Life

What do poets want with gold,
Cringing slaves and cushioned ease;
Are not crusts and garments old
Better for their souls than these?

Gold is but the juggling rod
Of a false usurping god,
Graven long ago in hell
With a sombre stony spell,
Working in the world forever.
Hate is not so strong to sever
Beating human heart from heart.
Soul from soul we shrink and part,
And no longer hail each other
With the ancient name of brother
Give the simple poet gold,
And his song will die of cold.
He must walk with men that reel
On the rugged path, and feel
Every sacred soul that is
Beating very near to his.
Simple, human, careless, free,
As God made him, he must be:
For the sweetest song of bird
Is the hidden tenor heard
In the d...

A beautiful and happy girl,
With step as light as summer air,
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair;
A seeming child in everything,
Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
As Nature wears the smile of Spring
When sinking into Summer's arms.

A mind rejoicing in the light
Which melted through its graceful bower,
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
And stainless in its holy white,
Unfolding like a morning flower
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.

How thrills once more the lengthening chain
Of memory, at the thought of thee!
Old hopes which long in dust ...

Now as even's warning bell
Rings the day's departing knell,
Leaving me from labour free,
Solitude, I'll walk with thee:
Whether 'side the woods we rove,
Or sweep beneath the willow grove;
Whether sauntering we proceed
Cross the green, or down the mead;
Whether, sitting down, we look
On the bubbles of the brook;
Whether, curious, waste an hour,
Pausing o'er each tasty flower;
Or, expounding nature's spells,
From the sand pick out the shells;
Or, while lingering by the streams,
Where more sweet the music seems,
Listen to the soft'ning swells
Of some distant chiming bells
Mellowing sweetly on the breeze,
Rising, falling by degrees,
Dying now, then wak'd again
In full many a 'witching strain,
Sounding, as the gale flits by,
Flats...

Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote,
    Mad with melody, rhythm - rife
From the very first to the final note.
    Give me his "Artist's Life!"

It stirs my blood to my finger-ends,
    Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest,
And all that is sweetest and saddest blends
    Together within my breast.

It brings back that night in the dim arcade,
    In love's sweet morning and life's best prime,
When the great brass orchestra played and played,
    And set our thoughts to rhyme.

It brings back that Winter of mad delights,
    Of leaping pulses and tripping feet,
And those languid moon-washed Summer nights
    When we heard the band in the street.

It brings back rapture and glee and glow,
    It brings back passion and pain a...

The Muse said, Let us sing a little song
    Wherein no hint of wrong,
No echo of the great world need, or pain,
    Shall mar the strain.
Lock fast the swinging portal of thy heart;
    Keep sympathy apart.
Sing of the sunset, of the dawn, the sea;
    Of any thing or nothing, so there be
No purpose to thy art.
    Yea, let us make, art for Art's sake.
And sing no more unto the hearts of men,
    But for the critic's pen.
With songs that are but words, sweet sounding words,
    Like joyous jargon of the birds.
Tune now thy lyre, O Poet, and sing on.
    Sing of

The Dawn

The Virgin Night, all languorous with dreams
    Of her beloved Darkness, rose in fear,
    Feeling the presence of another near.
Outside her curtained casement...

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass...

Standing here alone,
Let me pause awhile,
Drinking in the light
Ere, with plunge of white limbs prone,
I raise the sparkling flight
Of foam-flakes volatile.

Now, in natural guise,
I woo the deathless breeze,
Through me rushing fleet
The joy of life, in swift surprise:
I grow with growing wheat,
And burgeon with the trees.

Lo! I fetter Time,
So he cannot run;
And in Eden again -
Flash of memory sublime! -
Dwell naked, without stain,
Beneath the dazed sun.

All yields brotherhood;
Each least thing that lives,
Wrought of primal spores,
Deepens this wild sense of good
That, on these shaggy shores,
Return to nature gives.

Oh, that some solitude
Were ours, in woodlands deep,
Where, with lucent ...

My graveyard holds no once-loved human forms,
Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone,
But every agony my heart has known, -
The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms.

I visit every day the shadowy grove;
I bury there my outraged tender thought;
I bring the insult for the love I sought,
And my contempt, where I had tried to love.

Let the dream go.    Are there not other dreams
    In vastness of clouds hid from thy sight
That yet shall gild with beautiful gold gleams,
    And shoot the shadows through and through with light?
    What matters one lost vision of the night?
        Let the dream go!!

Let the hope set.    Are there not other hopes
    That yet shall rise like new stars in thy sky?
Not long a soul in sullen darkness gropes
    Before some light is lent it from on high;
    What folly to think happiness gone by!
        Let the hope set!

Let the joy fade.    Are there not other joys,
    Like frost-bound bulbs, that yet shall start and bloom?
Severe must be the winter that destroys
    The hardy roots locked in their silent tomb.
    What cares the earth for her ...

The dying words of Goethe.

"Light! more light! the shadows deepen,
    And my life is ebbing low,
Throw the windows widely open:
    Light! more light! before I go.

"Softly let the balmy sunshine
    Play around my dying bed,
E'er the dimly lighted valley
    I with lonely feet must tread.

"Light! more light! for Death is weaving
    Shadows 'round my waning sight,
And I fain would gaze upon him
    Through a stream of earthly light."

Not for greater gifts of genius;
    Not for thoughts more grandly bright,
All the dying poet whispers
    Is a prayer for light, more light.

Heeds he not the gathered laurels,
    Fading slowly from his sight;
All the poet's aspirations
    Centre in that prayer for light.
<...

Sad is the Evening: all the level sand
    Lies left and lonely, while the restless sea,
Tired of the green caresses of the land,
    Withdraws into its own infinity.

But still more sad this white and chilly Dawn
    Filling the vacant spaces of the sky,
While little winds blow here and there forlorn
    And all the stars, weary of shining, die.

And more than desolate, to wake, to rise,
    Leaving the couch, where softly sleeping still,
What through the past night made my heaven, lies;
    And looking out across the window sill

See, from the upper window's vantage ground,
    Mankind slip into harness once again,
And wearily resume his daily round
    Of love and labour, toil and strife and pain.

How the sad thoughts slip back across t...

Lines written after a summer day's excursion.


Fair Nature's priestesses! to whom,
In hieroglyph of bud and bloom,
Her mysteries are told;
Who, wise in lore of wood and mead,
The seasons' pictured scrolls can read,
In lessons manifold!

Thanks for the courtesy, and gay
Good-humor, which on Washing Day
Our ill-timed visit bore;
Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke
The morning dreams of Artichoke,
Along his wooded shore!

Varied as varying Nature's ways,
Sprites of the river, woodland fays,
Or mountain nymphs, ye seem;
Free-limbed Dianas on the green,
Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine,
Upon your favorite stream.

The forms of which the poets told,
The fair benignities of old,
Were doubtless such as yo...

Hopes what are they? Beads of morning
Strung on slender blades of grass;
Or a spider's web adorning
In a strait and treacherous pass.

What are fears but voices airy?
Whispering harm where harm is not;
And deluding the unwary
Till the fatal bolt is shot!

What is glory? in the socket
See how dying tapers fare!
What is pride? a whizzing rocket
That would emulate a star.

What is friendship? do not trust her,
Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From a palsy-shaken head.

What is truth? a staff rejected;
Duty? an unwelcome clog;
Joy? a moon by fits reflected
In a swamp or watery bog;

Bright, as if through ether steering,
To the Traveller's eye it shone:
He hath hailed it re-...

Have I dreamed? or was it real,
    What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal
In the land of the Ideal
    Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?

What! are these the guests whose glances
    Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies,
That with dithyrambic dances
    As with magic circles bound me?

Ah! how cold are their caresses!
    Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
And from loose dishevelled tresses
    Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!

O my songs! whose winsome measures
    Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures
    Fade and perish with the capture?

Fair they seemed,...

Prelude To "Illustrated Poems"

Full well I know the frozen hand has come
That smites the songs of grove and garden dumb,
And chills sad autumn's last chrysanthemum;

Yet would I find one blossom, if I might,
Ere the dark loom that weaves the robe of white
Hides all the wrecks of summer out of sight.

Sometimes in dim November's narrowing day,
When all the season's pride has passed away,
As mid the blackened stems and leaves we stray,

We spy in sheltered nook or rocky cleft
A starry disk the hurrying winds have left,
Of all its blooming sisterhood bereft.

Some pansy, with its wondering baby eyes
Poor wayside nursling! - fixed in blank surprise
At the rough welcome of unfriendly skies;

Or golden daisy, - will it dare disclaim

Whether the way be dark or light
    My soul shall sing as I journey on,
As sweetly sing in the deeps of night
    As it sang in the burst of the golden dawn.

Nothing can crush me, or silence me long,
    Though the heart be bowed, yet the soul will rise,
Higher and higher on wings of song,
    Till it swims like the lark in a sea of skies.

Though youth may fade, and love grow cold,
    And friends prove false, and best hopes blight,
Yet the sun will wade in waves of gold,
    And the stars in glory will shine at night.

Though all earth's joys from my life are missed,
    And I of the whole world stand bereft,
Yet dawns will be purple and amethyst,
    And I cannot be sad while the seas are left.

For I am a part of the mighty whole;

1

"There is no God," one said,
    And love is lust;
When I am dead I'm dead,
    And all is dust.

"Be merry while you can
    Before you're gray;
With some wild courtesan
    Drink care away."


2

One said, "A God there is,
    And God is love;
Death is not death, but bliss,
    And life above.

"Above all flesh is mind;
    And faith and truth
God's gifts to poor mankind
    That make life youth."


3

One from a harlot's side
Arose at morn;
One cursing God had died
That night forlorn.

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He pass’d by the town and out of the street;
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat;
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.


The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly,
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey;
And the nightingale thought, ‘I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.’