Life

What loveliness the years contrive
To rob us of! what exquisite
Beliefs, in which thought chanced to hit
On truths that with the world survive!
Dream-truths, that still attend their flocks
On the high hills of heart and mind,
Peopling the streams, the woods and rocks
With Beauty running like the wind.
They are not dead; but year by year
Still hold us through the inner eye
Of thought, and so can never die
As long as there's one heart to hear
Nature addressing words of love,
(As once she spoke to Rome and Greece,)
Unto the soul, whose faith shall prove
The dream will last though all else cease.

To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain,
And give oneself a world of pain;
Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,
Imperious, supple God knows what,
For what’s all one to have or not;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
For ’tis not joy, it is not gain,
It is not in itself a bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us all alive.

To say we truly feel the pain,
And quite are sinking with the strain;
Entirely, simply, undeceived,
Believe, and say we ne’er believed
The object, e’en were it achieved,
A thing we e’er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, ’tis not joy, and ’tis not bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us still alive.

O take this world away from me;
Its strife I cannot bear to see,
Its very praises hurt me more
Than een its coldness did before,
Its hollow ways torment me now
And start a cold sweat on my brow,
Its noise I cannot bear to hear,
Its joy is trouble to my ear,
Its ways I cannot bear to see,
Its crowds are solitudes to me.
O, how I long to be agen
That poor and independent man,
With labour's lot from morn to night
And books to read at candle light;
That followed labour in the field
From light to dark when toil could yield
Real happiness with little gain,
Rich thoughtless health unknown to pain:
Though, leaning on my spade to rest,
I've thought how richer folks were blest
And knew not quiet was the best.

Go with your tauntings, go;

There's blood between us, love, my love,
There's father's blood, there's brother's blood;
And blood's a bar I cannot pass:
I choose the stairs that mount above,
Stair after golden skyward stair,
To city and to sea of glass.
My lily feet are soiled with mud,
With scarlet mud which tells a tale
Of hope that was, of guilt that was,
Of love that shall not yet avail;
Alas, my heart, if I could bare
My heart, this selfsame stain is there:
I seek the sea of glass and fire
To wash the spot, to burn the snare;
Lo, stairs are meant to lift us higher:
Mount with me, mount the kindled stair.

    Your eyes look earthward, mine look up.
I see the far-off city grand,
Beyond the hills a watered land,
Beyond the gulf a gleaming strand
Of mansions wher...

Methought last night I saw thee lowly laid,
    Thy pallid cheek yet paler, on the bier;
And scattered round thee many a lovely braid
    Of flowers, the brightest of the closing year;
Whilst on thy lips the placid smile that played,
    Proved thy soul's exit to a happier sphere,
In silent eloquence reproaching those
Who watched in agony thy last repose.

A pensive, wandering, melancholy light
    The moon's pale radiance on thy features cast,
Which, through the awful stillness of the night,
    Gleamed like some lovely vision of the past,
Recalling hopes once beautiful and bright,
    Now, like that struggling beam, receding fast,
Which o'er the scene a softening glory shed,
And kissed the brow of the unconscious dead.

Yes--it was thou!--and we we...

Dear Anna,—Between friend and friend
Prose answers every common end;
Serves, in a plain and homely way,
To express the occurrence of the day;
Our health, the weather, and the news;
What walks we take, what books we choose;
And all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind.
But when a poet takes the pen,
Far more alive than other men,
He feels a gentle tingling come
Down to his finger and his thumb,
Derived from nature’s noblest part,
The centre of a glowing heart:
And this is what the world, who knows
No flights above the pitch of prose,
His more sublime vagaries slighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who scribble rhyme
To catch the triflers of the time,
And tell them truths divine and clear,
Which, c...

Just as those final words were penned, the sun broke out in power,
And gladdened all things; but, as chanced, within that very hour,
Air blackened, thunder growled, fire flashed from clouds that hid the sky,
And, for the Subject of my Verse, I heaved a pensive sigh.

Nor could my heart by second thoughts from heaviness be cleared,
For bodied forth before my eyes the cross-crowned hut appeared;
And, while around it storm as fierce seemed troubling earth and air,
I saw, within, the Norman Boy kneeling alone in prayer.

The Child, as if the thunder's voice spake with articulate call,
Bowed meekly in submissive fear, before the Lord of All;
His lips were moving; and his eyes, up-raised to sue for grace,
With soft illumination cheered the dimness of that place.

How bea...

Tell me, ye Zephyrs! that unfold,
While fluttering o'er this gay Recess,
Pinions that fanned the teeming mould
Of Eden's blissful wilderness,
Did only softly-stealing hours
There close the peaceful lives of flowers?

Say, when the 'moving' creatures saw
All kinds commingled without fear,
Prevailed a like indulgent law
For the still growths that prosper here?
Did wanton fawn and kid forbear
The half-blown rose, the lily spare?

Or peeped they often from their beds
And prematurely disappeared,
Devoured like pleasure ere it spreads
A bosom to the sun endeared?
If such their harsh untimely doom,
It falls not 'here' on bud or bloom.

All summer long the happy Eve
Of this fair Spot her flowers may bind,
Nor e'er, with ruffled fancy...

What dainty note of long-drawn melody
Athwart our dreamless sleep rings sweet and clear,
Till all the fumes of slumber are brushed by,


And with awakened consciousness we hear
The pipe of birds?    Look forth!    The sane, white day
Blesses the hilltops, and the sun is near.


All misty phantoms slowly roll away
With the night's vapors toward the western sky.
The Real enchants us, the fresh breath of hay


Blows toward us; soft the meadow-grasses lie,
Bearded with dew; the air is a caress;
The sudden sun o'ertops the boundary


Of eastern hills, the morning joyousness
Thrills tingling through the frame; life's pulse beats strong;
Night's fancies melt like dew.    So ends the song!

Dum studeo fungi fallentis munere vitae,
Adfectoque viam sedibus Elysiis
Arctoa florens sophia, Samiisque superbus
Discipulis, animas morte carere cano.
Has ego corporibus profugas ad sidera mitto;
Sideraque ingressis otia blanda dico;
Qualia conveniunt divis, queis fata volebant
Vitai faciles molliter ire vias:
Vinaque coelicolis media inter gaudia libo;
Et me quid majus suspicor esse viro,
Sed fuerint nulli forsan, quos spondeo, coeli;
Nullaque sint Ditis numina, nulla Jovis:
Fabula sit torris agitur, quae vita relictis
Quique superstes homo; qui nihil, esto Deus.
Attamen esse hilares, et inanes mittere curas
Proderit, ac vitae commoditate frui,
Et festos agitasse dies, aevique fugacis
Tempora perpetuis detinuisse jocis.
His me parentem praeceptis ...

Scene - A spacious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining.

Katharine. What are the words?

Eliza. Ask our friend, the Improvisatore; here he comes. Kate has a favour to ask of you, Sir; it is that you will repeat the ballad [Believe me if all those endearing young charms. - EHC's ? note] that Mr. ____ sang so sweetly.
Friend. It is in Moore's Irish Melodies; but I do not recollect the words distinctly. The moral of them, however, I take to be this:

Love would remain the same if true,
When we were neither young nor new;
Yea, and in all within the will that came,
By the same proofs would show itself the same.

Eliza. What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my mother admired so much? It begins with something about two v...

I had remarked--how sharply one observes
When life is disappearing round the curves
Of yet another corner, out of sight!--
I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night"
And "a good journey to you," on her face
Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs
Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace
Of clouded thought in those brown eyes,
Always so happily clear of hows and ifs--
My poor bleared mind!--and haunting whys.

There I stood, holding her farewell hand,
(Pressing my life and soul and all
The world to one good-bye, till, small
And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand
Dead when they vanished with the sight of her).
And I saw that she had grown aware,
Queer puzzled face! of other things
Beyond the present and her own young speed,

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through
A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love's living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down
Upon the heated sod:
It seemed as if my body pressed
The very ground she trod.

I lay, and thought; and in a trance
She came and stood me by
The same, even to the marvellous ray
That used to light her eye.

"You draw me, and I come to you,
My faithful one," she said,
In voice that had the moving tone
It bore ere breath had fled.

She said: "'Tis seven years since I died:
Few now remember me;
My husband clasps another bride;
My children's love has she.

"My brethren, sisters, and my friends
Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
Till I...

(VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE.)
INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER.


I.
White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white;
Snowdrops that plead for pardon
And pine for fright
Because the hard East blows
Over their maiden rows
Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.

Behind the veil, forbidden,
Shut up from sight,
Love, is there sorrow hidden,
Is there delight?
Is joy thy dower or grief,
White rose of weary leaf,
Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light?

Soft snows that hard winds harden
Till each flake bite
Fill all the flowerless garden
Whose flowers took flight
Long since when summer ceased,
And men rose up from feast,
And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night.

II.<...

"Child of the Woods, bred in leafy dell,
See the palace home in which I dwell,
With its lofty walls and casements wide,
And objects of beauty on every side;
Now, tell me, dost thou not think it bliss
To dwell in a home as bright as this?"

"Has my pale-faced sister never seen
My home in the pleasant forest green,
With the sunshine weaving its threads of gold
Through the boughs of elm and of maples old,
And soft green moss and wild flowers sweet,
What carpet more fitting for maidens' feet?"

"Well, see these diamonds of price untold,
These costly trinkets of burnished gold,
With rich soft robes - my daily wear -
These graceful flower-wreaths for my hair;
And now, at least, thou must frankly tell
Thou would'st like such garb and jewels well."

I cannot look upon thy grave,
    Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
    These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
    A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
    The stillness round a star?

Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
    Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
    This madness of the heart.

And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
    A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
    Had oped and closed again.

And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
    The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
    Then turn away to peace.

But oh, for evermore thy look,
    Thy laugh, thy charm, t...

Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope O God! I can
Its fount is holier more divine
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bowed from its wild pride into shame
O yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,
The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The u...

God sent us here to make mistakes,
    To strive, to fail, to re-begin,
    To taste the tempting fruit of sin,
And find what bitter food it makes,

To miss the path, to go astray,
    To wander blindly in the night;
    But, searching, praying for the light,
Until at last we find the way.

And looking back along the past,
    We know we needed all the strain
    Of fear and doubt and strife and pain
To make us value peace, at last.

Who fails, finds later triumph sweet;
    Who stumbles once, walks then with care,
    And knows the place to cry "Beware"
To other unaccustomed feet.

Through strife the slumbering soul awakes,
    We learn on error's troubled route
    The truths we could not prize without
The sorrow of our sad...