Life

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
And lonely see the shooting stars appear,
Worlds rushing into judgment all the year.
O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.
Farewell to poesy--and leave the will;
Take all the world away--and leave me still
The mirth and music of a woman's voice,
That bids the heart be happy and rejoice.

Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.

Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:
The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:
But thy soul or this...

We went a day's excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
And I did not think
That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,
And I full forgot
That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
No thought soever
That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

I know not whence I came,
    I know not whither I go;
But the fact stands clear that I am here
    In this world of pleasure and woe.
And out of the mist and murk
    Another truth shines plain -
It is my power each day and hour
    To add to its joy or its pain.

I know that the earth exists,
    It is none of my business why;
I cannot find out what it's all about,
    I would but waste time to try.
My life is a brief, brief thing,
    I am here for a little space,
And while I stay I would like, if I may,
    To brighten and better the place.

The trouble, I think, with us all
    Is the lack of a high conceit.
If each man thought he was sent to this spot
    To make it a bit more sweet,
How soon we could gladden the world,

Autumn's last days, winters and mud-soaked spring
I praise the stupefaction that you bring
By so enveloping my heart and brain
In shroud of vapours, tomb of mist and rain.

In this great flatness where the chill winds course,
Where through the nights the weather-cock grows hoarse,
My soul, more than in springtime's tepid sky,
Will open out her raven's wings to fly.

O blankest seasons, queens of all my praise,
Nothing is sweet to the funereal breast
That has been steeped in frost and wintriness

But the continuous face of your pale shades
- Except we two, where moonlight never creeps
Daring in bed to put our griefs to sleep.

Myself and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heat - to take good aim with a gun - to sail a boat - to manage horses - to beget superb children,
To speak readily and clearly - to feel at home among common people,
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea.

Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers - I welcome them also;)
But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.

Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking.

Let me have my own way;
Let others promulge the laws - I will make no account of the laws;
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace - I hold up agitation and conflict;
...

I have no secrets from thee, lyre sublime,
    My lyre whereof I make my melody.
    I sing one way like the west wind through thee,
With my whole heart, and hear thy sweet strings chime.

But thou, who soundest in my tune and rhyme,
    Hast tones I wake not, in thy land and sea,
    Loveliness not for me, secrets from me,
Thoughts for another, and another time.

And as, the west wind passed, the south wind alters
    His intimate sweet things, his hues of noon,
            The voices of his waves, sound of his pine,

The meanings of his lost heart,--this thought falters
    In my short song--'Another bard shall tune
            Thee, my one Lyre, to other songs than mine.'

We strolled down by the river side,
My sister Nell and I,
To watch the waters onward glide,
And vessels passing by.

On Nature's floor of lovely green,
Bedecked with flowers of gold,
The purple sassafras as sheen,
Which trumpet vines enfold.

We played our youthful games for hours,
And told our childish tales;
Adorned each brow with fragrant flowers,
And slept 'neath cooling gales.

For I was then but nine years old,
And she was only seven;
Yet joys like ours can ne'er be told--
They savored much of heaven.

Close by the bank, in shady nooks,
The waxen lilies grew;
We called them fish, and with our hooks
To shore full many drew.

With these I made a wreath for Nell.
She was so good and pure,
They seemed to...

Elemental drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!

As I ebb'd with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum...

I.

To—

As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude,
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, ‘All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where;’
So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true–
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each–
That, tho’ I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either’s heart and speech.



II.

To J.M.K.

My hope and heart is with thee–thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scar...

Friends! do you see in yon sunset sky,
    That cloud of crimson bright?
Soon will its gorgeous colors die
    In coming dim twilight;
E'en now it fadeth ray by ray -
Like it I too shall pass away!

Look on yon fragile summer flower
    Yielding its sweet perfume;
Soon shall it have lived out its hour,
    Its beauty and its bloom:
Trampled, 'twill perish in the shade -
Alas! as quickly shall I fade.

Mark you yon planet gleaming clear
    With steadfast, gentle light,
See, heavy dark clouds hovering near,
    Have veiled its radiance bright -
As you vainly search that gloomy spot,
You'll look for me and find me not!

Turn now to yonder sparkling stream,
    Where silver ripples play;
Dancing within the moon's pale beam -

                There is no length of days
    But yours, boys who were children once.    Of old
    The past beset you in your childish ways,
                With sense of Time untold!

                What have you then forgone?
    A history?    This you had.    Or memories?
    These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn.
                No further dawn seems his,

                The old man who shares with you,
    But has no more, no more.    Time’s mystery
    Did once for him the most that it can do:
                He has had infancy.

                And all his dreams, and all
    His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few,
    Are but the dwindling past he can recall
                Of what his childhood knew.

               ...

I push on through the shaggy wood,
I round the hill: 't is here it stood;
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,

Yet seems to make a passing stay,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead's door.

But dumbly sits the shattered house,
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.

On what was once a garden-ground
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture's pale.

Ah, strange and savage, where he shines,
The sun seems staring through those pines
That once the vanished home could bless
With intimate, sweet loneliness....

I go beyond the commandment.' So be it. Then mine be the blame,
The loss, the lack, the yearning, till life's last sand be run, -
I go beyond the commandment, yet honour stands fast with her claim,
And what I have rued I shall rue; for what I have done - I have done.

Hush, hush! for what of the future; you cannot the base exalt,
There is no bridging a chasm over, that yawns with so sheer incline;
I will not any sweet daughter's cheek should pale for this mother's fault,
Nor son take leave to lower his life a-thinking on mine.

' Will I tell you all?' So! this, e'en this, will I do for your great love's sake;
Think what it costs. 'Then let there be silence - silence you'll count consent.'
No, and no, and for ever no: rather to cross and to break,
And to ...

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-
    Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
    Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
    In which your June has never passed away.
    Walk there awhile among my memories.

HE

Let us be friends.    My life is sad and lonely,
While yours with love is beautiful and bright.
Be kind to me:    I ask your friendship only.
No Star is robbed by lending darkness light.

SHE

I give you friendship as I understand it,
A sentiment I feel for all mankind.

HE

Oh, give me more; may not one friend command it?

SHE

Look in the skies, 'tis there the star you'll find;
It casts its beams on all with equal favour.

HE

I would have more than what all men may claim.

SHE

Then your ideas of friendship strongly savour
Of sentiments which wear another name.

HE

May not one friend receive more than another?

SHE

Not man from woman and still remain a ...

My cot was down by a cypress grove,
And I sat by my window the whole night long,
And heard well up from the deep dark wood
A mocking-bird's passionate song.

And I thought of myself so sad and lone,
And my life's cold winter that knew no spring;
Of my mind so weary and sick and wild,
Of my heart too sad to sing.

But e'en as I listened the mock-bird's song,
A thought stole into my saddened heart,
And I said, "I can cheer some other soul
By a carol's simple art."

For oft from the darkness of hearts and lives
Come songs that brim with joy and light,
As out of the gloom of the cypress grove
The mocking-bird sings at night.

So I sang a lay for a brother's ear
In a strain to soothe his bleeding heart,
And he smiled at the sound of my...

Trust not Hope's illusive ray,
Trust not Joy's deceitful smiles;
Oft they reckless youth betray
With their bland, seductive wiles.

I have proved them all, alas!
Transient as the hues of eve;
Meteor-like, they quickly pass
Through the bosoms they deceive.

Let not Love thy prospects gild;
Soon they will be clouded o'er,
And the budding heart once chilled,
It can brightly bloom no more.

Slumber not in Pleasure's beam;
It may sparkle for a while,
But 'tis transient as a dream,
Faithless as a foeman's smile.

There's a light that's brighter far,
Soothes the soul by anguish riven,
'Tis Religion's guiding star
Glittering on the verge of Heaven.

Oh! this beam divine is worth
All the charm that life can give;
'...