Life

The Youths.

O Winter, O white winter, wert thou gone
No more within the wilds were I alone
Leaping with bent bow over stock and stone!

No more alone my love the lamp should burn,
Watching the weary spindle twist and turn,
Or o'er the web hold back her tears and yearn:
O winter, O white winter, wert thou gone!

The Maidens.

Sweet thoughts fly swiftlier than the drifting snow,
And with the twisting threads sweet longings grow,
And o'er the web sweet pictures come and go,
For no white winter are we long alone.

The Youths.

O stream so changed, what hast thou done to me,
That I thy glittering ford no more can see
Wreathing with white her fair feet lovingly?

See, in the rain she stands, and, looking ...

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.

These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Lais! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls.
Under cold rags, their shredded petticoats,

They creep, lashed by the merciless north wind,
Quake from the riot of an omnibus,
Clasp by their sides like relics of a saint
Embroidered bags of flowery design;

They toddle, every bit like marionettes,
Or drag themselves like wounded animals,
Or dance against their will, poor little bells
That a remorseless demon rings! Worn out

They are, yet they have eyes piercing like...

One morning (raw it was and wet
A foggy day in winter time)
A Woman on the road I met,
Not old, though something past her prime:
Majestic in her person, tall and straight;
And like a Roman matron's was her mien and gait.

The ancient spirit is not dead;
Old times, thought I, are breathing there;
Proud was I that my country bred
Such strength, a dignity so fair:
She begged an alms, like one in poor estate;
I looked at her again, nor did my pride abate.

When from these lofty thoughts I woke,
"What is it," said I, "that you bear,
Beneath the covert of your Cloak,
Protected from this cold damp air? "
She answered, soon as she the question heard,
"A simple burthen, Sir, a little Singing-bird."

And, thus continuing, she said,
"I had a...

With copious eulogy in prose or rhyme
Graven on the tomb we struggle against Time,
Alas, how feebly! but our feelings rise
And still we struggle when a good man dies:
Such offering Beaumont dreaded and forbade,
A spirit meek in self-abasement clad.
Yet 'here' at least, though few have numbered days
That shunned so modestly the light of praise
His graceful manners, and the temperate ray
Of that arch fancy which would round him play,
Brightening a converse never known to swerve
From courtesy and delicate reserve;
That sense, the bland philosophy of life,
Which checked discussion ere it warmed to strife
Those rare accomplishments, and varied powers,
Might have their record among sylvan bowers.
Oh, fled for ever! vanished like a blast
That shook the leaves in...

You are a lovely autumn sky, rose-clear!
But sadness is flowing in me like the sea,
And leaves on my sullen lip, as it disappears,
of its bitter slime the painful memory.


Your hand glides over my numb breast in vain:
what it seeks, dear friend, is a place made raw
by woman’s ferocious fang and claw, refrain:
seek this heart, the wild beasts tear, no more.


My heart is a palace defiled by the rabble,
they drink, and murder, and clutch each other’s hair!
About your naked throat a perfume hovers!...


O Beauty, harsh scourge of souls, this is your care!
With your eyes of fire, dazzling as at our feasts,
Burn these scraps to ashes, spared by the beasts!

I

Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.

II

Always we'd have the new friend meet the old
And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,
And there is salt to lengthen out the smart
In the affections of our heart,
And quarrels are blown up upon that head;
But not a friend that I would bring
This night can set us quarrelling,
For all that come into my mind are dead.

III

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
That loved his learning bette...

In Vanity Fair, as we bow and smile,
    As we talk of the opera after the weather,
As we chat of fashion and fad and style,
    We know we are playing a part together.
You know that the mirth she wears, she borrows;
She knows you laugh but to hide your sorrows;
We know that under the silks and laces,
And back of beautiful, beaming faces,
Lie secret trouble and grim despair,
        In Vanity Fair.

In Vanity Fair, on dress parade,
    Our colours look bright and our swords are gleaming;
But many a uniform's worn and frayed,
    And most of the weapons, despite their seeming,
Are dull and blunted and badly battered,
And close inspection will show how tattered
And stained are the banners that float above us.
Our comrades hate, while they swear to love...

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness"


The heart hath its moments of hopeless gloom,
As rayless as is the dark night of the tomb;
When the past has no spell, the future no ray,
To chase the sad cloud from the spirit away;
When earth, though in all her rich beauty arrayed,
Hath a gloom o'er her flowers - o'er her skies a dark shade,
And we turn from all pleasure with loathing away,
Too downcast, too spirit sick, even to pray!

Oh! where may the heart seek, in moments like this,
A whisper of hope, or a faint gleam of bliss?
When friendship seems naught but a cold, cheerless flame,
And love a still falser and emptier name;
When honors and wealth are a wearisome chain,
Each link interwoven with grief and with pain,
And each solace or joy that the spiri...

        I said this morning, as I leaned and threw
    My shutters open to the Spring's surprise,
        "Tell me, O Earth, how is it that in you
    Year after year the same fresh feelings rise?
        How do you keep your young exultant glee?
        No more those sweet emotions come to me.

        "I note through all your fissures how the tide
    Of healthful life goes leaping as of old;
        Your royal dawns retain their pomp and pride;
    Your sunsets lose no atom of their gold.
        How can this wonder be?" My soul's fine ear
        Leaned, listening, till a small voice answered near:

        "My days lapse never over into night;
    My nights encroach not on the rights of dawn.
        I rush not breathless after some delight;
    I wa...

Whether I loved you who shall say?
Whether I drifted down your way
In the endless River of Chance and Change,
And you woke the strange
Unknown longings that have no names,
But burn us all in their hidden flames,
    Who shall say?

Life is a strange and a wayward thing:
We heard the bells of the Temples ring,
The married children, in passing, sing.
The month of marriage, the month of spring,
Was full of the breath of sunburnt flowers
That bloom in a fiercer light than ours,
And, under a sky more fiercely blue,
    I came to you!

You told me tales of your vivid life
Where death was cruel and danger rife -
Of deep dark forests, of poisoned trees,
Of pains and passions that scorch and freeze,
Of southern noontides and eastern nights,

In the downhill of life, when I find I’m declining,
May my lot no less fortunate be
Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining,
And a cot that o’erlooks the wide sea;
With an ambling pad-pony to pace o’er the lawn,
While I carol away idle sorrow,
And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn
Look forward with hope for tomorrow.

With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too,
As the sunshine or rain may prevail;
And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too,
With a barn for the use of the flail;
A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game,
And a purse when a friend wants to borrow;
I’ll envy no Nabob his riches or fame,
Nor what honours may wait him tomorrow.

From the bleak northern blast may my cot be completely
Secure...

I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on

it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, its convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how hes shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles w...

The search for beauty is the search for God
Who is All Beauty.    He who seeks shall find.
And all along the paths my feet have trod,
I have sought hungrily with heart and mind,
    And open eyes for beauty, everywhere.
    Lo! I have found the world is very fair.
The search for beauty is the search for God.

Beauty was first revealed to me by stars,
    Before I saw it in my mother's eyes,
Or, seeing, sensed it beauty, I was stirred
To awe and wonder by those orbs of light
    All palpitant against empurpled skies.
They spoke a language to my childish heart
Of mystery and splendour, and of space,
Friendly with gracious, unseen presences.
Beauty was first revealed to me by stars.

Sunsets enlarged the meaning of the word.
    There was a window ...

The shadow of Dawn;
Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
Of Life and Death and Sleep;
Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound
Of the old, unchanging Sea.

My soul and yours -
O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,
Into the ghostliness,
The infinite and abounding solitudes,
Beyond - O, beyond! - beyond . . .

Here in the porch
Upon the multitudinous silences
Of the kingdoms of the grave,
We twain are you and I - two ghosts Omnipotence
Can touch no more . . . no more!

Now overhead,
Where the rivulet loiters and stops,
The bittersweet hangs from the tops
Of the alders and cherries
Its bunches of beautiful berries,
Orange and red.

And the snowbirds flee,
Tossing up on the far brown field,
Now flashing and now concealed,
Like fringes of spray
That vanish and gleam on the gray
Field of the sea.

Flickering light,
Come the last of the leaves down borne,
And patches of pale white corn
In the wind complain,
Like the slow rustle of rain
Noticed by night.

Withered and thinned,
The sentinel mullein looms,
With the pale gray shadowy plumes
Of the goldenrod;
And the milkweed opens its pod,
Tempting the wind.

Aloft on the hill,
A cloudrift opens and shines
Through ...

From the dawn of spring till the year grows hoary,
    Nothing is new that is done or said,
The leaves are telling the same old story -
    "Budding, bursting, dying, dead."
And ever and always the wild bird's chorus
    Is "coming, building, flying, fled."

Never the round earth roams or ranges
    Out of her circuit, so old, so old,
And the smile o' the sun knows but these changes -
    Beaming, burning, tender, cold,
As Spring time softens or Winter estranges
    The mighty heart of this orb of gold.

From our great sire's birth to the last morn's breaking
    There were tempest, sunshine, fruit and frost,
And the sea was calm or the sea was shaking
    His mighty main like a lion crossed,
And ever this cry the heart was making -
    Longing,...

So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time un-proved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!

What! are we not glad-hearted?
Is there no deed to do?
Is not all fear departed
And Spring-tide blossomed new?

The sails swell out above us,
The sea-ridge lifts the keel;
For They have called who love us,
Who bear the gifts that heal:

A crown for him that winneth,
A bed for him that fails,
A glory that beginneth
In never-dying tales.

Yet now the pain is ended
And the glad hand grips the sword,
Look on thy life amended
And deal out due award.

Think of the thankless morning,
The gifts of noon unused;
Think of the eve of scorning,
The night of prayer refused.

And yet.    The life be...

    It came with spring's soft sun and showers,
Mid bursting buds and blushing flowers;
It flourished on the same light stem,
It drank the same clear dews with them.
The crimson tints of summer morn
That gilded one, did each adorn:
The breeze that whispered light and brief
To bud or blossom, kissed the leaf;
When o'er the leaf the tempest flew,
The bud and blossom trembled too.

    But its companions passed away,
And left the leaf to lone decay.
The gentle gales of spring went by:
The fruits and flowers of summer die.
The autumn winds swept o'er the hill,
And winter's breath came cold and chill.
The leaf now yielded to the blast,
And on the rushing stream was cast.
Far, far it glided to the sea,
And whirled and eddied wearily,
Till su...