Life

I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.

In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colors from the sky;

Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made.

Cities of mortals woe-begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.

There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk...

The night is young yet; an enchanted night
In early summer: calm and darkly bright.

I love the Night, and every little breeze
She brings, to soothe the sleep of dreaming trees.

Hearst thou the Voices? Sough! Susurrus! Hark!
’Tis Mother Nature whispering in the dark!

Burden of cities, mad turmoil of men,
That vex the daylight, she forgets them then.

Her breasts are bare; Grief gains from them surcease:
She gives her restless sons the milk of Peace.

To sleep she lulls them, drawn from thoughts of pelf
By telling sweet old stories of herself.

.    .    .    .    .

All secrets deep, yea, all I hear and see
Of things mysterious, Night reveals to me.

I know what every flower, with drowsy head
Down-drooping, dreams of, ...

Ye love, and sonnets write! Fate's strange behest!

The heart, its hidden meaning to declare,

Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair:
Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best.

Scarcely with freedom the o'erflowing breast

As yet can speak, and well may it beware;

Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that's there,
Then once more sink to night and gentle rest.

Why vex yourselves and us, the heavy stone

Up the steep path but step by step to roll?

It falls again, and ye ne'er cease to strive.

THE LOVERS.

But we are on the proper road alone!

If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,

The fire of love must aye be kept alive.

Summer's pleasures they are gone like to visions every one,
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on.
I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and forever far away.
Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay?
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay,
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at "clink and bandy," "chock" and "taw" and "ducking stone,"
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone.

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring,
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing,
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing,
With heart just like a feather, now as heav...

Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet
Because of those new dead
That come into my soul and escape
Confusion of the bed,
Or those begotten or unbegotten
Perning in a band,

Or those begotten or unbegotten,
For I would not recall
Some that being unbegotten
Are not individual,
But copy some one action,
Moulding it of dust or sand,

An old ghost's thoughts are lightning,
To follow is to die;
Poetry and music I have banished,
But the stupidity
Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
Makes no demand.

What are the things that make life bright?
A star gleam in the night.
What hearts us for the coming fray?
The dawn tints of the day.
What helps to speed the weary mile?
A brother's friendly smile.
What turns o' gold the evening gray?
A flower beside the way.

This morning is the morning of the day,
When I and Eustace from the city went
To see the Gardener’s Daughter; I and he,
Brothers in Art; a friendship so complete
Portion’d in halves between us, that we grew
The fable of the city where we dwelt.
My Eustace might have sat for Hercules;
So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.
He, by some law that holds in love, and draws
The greater to the lesser, long desired
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ’d up and closed in little;—Juliet, she
So light of foot, so light of spirit—oh, she
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of nothing! Know you not
Such touches are but embassies of love,
To tamper with the feelings,...

Of these years I sing,
How they pass and have pass'd, through convuls'd pains as through parturitions;
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the Absolute Success, despite of people Illustrates evil as well as good;
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity;
How few see the arrived models, the Athletes, the Western States or see freedom or spirituality or hold any faith in results,
(But I see the Athletes and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable and they again leading to other results;)
How the great cities appear How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them;
How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on;

PROLOGUE

O Lady Flora, let me speak:
A pleasant hour has passed away
While, dreaming on your damask cheek,
The dewy sister-eyelids lay.
As by the lattice you reclined,
I went thro’ many wayward moods
To see you dreaming–and, behind,
A summer crisp with shining woods.
And I too dream’d, until at last
Across my fancy, brooding warm,
The reflex of a legend past,
And loosely settled into form.
And would you have the thought I had,
And see the vision that I saw,
Then take the broidery-frame, and add
A crimson to the quaint Macaw,
And I will tell it. Turn your face,
Nor look with that too-earnest eye–
The rhymes are dazzled from their place
And order’d words asunder fly.



THE SLEEPING PALACE

I.

Th...

Lonely and silent and calm it lies
'Neath rosy dawn or midnight skies;
So densely peopled, yet so still,
The murmuring voice of mountain rill,
The plaint the wind 'mid branches wakes,
Alone the solemn silence breaks.

Whatever changes the seasons bring, -
The birds, the buds of joyous spring,
The glories that come with the falling year
The snows and storms of winter drear, -
Are all unmarked in this lone spot,
Its shrouded inmates feel them not.

Thoughts full of import, earnest and deep,
Must the feeling heart in their spirit steep,
Here, where Death's footprints meet the sight:
The long chill rows of tombstones white,
The graves so thickly, widely spread,
Within this city of the Dead.

Say, who could tell what aching sighs,
What...

A life was mine full of the close concern
Of many-voiced affairs. The world sped fast;
Behind me, ever rolled a pregnant past.
A present came equipped with lore to learn.
Art, science, letters, in their turn,
Each one allured me with its treasures vast;
And I staked all for wisdom, till at last
Thou cam'st and taught my soul anew to yearn.
I had not dreamed that I could turn away
From all that men with brush and pen had wrought;
But ever since that memorable day
When to my heart the truth of love was brought,
I have been wholly yielded to its sway,
And had no room for any other thought.

You are here, and you are wanted,
    Though a waif upon life's stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
    With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing
Called your spirit into being -
Gave you strength for any fate.
Since your life by Him was needed,
All your ways by Him are heeded -
    You can trust and you can wait.

You can wait to know the meaning
    Of the troubles sent your soul;
Of the chasms intervening
    'Twixt your purpose and your goal;
Of the sorrows and the trials,
Of the silence and denials,
    Ofttimes answering to your pleas;
Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,
And of pain's too generous measure -
    You can wait the WHY of these.

Forth from planet unto planet,
    You have go...

Happy are they whom men and women love,
And you were happy as a river that flows
Down between lonely hills, and knows
The pang and virtue of that loneliness,
And moves unresting on until it move
Under the trees that stoop at the low brink
And deepen their cool shade, and drink
And sing and hush and sing again,
Breathing their music's many-toned caress;
While the river with his high clear music speaks
Sometimes of loneliness, of hills obscure,
Sometimes of sunlight dancing on the plain,
Or of the night of stars unbared and deep
Multiplied in his depths unbared and pure;
Sometimes of winds that from the unknown sea creep,
Sometimes of morning when most clear it breaks
Spilling its brightness on his breast like rain:--
And then flows on in loneliness again

Where the ragged, snow-capped saw tooth
    Cuts the azure of the sky
And watches o'er the lonely land
    As ages wander by;
Where the sentinel pines in grandeur
    Murmur to the glacier stream
As it, ice-gorged, gluts the canyon,
    Never brightened by the gleam
Of sun at brightest noon day,
    Nor moon of Arctic night,
And whose only link with Heaven
    Is the fitful Northern Light.
Where the Whistler shrills in triumph
    And the Big Horn dreams in peace,
Where the Brown Bear skulks to cover
    Up where silence holds the lease;
Where the land is as God left it
    Nor has known the tread of man,
There's a treasure ledge a-waiting--
    Go and find it if you can.

If your heart be steeled to triumph
    Nor beats less at ...

        I hear the beat of the unresting tide
    On either shore as swiftly on I glide
    With eager haste the narrow channel o'er,
    Which links the floods behind with those before.
    I hear behind me as I onward glide,
    Faint, farewell voices blending with the tide,
    While from beyond, now near, now far away,
    Come stronger voices chiding each delay;
    And drowning, oft, with wild, discordant burst,
    The melancholy minor of the first

"Farewell! farewell! - ye leave us far behind you!" -
    Tis thus the bright-winged Hours sigh from the Past -
"Ye leave us, and the coming ones will find you
    Still vainly dreaming they will ever last, -
Still trifling with the gifts all fresh and glowing,
    Each in its turn will scatter in your way, ...

In the youth of the year, when the birds were building,
    When the green was showing on tree and hedge,
And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding
    The world from zenith to outermost edge,
My soul grew sad and longingly lonely!
    I sighed for the season of sun and rose,
And I said, "In the Summer and that time only
    Lies sweet contentment and blest repose."

With bee and bird for her maids of honor
    Came Princess Summer in robes of green.
And the King of day smiled down upon her
    And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen.
Fruit of their union and true love's pledges,
    Beautiful roses bloomed day by day,
And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges
    Like royal children in sportive play.

My restless soul for a little seas...

The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.

A name to hear in soft accord
Of leaves by light winds overrun,
Or read, upon the greening sward
Of May, in shade and sun.

The name my infant ear first heard
Breathed softly with a mother’s kiss;
His mother’s own, no tenderer word
My father spake than this.

No child have I to bear it on;
Be thou its keeper; let it take
From gifts well used and duty done
New beauty for thy sake.

The fair ideals that outran
My halting footsteps seek and find
The flawless symmetry of man,
The poise of heart and mind.

Stand firmly where I felt the sway
Of every wing that fancy flew,
See clearly where I...

Lost Youth, come back again!
Laugh at weariness and pain.
Come not in dreams, but come in truth,
            Lost Youth.

Sweetheart of long ago,
Why do you haunt me so?
Were you not glad to part,
            Sweetheart?

Still Death, that draws so near,
Is it hope you bring, or fear?
Is it only ease of breath,
            Still Death?