Life

In valleys green and still
Where lovers wander maying
They hear from over hill
A music playing.

Behind the drum and fife,
Past hawthornwood and hollow,
Through earth and out of life
The soldiers follow.

The soldier’s is the trade:
In any wind or weather
He steals the heart of maid
And man together.

The lover and his lass
Beneath the hawthorn lying
Have heard the soldiers pass,
And both are sighing.

And down the distance they
With dying note and swelling
Walk the resounding way
To the still dwelling.

None ever knew his name,
Honoured, or one of shame,
Highborn or lowly;
Only upon that tree
Two letters, J and C,
Carved by him, mark where he
Lay dying slowly.

Why came he to the West?
Had then the parent nest
Grown so distasteful?
What cause had he to shun
Life, ere ’twas well begun?
Was he that youngest son,
Of substance wasteful?

Were Fate and he at War?
Was it a pennance, or
Renunciation?
Is it a glad release?
Has he at length found peace,
Now Death hath bid him cease
Peregrination?

Hands white, without a blot,
Told us that he was not
One of “the vulgar.”
What can those cyphers be?
Two only, J and C.
Carved in his agony
Deep in the mulga.

Was there no woman’s face
Whos...

    Elenor Murray asked to go in training
    And came to see me, but the school was full,
    We could not take her. Then she asked to stand
    Upon a list and wait, I put her off.
    She came back, and she came back, till at last
    I took her application; then she came
    And pushed herself and asked when she could come,
    And start to train. At last I laughed and said:
    "Well, come to-morrow." I had never seen
    Such eagerness, persistence. So she came.
    She tried to make a friend of me, perhaps
    Since it was best, I being in command.
    But anyway she wooed me, tried to please me.
    And spite of everything I grew to love her,
    Though I distrusted her. But yet again
    I had belief in her best self, though doubting
    The girl some...

Not asking or expecting aught,
    One day I went to view the court,
Unbent and free from care or thought,
    Though thither fears and hopes resort.

A piece of tapestry took my eye,
    The faded colours spoke it old;
But wrought with curious imagery,
    The figures lively seem'd and bold.

Here you might see the youth prevail,
    (In vain are eloquence and wit,)
The boy persists, Apollo's frail;
    Wisdom to nature does submit.

There mounts the eager charioteer;
    Soon from his seat he's downward hurl'd;
Here Jove in anger doth appear,
    There all, beneath, the flaming world.

What does this idle fiction mean?
    Is truth at court in such disgrace,
It may not on the walls be seen,
    Nor e'en in picture show its ...

Why, when the World’s great mind
Hath finally inclin’d,
Why, you say, Critias, be debating still?
Why, with these mournful rhymes
Learn’d in more languid climes,
Blame our activity,
Who, with such passionate will,
Are, what we mean to be?

Critias, long since, I know,
(For Fate decreed it so,)
Long since the World hath set its heart to live.
Long since with credulous zeal
It turns Life’s mighty wheel;
Still doth for labourers send,
Who still their labour give;
And still expects an end.

Yet, as the wheel flies round,
With no ungrateful sound
Do adverse voices fall on the World’s ear.
Deafen’d by his own stir
The rugged Labourer
Caught not till then a sense
So glowing and so near
Of his omnipotence.

So, wh...

In their deepest caverns of limestone
They pictured the Gods of Food,
The Horse, the Elk, and the Bison
That the hunting might be good;
With the Gods of Death and Terror,
The Mammoth, Tiger, and Bear.
And the pictures moved in the torchlight
To show that the Gods were there!
But that was before Ionia,
(Or the Seven Holy Islands of Ionia)
Any of the Mountains of Ionia,
Had bared their peaks to the air.

The close years packed behind them,
As the glaciers bite and grind,
Filling the new-gouged valleys
With Gods of every kind.
Gods of all-reaching power,
Gods of all-searching eyes,
But each to be wooed by worship
And won by sacrifice.
Till, after many winters, rose Ionia,
(Strange men brooding in Ionia)
Crystal-eyed Sages of Ion...

As I sit with others, at a great feast, suddenly, while the music is playing,
To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral, in mist, of a wreck at sea;
Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers, and wafted kisses, and that is the last of them!
Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President;
Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations, founder’d off the Northeast coast, and going down, Of the steamship Arctic going down,
Of the veil’d tableau, Women gather’d together on deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close, O the moment!
A huge sob, A few bubbles, the white foam spirting up, And then the women gone,
Sinking there, while the passionless wet flows on, And I now pondering, Are those women indeed gone?
Are Souls drown’d and d...

Another day awakes. And who--
    Changing the world--is this?
He comes at whiles, the Winter through,
    West Wind! I would not miss
His sudden tryst: the long, the new
    Surprises of his kiss.

Vigilant, I make haste to close
    With him who comes my way.
I go to meet him as he goes;
    I know his note, his lay,
His colour and his morning rose;
    And I confess his day.

My window waits; at dawn I hark
    His call; at morn I meet
His haste around the tossing park
    And down the softened street;
The gentler light is his; the dark,
    The grey--he turns it sweet.

So too, so too, do I confess
    My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess
    With his immortal things.
I feel, I know him. On I pres...

That such have died enables us
The tranquiller to die;
That such have lived, certificate
For immortality.

"The house is bleak and cold
Built so new for me!
All the winds upon the wold
Search it through for me;
No screening trees abound,
And the curious eyes around
Keep on view for me."

"My Love, I am planting trees
As a screen for you
Both from winds, and eyes that tease
And peer in for you.
Only wait till they have grown,
No such bower will be known
As I mean for you."

"Then I will bear it, Love,
And will wait," she said.
- So, with years, there grew a grove.
"Skill how great!" she said.
"As you wished, Dear?" - "Yes, I see!
But - I'm dying; and for me
'Tis too late," she said.

Friend of my soul, this goblet sip,
    'Twill chase that pensive tear;
'Tis not so sweet as woman's lip,
    But, oh! 'tis more sincere.

    Like her delusive beam,
        'Twill steal away thy mind:
    But, truer than love's dream,
        It leaves no sting behind.

Come, twine the wreath, thy brows to shade;
    These flowers were culled at noon;--
Like woman's love the rose will fade,
    But, ah! not half so soon.
        For though the flower's decayed,
            Its fragrance is not o'er;
        But once when love's betrayed,
            Its sweet life blooms no more.

What various objects strike with various force,
Achilles, Hebe, and Sir Watkin's horse!
Here summer scenes, there Pentland's stormy ridge,
Lords, ladies, Noah's ark, and Cranford bridge!
Some that display the elegant design,
The lucid colours, and the flowing line;
Some that might make, alas! Walsh Porter[1] stare,
And wonder how the devil they got there!

Lady M----ve.

How clear a strife of light and shade is spread!
The face how touched with nature's loveliest red!
The eye, how eloquent, and yet how meek!
The glow subdued, yet mantling on thy cheek!
M----ve! I mark alone thy beauteous face,
But all is nature, dignity, and grace!

Hon. Miss Mercer.--Hopner.

Oh! hide those tempting eyes, that faultless form,
Those looks wi...

I wonder what they are,
    These pretty, wayward things,
That o'er the gloomy earth
    The wind of heaven flings.

Each one a tiny star,
    And each a perfect gem;
What magic in the art
    That thus has fashioned them.

What beauty in the flake
    That falls upon my hand;
And yet this tiny thing
    My will cannot command.

No two are just alike,
    And yet they are the same;
I wonder if my thought
    Could give to each a name.

Unlike the fragile flowers
    That love the sun's warm rays,
These snow-flakes love the cold,
    And die on sunny days!

So dainty and so pure,
    How beautiful they are;
And yet the slightest touch
    Their purity may mar.

They must be gazed upon,
 ...

Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey
When at the sacred font for thee I stood;
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay:
Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day
For stedfast hope the contract to fulfil;
Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still,
Embodied in the music of this Lay,
Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream
Whose murmur soothed thy languid Mother's ear
After her throes, this Stream of name more dear
Since thou dost bear it, a memorial theme
For others; for thy future self, a spell
To summon fancies out of Time's dark cell.

    From those drear solitudes and frowsy cells,
    Where infamy with sad repentance dwells;
    Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast,
    And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
    Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin,
    Blush at the curious stranger peeping in;
    Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar,
    Resolve to drink, nay, half to whore, no more;
    Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing,
    Beat hemp for others, riper for the string:
    From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date,
    To tell Maria her Esopus' fate.

    "Alas! I feel I am no actor here!"
    'Tis real hangmen, real scourges bear!
    Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale
    Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale;
    Will make they hair, tho'...

Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul;
Thy gentle words are drops of balm
In life's too bitter bowl;
No grief is mine, but that alone
These choicest blessings I have known.

Harriet! if all who long to live
In the warm sunshine of thine eye,
That price beyond all pain must give, -
Beneath thy scorn to die;
Then hear thy chosen own too late
His heart most worthy of thy hate.

Be thou, then, one among mankind
Whose heart is harder not for state,
Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
Amid a world of hate;
And by a slight endurance seal
A fellow-being's lasting weal.

For pale with anguish is his cheek,
His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,
Thy name is struggling ere he speak,
Weak is each trembl...

Do not, O do not use me
As you have used others.
Better you did refuse me:
You have refused others.
Better, far better hope to banish
A small child than, grown old,
Hope should decay, his vigour vanish,
And I be left alone and
Cold, cold.

Ah, use no guile nor cunning
If you should even yet love me.
Hark, Time with Love is running,
Death cloud-like floats above me.
Love me with such simplicity
As children, frankly bold,
Do love with; oh, never pity me,
Though I be left alone and
Cold, cold.

Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district, Colorado, as seen from the summit of Mt. Wilson.


I stood at sunrise, on the topmost part
Of lofty mountain, massively sublime;
A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred
By countless generations' ceaseless war
And struggle with the restless elements;
A rugged point, which shot into the air,
As by ambition or desire impelled
To pierce the eternal precincts of the sky.

        Below, outspread,
A scene of such terrific grandeur lay
That reeled the brain at what the eyes beheld;
The hands would clench involuntarily
And clutch from intuition for support;
The eyes by instinct closed, nor dared to gaze
On such an awful and inspiring sight.

The sun arose with bright transcendent ray,
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