'Tis love, and love alone
That spurs my soul so surely on;
Turns night to dawn,
And thorns to roses fairest blown;<...

Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.

And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.

I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shining green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.

He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.

He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heart, without aim or art;
'T is a song of the merriest.

O...

See yonder leafless trees against the sky,
How they diffuse themselves into the air,
And, ever subdividing, separate
Limbs into branches, branches into twigs.
As if they loved the element, and hasted
To dissipate their being into it.



Parks and ponds are good by day;
I do not delight
In black acres of the night,
Nor my unseasoned step disturbs
The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.



In Walden wood the chickadee
Runs round the pine and maple tree
Intent on insect slaughter:
O tufted entomologist!
Devour as many as you list,
Then drink in Walden water.



The low December vault in June be lifted high,
And largest clouds be flakes of down in that enormous sky.

i.

Again, O Love! again I make lament,
    And, Arab-like, I pitch my summer-tent
Outside the gateways of the Lord of Song.
I weep and wait, contented all day long
To be the proud possessor of a grief.
It comforts me. It gives me more relief
    Than pleasures give; and, spirit-like in air,
It re-invokes the peace that was so brief.


ii.

It speaks of thee. It keeps me from the lake
    Which else might tempt me; and for thy sweet sake
I shun all evil. I am calmer now
Than when I wooed thee, calmer than the vow
Which made me thine, and yet so fond withal
I start and tremble at the wind's footfall.
    Is it the wind? Or is it mine own past
Come back to life to lure me to its thrall?


iii.

I long to rise and...

Mid-noon is past; upon the sultry mead
No zephyr breathes, no cloud its shadow throws:
If we advance unstrengthened by repose,
Farewell the solace of the vagrant reed!
This Nook with woodbine hung and straggling weed
Tempting recess as ever pilgrim chose,
Half grot, half arbour, proffers to enclose
Body and mind, from molestation freed,
In narrow compass, narrow as itself:
Or if the Fancy, too industrious Elf,
Be loth that we should breathe awhile exempt
From new incitements friendly to our task,
Here wants not stealthy prospect, that may tempt
Loose Idless to forego her wily mask.

No rest--not one day in the seven for me?
Not one, from the maddening yoke to be free?
Not one to escape from the boss on the prowl,
His sinister glance and his furious growl,
The cry of the foreman, the smell of the shop,--
To feel for one moment the manacles drop?
--'Tis rest then you want, and you fain would forget?
To rest and oblivion they'll carry you yet.

The flow'rs and the trees will have withered ere long,
The last bird already is ending his song;
And soon will be leafless and shadeless the bow'rs...
I long, oh I long for the perfume of flow'rs!
To feel for a moment ere stripped are the trees,
In meadow lands open, the breath of the breeze.
--You long for the meadow lands breezy and fair?
O, soon enough others will carry you there.