Life

Madame,

VVhil'st that, for which all vertue now is sold,
And almost every vice, almightie gold,
That which, to boote with hell, is thought worth heaven,
And for it, life, conscience, yea soules are given,
Toyles, by grave custome, up and downe the Court,
To every squire, or groome, that will report
Well, or ill, only, all the following yeere,
Just to the waight their this dayes-presents beare;
While it makes huishers serviceable men,
And some one apteth to be trusted, then,
Though never after; whiles it gaynes the voyce
Of some grand peere, whose ayre-doth make rejoyce
The foole that gave it; who will want, and weepe,
When his proud patrons favours are asleepe;
While thus it buyes great grace, and hunts poore fame;
Runs betweene man, and man, 'tweene, da...

This little rill, that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope a while, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new,
When woods in early green were dressed,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Words cannot tell how br...

When, to the attractions of the busy world,
Preferring studious leisure, I had chosen
A habitation in this peaceful Vale,
Sharp season followed of continual storm
In deepest winter; and, from week to week,
Pathway, and lane, and public road, were clogged
With frequent showers of snow. Upon a hill
At a short distance from my cottage, stands
A stately Fir-grove, whither I was wont
To hasten, for I found, beneath the roof
Of that perennial shade, a cloistral place
Of refuge, with an unincumbered floor.
Here, in safe covert, on the shallow snow,
And, sometimes, on a speck of visible earth,
The redbreast near me hopped; nor was I loth
To sympathise with vulgar coppice birds
That, for protection from the nipping blast,
Hither repaired. A single beech-tree grew<...

    Regret not me;
    Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

    Swift as the light
    I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

    I did not know
    That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

    I skipped at morn
    Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

    I ran at eves
    Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, "I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves."

    Now soon will come
    The apple, pear, and plum
And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.

    Again you will fare
    To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

    Yet gaily sing
    Until the pe...

Rambling I looked for an old abode
Where, years back, one had lived I knew;
Its site a dwelling duly showed,
But it was new.

I went where, not so long ago,
The sod had riven two breasts asunder;
Daisies throve gaily there, as though
No grave were under.

I walked along a terrace where
Loud children gambolled in the sun;
The figure that had once sat there
Was missed by none.

Life laughed and moved on unsubdued,
I saw that Old succumbed to Young:
'Twas well. My too regretful mood
Died on my tongue.

There is singing of birds in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the listening solitudes,
Pewees, and thrushes, and sparrows, not few,
And all the notes of their throats are true.

The thrush from the innermost ash takes on
A tender dream of the treasured and gone;
But the sparrow singeth with pride and cheer
Of the might and light of the present and here.

There is shining of flowers in the deep wet woods,
In the heart of the sensitive solitudes,
The roseate bell and the lily are there,
And every leaf of their sheaf is fair.

Careless and bold, without dream of woe,
The trilliums scatter their flags snow;
But the pale wood-daffodil covers her face,
Agloom with the doom of a sorrowful race.

I

We cannot choose our sorrows.    One there was
Who, reverent of soul, and strong with trust,
Cried, 'God, though Thou shouldst bow me to the dust,
Yet will I praise thy everlasting laws.
Beggared, my faith would never halt or pause,
But sing Thy glory, feasting on a crust.
Only one boon, one precious boon I must
Demand of Thee, O opulent great Cause.
Let Love stay with me, constant to the end,
Though fame pass by and poverty pursue.'
With freighted hold her life ship onward sailed;
The world gave wealth, and pleasure, and a friend,
Unmarred by envy, and whose heart was true.
But ere the sun reached midday, Love had failed.

II

Then from the depths, in bitterness she cried,
'Hell is on earth, and heaven is but a dream;
And human lif...

Wan-Visaged thing! thy virgin leaf
To me looks more than deadly pale,
Unknowing what may stain thee yet, -
A poem or a tale.

Who can thy unborn meaning scan?
Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now?
No, - seek to trace the fate of man
Writ on his infant brow.

Love may light on thy snowy cheek,
And shake his Eden-breathing plumes;
Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles,
Or Angelina blooms.

Satire may lift his bearded lance,
Forestalling Time's slow-moving scythe,
And, scattered on thy little field,
Disjointed bards may writhe.

Perchance a vision of the night,
Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin,
Or sheeted corpse, may stalk along,
Or skeleton may grin.

If it should be in pensive hour
Some sorrow-moving theme I try...

She wept. Life's purple tide began to flow
In languid streams through every thrilling vein;
Dim were my swimming eyes, my pulse beat slow,
And my full heart was swell'd to dear delicious pain.
Life left my loaded heart, and closing eye;
A sigh recall'd the wanderer to my breast;
Dear was the pause of life, and dear the sigh
That call'd the wanderer home, and home to rest.
That tear proclaims in thee each virtue dwells,
And bright will shine in misery's midnight hour;
As the soft star of dewy evening tells
What radiant fires were drown'd by day's malignant pow'r,
That only wait the darkness of the night
To cheer the wand'ring wretch with hospitable light.

Beside the brook the boy reclined
And wove his flowery wreath,
And to the waves the wreath consigned
The waves that danced beneath.
"So fleet mine hours," he sighed, "away
Like waves that restless flow:
And so my flowers of youth decay
Like those that float below."

"Ask not why I, alone on earth,
Am sad in life's young time;
To all the rest are hope and mirth
When spring renews its prime.
Alas! the music Nature makes,
In thousand songs of gladness
While charming all around me, wakes
My heavy heart to sadness."

"Ah! vain to me the joys that break
From spring, voluptuous are;
For only one 't is mine to seek
The near, yet ever far!
I stretch my arms, that shadow-shape
In fond embrace to hold;
Still doth the shade the clas...

    They will find in this life who are grieved with its gladness
        No songs for the heart and no hopes for the soul,
    But will faint in the glooms where the dirges of sadness
        In tremulous murmurs of wretchedness roll;
    For the sweets of this earth never lavish their kisses
        Where lives in the valleys of rapture repine;
    In the tortures they mourn who denounce all the blisses,--
        They weep in the shadow that rail at the shine.

    In the fields that are fair with the blooms of the clover,
        No garlands are grown for the arbors of shade
    Where the woes of the wood in their darkness hang over
        The grasses that wave with the winds of the glade;
    From the chimes of the breezes there echo no measures
        That gladd...

1.
Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude
To live alone, an isolated thing?
To see the busy beings round thee spring,
And care for none; in thy calm solitude,
A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude
To Zephyr's passing wing?

2.
Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove,
Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother's hate,
Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate
As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love:
He bears a load which nothing can remove,
A killing, withering weight.

3.
He smiles - 'tis sorrow's deadliest mockery;
He speaks - the cold words flow not from his soul;
He acts like others, drains the genial bowl, -
Yet, yet he longs - although he fears - to die;
He pants to reach what yet he seems to fly,
Dull life's extre...

Gold or silver, every day,
Dies to gray.
There are knots in every skein.
Hours of work and hours of play
Fade away
Into one immense Inane.
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
Are as vain
As the foam or as the spray.
Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
One refrain:
'If it could be always May!'

Though the earth be green and gay,
Though, they say,
Man the cup of heaven may drain;
Though, his little world to sway,
He display
Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
Autumn brings a mist and rain
That constrain

Him and his to know decay,
Where undimmed the lights that wane
Would remain,
If it could be always May.

YEA, alas, must turn to NAY,
Flesh to clay.
Chance and Time are ever twain.
Men may sc...

My thoughts are all in yonder town,
Where, wept by many tears,
To-day my mother's friend lays down
The burden of her years.

True as in life, no poor disguise
Of death with her is seen,
And on her simple casket lies
No wreath of bloom and green.

Oh, not for her the florist's art,
The mocking weeds of woe;
Dear memories in each mourner's heart
Like heaven's white lilies blow.

And all about the softening air
Of new-born sweetness tells,
And the ungathered May-flowers wear
The tints of ocean shells.

The old, assuring miracle
Is fresh as heretofore;
And earth takes up its parable
Of life from death once more.

Here organ-swell and church-bell toll
Methinks but discord were;
The prayerful silence of the soul...

If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
    To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
    To the long winds of heaven?    Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?

Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
    My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping?
    No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.

From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
    And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
            Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.

Through my indifferent words of every day,
    Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring
            And make my poem; and I shall not know.

In the fair morning of his life,
    When his pure heart lay in his breast,
    Panting, with all that wild unrest
To plunge into the great world's strife

That fills young hearts with mad desire,
    He saw a sunset. Red and gold
    The burning billows surged and rolled,
And upward tossed their caps of fire.

He looked. And as he looked, the sight
    Sent from his soul through breast and brain
    Such intense joy, it hurt like pain.
His heart seemed bursting with delight.

So near the Unknown seemed, so close
    He might have grasped it with his hand.
    He felt his inmost soul expand,
As sunlight will expand a rose.

One day he heard a singing strain -
    A human voice, in bird-like trills.
    He paused, and little raptur...

ON A SUN-PORTRAIT OF HER HUSBAND, SENT BY HIS WIFE TO THEIR FRIEND.

Beautiful eyes, - and shall I see no more
The living thought when it would leap from them,
And play in all its sweetness 'neath their lids?

Here was a man familiar with fair heights
That poets climb. Upon his peace the tears
And troubles of our race deep inroads made,
Yet life was sweet to him; he kept his heart
At home. Who saw his wife might well have thought, -
"God loves this man. He chose a wife for him, -
The true one!" O sweet eyes, that seem to live,
I know so much of you, tell me the rest!
Eyes full of fatherhood and tender care
For small, young children. Is a message here
That you would fain have sent, but had not time?
If such there be, I promise, by long love
And perfec...

The fountain of my life, which flowed so free,
    The plenteous waves, which brimming gushed along,
    Bright, deep, and swift, with a perpetual song,
Doubtless have long since seemed dried up to thee:
How should they not? from the shrunk, narrow bed,
    Where once that glory flowed, have ebbed away
    Light, life, and motion, and along its way
The dull stream slowly creeps a shallow thread, -
Yet, at the hidden source, if hands unblest
    Disturb the wells whence that sad stream takes birth,
    The swollen waters once again gush forth,
Dark, bitter floods, rolling in wild unrest.