Loneliness

Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above.

It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.

One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.

The fair brow and ruddy cheek
Spoke of less burning skies;
Words cannot paint the look that beamed
In his dark lustrous eyes.

The other was a slender girl,
Blooming and young and fair.
The snowy neck was shaded with
The long bright sunny hair.

And those deep eyes of watery blue,
So sweetly sad they seemed.
And every featu...

Oh in the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of a satyr carved in stone.
The fountain sang and sang
But the satyr never stirred
Only the great white moon
In the empty heaven heard.
The fountain sang and sang
And on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
Their dreams were strange and dim.
Bright dew was on the grass,
And on the ilex dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
Were all a-glisten too.
The fountain sang and sang
The things one cannot tell,
The dreaming peacocks stirred
And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

If the bird knew how through the wintry weather
An empty nest would swing by day and night,
It would not weave the strands so close together
Or sing for such delight.

And if the rosebud dreamed e'er its awaking
How soon its perfumed leaves would drift apart,
Perchance 'twould fold them close to still the aching
Within its golden heart.

If the brown brook that hurries through the grasses
Knew of drowned sailors - and of storms to be -
Methinks 'twould wait a little e'er it passes
To meet the old grey sea.

If youth could understand the tears and sorrow,
The sombre days that age and knowledge bring,
It would not be so eager for the morrow
Or spendthrift of the spring.

If love but learned how soon life treads its measure,
How short and...

Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook--
Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate
Dark-eyed goddesses,
There by his cressy bed
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled into dew
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising--

Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
Torridge and Tamar,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone;
By Roughtor, Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence,
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges cyclopean,
By Trevenna, Treverbyn,
Lawharne and Largin,
By Glyn...

Yesterday I held your hand,
Reverently I pressed it,
And its gentle yieldingness
From my soul I blessed it.

But to-day I sit alone,
Sad and sore repining;
Must our gold forever know
Flames for the refining?

Yesterday I walked with you,
Could a day be sweeter?
Life was all a lyric song
Set to tricksy meter.

Ah, to-day is like a dirge,--
Place my arms around you,
Let me feel the same dear joy
As when first I found you.

Let me once retrace my steps,
From these roads unpleasant,
Let my heart and mind and soul
All ignore the present.

Yesterday the iron seared
And to-day means sorrow.
Pause, my soul, arise, arise,
Look where gleams the morrow.

        I pass a cobbler's shop along the street
            And pause a moment at the door-step, where,
        In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,
            The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,
            Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,
        And twitter where the autumn hedges run,
        Join all the months of music into one.

        I shut my eyes:    the shy wood-thrush is there,
            And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;
        Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere
            A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;
            From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;
        And when the oriole sets his full heart free
        Barefooted boyhood comes again to me.

      ...

Beneath the moonlight and the snow
Lies dead my latest year;
The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.

I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well!

His light shines on me from above,
His low voice speaks within,
The patience of immortal love
Outwearying mortal sin.

Not mindless of the growing years
Of care and loss and pain,
My eyes are wet with thankful tears
For blessings which remain.

If dim the gold of life has grown,
I will not count it dross,
Nor turn from treasures still my own
To sigh for lack and loss.

The years no charm from Nature take;
As sweet her voices call,
As beautiful her mornings break,
As fair her even...

I.

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to a jargon of muted tones.
This is the night we have kept, you say:
This is the moonlit night that will never die.
Through the grey streets our memories retain
Let us go back again.

II.

Mist goes up from the river to dim the stars,
The river is black and cold; so let us dance
To flare of horns, and clang of cymbal...

Beyond yon dim old mountain's shadowy height,
    The restless sun droops low his grand old face;
While downward sweeps the trembling veil of night,
    To hide the earth; the frost king's filmy lace
Rests on the mountain's hoary snow-crowned head,
    And adds to it a softened grace; the light
Which dies afar in faint and fading red
    In purple shadows circles near.

                    The flight
Of birds across the vast and silent plains
    Awakes the echoes of the sleeping earth;
Of all the summer beauty naught remains,
    There come no tidings of the spring's glad birth.

Beyond the valley and far-off height
    The birds in wandering do take their way;
Ah, whither is their strange and trackless flight
    Amid the dying embers of the day;

Per mezzo i boschi inospiti e selvaggi.

EVER THINKING ON HER, HE PASSES FEARLESS AND SAFE THROUGH THE FOREST OF ARDENNES.


    Through woods inhospitable, wild, I rove,
Where armèd travellers bend their fearful way;
Nor danger dread, save from that sun of love,
Bright sun! which darts a soul-enflaming ray.
Of her I sing, all-thoughtless as I stray,
Whose sweet idea strong as heaven's shall prove:
And oft methinks these pines, these beeches, move
Like nymphs; 'mid which fond fancy sees her play
I seem to hear her, when the whispering gale
Steals through some thick-wove branch, when sings a bird,
When purls the stream along yon verdant vale.
How grateful might this darksome wood appear,
Where horror reigns, where scarce a sound is heard;
But, ...

This is the image of my last content:
My soul shall be a little lonely lake,
So hidden that no shadow of man may break
The folding of its mountain battlement;
Only the beautiful and innocent
Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake
Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake
Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent.
For there shall be no terror in the night
When stars that I have loved are born in me,
And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair;
But this shall be the end of my delight:
That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see
Your image in the mirrored beauty there.

Misfortune hath constrained me
To leave the lute and poetry,
Nor can I from their easing borrow
        Sleep for my sorrow.

Do I see true, or hath a dream
Flown forth from ivory gates to gleam
In phantom gold, before forsaking
        Its poor cheat, waking?

Oh, mad, mistaken humankind,
'Tis easy triumph for the mind
While yet no ill adventure strikes us
        And naught mislikes us.

In plenty we praise poverty,
'Mid pleasures we hold grief to be
(And even death, ere it shall stifle
        Our breath) a trifle.

But when the grudging spinner scants
Her thread and fate no surcease grants
From grief most deep and need most wearing,
        Less calm our bearing.

Ah, Tully, thou didst flee from Rome
With w...

    When I lie musing on my bed alone,
    And listen to the wintry waterfall;[1]
    And many moments that are past and gone,
    Moments of sunshine and of joy, recall;

    Though the long night is dark and damp around,
    And no still star hangs out its friendly flame;
    And the winds sweep the sash with sullen sound,
    And freezing palsy creeps o'er all my frame;

    I catch consoling phantasies that spring
    From the thick gloom, and as the night airs beat,
    They touch my heart, like wind-swift wires[2] that ring
    In mournful modulations, strange and sweet.

    Was it the voice of thee, my buried friend?
    Was it the whispered vow of faithful love?
    Do I in Knoyle's green shades thy steps attend,
    An...

An hour before the dawn,
My friend,
You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,
Your breakfast-fire anon,
And outing into the dark and damp
You saddled, and set on.

Thuswise, before the day,
My friend,
You sought her on her surfy shore,
To fetch her thence away
Unto your own new-builded door
For a staunch lifelong stay.

You said: "It seems to be,
My friend,
That I were bringing to my place
The pure brine breeze, the sea,
The mews all her old sky and space,
In bringing her with me!"

But time is prompt to expugn,
My friend,
Such magic-minted conjurings:
The brought breeze fainted soon,
And then the sense of seamews' wings,
And the shore's sibilant tune.

So, it had been more due,
My friend,
Perhaps,...

Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him
Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.
"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,
Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover,
Over and over and over and over,
Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven,
Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven:
How can we sleep?

`Peep!' you whistle, and `cheep! cheep! cheep!'
Oh, peep, if you will, and buy, if 'tis cheap,
And have done; for an owl must sleep.
Are ye singing for fame, and who shall be first?
Each day's the same, yet the last is worst,
And the summer is cursed with the silly outburst
Of idiot red-breasts peeping and cheeping
By day, when all honest birds ought to be sleeping.
Lord, what a din! ...

Softly the feathery Palm-trees fade in the violet Distance,
Faintly the lingering light touches the edge of the sea,
Sadly the Music of Waves, drifts, faint as an Anthem's insistence,
Heard in the aisles of a dream, over the sandhills, to me.

Now that the Lights are reversed, and the Singing changed into sighing,
Now that the wings of our fierce, fugitive passion are furled,
Take I unto myself, all alone in the light that is dying,
Much of the sorrow that lies hid at the Heart of the World.

Sad am I, sad for your loss: for failing the charm of your presence,
Even the sunshine has paled, leaving the Zenith less blue.
Even the ocean lessens the light of its green opalescence,
Since, to my sorrow I loved, loved and grew weary of, you.

Why was our passion so fleetin...

Call me not back, O cold and crafty world:
I scorn your thankless thanks and hollow praise.
Wiser than seer or scientist content
To tread no paths beyond these bleating hills,
Here let me lie beneath this dear old elm,
Among the blossoms of the clover-fields,
And listen to the humming of the bees.
Here in those far-off, happy, boyhood years,
When all my world was bounded by these hills,
I dreamed my first dreams underneath this elm.
Dreamed? Aye, and builded castles in the clouds;
Dreamed, and made glad a fond, proud mother's heart,
Now moldering into clay on yonder hill;
Dreamed till my day-dreams paved the world with gold;
Dreamed till my mad dreams made one desolate;
Dreamed O my soul, and was it all a dream?

As I lay dreaming under this old elm,

No bird-song floated down the hill,
The tangled bank below was still;

No rustle from the birchen stem,
No ripple from the water’s hem.

The dusk of twilight round us grew,
We felt the falling of the dew;

For, from us, ere the day was done,
The wooded hills shut out the sun.

But on the river’s farther side
We saw the hill-tops glorified,

A tender glow, exceeding fair,
A dream of day without its glare.

With us the damp, the chill, the gloom
With them the sunset’s rosy bloom;

While dark, through willowy vistas seen,
The river rolled in shade between.

From out the darkness where we trod,
We gazed upon those hills of God,

Whose light seemed not of moon or sun.
We spake not, but our thought was one....