Life

I.
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.

II.
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

III.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.

IV.
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.

V.
So wore night; the East was gray,
...

On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished
rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,
trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,
under the four-square heaven of solitude,
where a child drinks study’s tart ten-year brew.
It was in those days, outstanding and memorable,
when the teachers, forced to loosen our classical
fetters, yet all still hostile to your rhyming,
succumbed to the pressure of our mad duelling,
and allowed a triumphant, mutinous, pupil
to make Triboulet howl in Latin, at will.
Which of us in those days of pale adolescence
didn’t share the weary torpor of confinement,
eyes lost in the dreary blue of a summer sky
or the snowfall’s whiteness, we were dazzled by,
ears pricked, eager...

    Ye dear stars of the Bear, I did not think
    I should again be turning, as I used,
    To see you over father's garden shine,
    And from the windows talk with you again
    Of this old house, where as a child I dwelt,
    And where I saw the end of all my joys.
    What charming images, what fables, once,
    The sight of you created in my thought,
    And of the lights that bear you company!
    Silent upon the verdant clod I sat,
    My evening thus consuming, as I gazed
    Upon the heavens, and listened to the chant
    Of frogs that in the distant marshes croaked;
    While o'er the hedges, ditches, fire-flies roamed,
    And the green avenues and cypresses
    In yonder grove were murmuring to the wind;
    While in the house were heard, at inter...

    Small, shapeless drifts of cloud
Sail slowly northward in the soft-hued sky,
    With blur half-tints and rolling summits bright,
By the late sun caressed; slight hazes shroud
    All things afar; shineth each leaf anigh
    With its own warmth and light.


    O'erblown by Southland airs,
The summer landscape basks in utter peace:
    In lazy streams the lazy clouds are seen;
Low hills, broad meadows, and large, clear-cut squares
    Of ripening corn-fields, rippled by the breeze,
    With shifting shade and sheen.


    Hark! and you may not hear
A sound less soothing than the rustle cool
    Of swaying leaves, the steady wiry drone
Of unseen crickets, sudden chirpings clear
    Of happy birds, the tinkle of the pool,
    Chafed ...

What is the explanation of the strange silence of American poets
concerning American triumphs on sea and land?
Literary Digest.

Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes?

To laud and eulogize the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?

Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.

'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay,
Not so the battles of our modern day.

Too often now the conquering hero struts
A Gulliver among the Liliputs.

Success no longer rests on skill or fate,
But on the movements of a syndicate.

Of old men fought and deemed it right and just.
To-day the warrior fights because he must,

And in hi...

    Some lives have themes.
    Goldfish that stubbornly die;
    compatability only with distant lovers
    - flowers (but no sweet-breads)
    that wilt to the touch.

    Waiting. Charcoal-grey cat
    agreeably on a green linoleum table
    with light basking in....
    a tad playful,
    paws up,
    (classic boxer stance)
    but no one notices.
    Others oblique in their transparency,
    are unmindful of even the empty closet
    and greeting cards that smile hello.

    In the dark
    this room shimmers below
    life-raft status;
    chairs are buoys
    bobbing under waves
    of congealed fright.
    In the morning
    the first pigeons
    rifle over rooftops,
    mad flutterings like your eyes

    The morning rain, when, from her coop released,
    The hen, exulting, flaps her wings, when from
    The balcony the husbandman looks forth,
    And when the rising sun his trembling rays
    Darts through the falling drops, against my roof
    And windows gently beating, wakens me.
    I rise, and grateful, bless the flying clouds,
    The cheerful twitter of the early birds,
    The smiling fields, and the refreshing air.
    For I of you, unhappy city walls,
    Enough have seen and known; where hatred still
    Companion is to grief; and grieving still
    I live, and so shall die, and that, how soon!
    But here some pity Nature shows, though small,
    Once in this spot to me so courteous!
    Thou, too, O Nature, turn'st away thy gaze
    From mis...

I know not, Time and Space so intervene,
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
Or, called at last, art now Heaven’s citizen;
But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,
Like an old friend, all day has been with me.
The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand
Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land
Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet
Keeps green the memory of his early debt.
To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words
Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,
Listening with quickened heart and ear intent
To each sharp clause of that stern argument,
I still can hear at times a softer note
Of the old pastoral music round me float,
While through the hot gleam of our civil strife

Life, and Death, and Giants
Such as these, are still.
Minor apparatus, hopper of the mill,
Beetle at the candle,
Or a fife's small fame,
Maintain by accident
That they proclaim.

The yesterday doth never smile,
The day goes drudging through the while,
Yet, in the name of Godhead, I
The morrow front, and can defy;
Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
If He should make my web a blot
On life's fair picture of delight,
My heart's content would find it right.
But O, these waves and leaves,--
When happy stoic Nature grieves,
No human speech so beautiful
As their murmurs mine to lull.
On this altar God hath built
I lay my vanity and guilt;
Nor me can Hope or Passion urge
Hearing as now the lofty dirge
Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
Nature's funeral high and dim,--
Sable pageantry of clouds,
Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
Many...

I had rather write one word upon the rock
Of ages than ten thousand in the sand.
The rock of ages! lo I cannot reach
Its lofty shoulders with my puny hand:
I can but touch the sands about its feet.
Yea, I have painted pictures for the blind,
And sung my sweetest songs to ears of stone.
What matter if the dust of ages drift
Five fathoms deep above my grave unknown,
For I have sung and loved the songs I sung.
Who sings for fame the Muses may disown;
Who sings for gold will sing an idle song;
But he who sings because sweet music springs
Unbidden from his heart and warbles long,
May haply touch another heart unknown.
There is sweeter poetry in the hearts of men
Than ever poet wrote or minstrel sung;
For words are clumsy wings for burning thought.
The ful...

What time the mighty moon was gathering light
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll’d his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight.
‘You must begone,’ said Death, ‘these walks are mine.’
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, ‘This hour is thine:
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death.
The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all.’

Yes, my friends! that happier times have been
Than the present, none can contravene;
That a race once lived of nobler worth;
And if ancient chronicles were dumb,
Countless stones in witness forth would come
From the deepest entrails of the earth.
But this highly-favored race has gone,
Gone forever to the realms of night.
We, we live! The moments are our own,
And the living judge the right.

Brighter zones, my friends, no doubt excel
This, the land wherein we're doomed to dwell,
As the hardy travellers proclaim;
But if Nature has denied us much,
Art is yet responsive to our touch,
And our hearts can kindle at her flame.
If the laurel will not flourish here
If the myrtle is cold winter's prey,
Yet the vine, to crown us, year by year,
Still pu...

Judge we of coming, by the by-past, years,
And still can Hope, the siren, soothe our fears?
Cheated, deceived, our cherished day-dreams o'er,
We cling the closer, and we trust the more.
Oh, who can say there's bliss in the review
Of hours, when Hope with fairy fingers drew
A magic sketch of "rapture yet to be,"
A rainbow horizon, a life of glee!
The world all bright before us vivid scene
Of cloudless sunshine and of fadeless green;
A treacherous picture of our coming years,
Bright in prospective welcomed but with tears.

How false the view, a backward glance will tell!
A tale of visions wrecked, of broken spell,
Of valued hearts estranged or careless grown,
Affection's links dissevered or unknown;
Of joys, deemed fadeless, gone to swift decay,
And lo...

..."Una selva oscura." - Dante.


Awake or sleeping (for I know not which)
I was or was not mazed within a wood
Where every mother-bird brought up her brood
Safe in some leafy niche
Of oak or ash, of cypress or of beech,

Of silvery aspen trembling delicately,
Of plane or warmer-tinted sycamore,
Of elm that dies in secret from the core,
Of ivy weak and free,
Of pines, of all green lofty things that be.

Such birds they seemed as challenged each desire;
Like spots of azure heaven upon the wing,
Like downy emeralds that alight and sing,
Like actual coals on fire,
Like anything they seemed, and everything.

Such mirth they made, such warblings and such chat
With tongue of music in a well-tuned beak,
They seemed to speak more wis...

The brook that down the valley
So musically drips,
Flowed never half so brightly
As the light laugh from her lips.

Her face was like the lily,
Her heart was like the rose,
Her eyes were like a heaven
Where the sunlight always glows.

She trod the earth so lightly
Her feet touched not a thorn;
Her words wore all the brightness
Of a young life's happy morn.

Along her laughter rippled
The melody of joy;
She drank from every chalice,
And tasted no alloy.

Her life was all a laughter,
Her days were all a smile,
Her heart was pure and happy,
She knew not gloom nor guile.

She rested on the bosom
Of her mother, like a flower
That blooms far in a valley
Where no storm-clouds ever lower.

And -- "M...

A scene, which 'wildered fancy viewed
In the soul's coldest solitude,
With that same scene when peaceful love
Flings rapture's colour o'er the grove,
When mountain, meadow, wood and stream
With unalloying glory gleam,
And to the spirit's ear and eye
Are unison and harmony.
The moonlight was my dearer day;
Then would I wander far away,
And, lingering on the wild brook's shore
To hear its unremitting roar,
Would lose in the ideal flow
All sense of overwhelming woe;
Or at the noiseless noon of night
Would climb some heathy mountain's height,
And listen to the mystic sound
That stole in fitful gasps around.
I joyed to see the streaks of day
Above the purple peaks decay,
And watch the latest line of light
Just mingling with the shades of ni...

    One summer's morning I heard a lark
    Singing to heaven, a sweet-throated bird;
    One winter's night I was glad in the dark
    Because of the wondrous song I had heard.

    The joy of life, I have heard you say,
    Is my love, my laughter, my smiles and tears;
    When I have gone on the long, strange way,
    Let these stay with you through all the years -

    These be the lark's song. What is love worth
    That cannot crowd, in the time that's given
    To two like us on this gray old earth,
    Such bliss as will last till we reach heaven?

    Dear one, think oft of the full, glad years,
    And, thinking of them, forget to weep.
    Whisper: "Remembrance holds no tears!"
    And kiss my mouth when I fall on sleep.