Loneliness

No, foolish youth, To virtuous fame
If now thy early hopes be vow'd,
If true ambition's nobler flame
Command thy footsteps from the croud,
Lean not to love's inchanting snare;
His songs, his words, his looks beware,
Nor join his votaries, the young and fair.
By thought, by dangers, and by toils,
The wreath of just renown is worn;
Nor will ambition's awful spoils
The flowery pomp of ease adorn:
But love unbends the force of thought;
By love unmanly fears are taught;
And love's reward with gaudy sloth is bought.

Yet thou hast read in tuneful lays,
And heard from many a zealous breast,
The pleasing tale of beauty's praise
In wisdom's lofty language dress'd;
Of beauty powerful to impart
Each finer sense, each comelier art,
And sooth and p...

Oh, the garden ways are lonely!
Winds that bluster, winds that shout,
Battle with the strong laburnum,
Toss the sad brown leaves about.
In the gay herbaceous border,
Now a scene of wild disorder,
The last dear hollyhock has flamed his
crimson glory out.

Yet, upon this night of longing,
Souls are all abroad, they say.
Will they come, the dazzling blossoms,
That were here but yesterday?
Will the ghosts of radiant roses
And my sheltered lily-closes
Hold once more their shattered fragrance
now November's on her way?

Wallflowers, surely you'll remember,
Pinks, recall it, will you not?
How I loved and watched and tended,
Made this ground a hallowed spot:
Pansies, with the soft meek faces,
Harebells, with a thousand graces:
D...

There was a time, when love's young flowers
With many a joy my bosom prest:
Sweet hours of bliss!--but short are hours,
Those hours are fled--and I'm distrest.
I would not wish, in reason's spite;
I would not wish new joy to gain;
I only wish for one delight,--
To see those hours of bliss again.

There was a day, when love was young,
And nought but bliss did there belong;
When blackbirds nestling o'er us sung,
Ah me! what sweetness wak'd his song.
I wish not springs for ever fled;
I wish not birds' forgotten strain;
I only wish for feelings dead
To warm, and wake, and feel again.

But ah! what once was joy is past:
The time's gone by; the day and hour
Are whirring fled on trouble's blast,
As winter nips the summer flower.
A shadow...

I

The hills are full of prophecies
And ancient voices of the dead;
Of hidden shapes that no man sees,
Pale, visionary presences,
That speak the things no tongue hath said,
No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.

The streams are full of oracles,
And momentary whisperings;
An immaterial beauty swells
Its breezy silver o'er the shells
With wordless speech that sings and sings
The message of diviner things.

No indeterminable thought is theirs,
The stars', the sunsets' and the flowers';
Whose inexpressible speech declares
Th' immortal Beautiful, who shares
This mortal riddle which is ours,
Beyond the forward-flying hours.

II

It holds and beckons in the streams;
It lures and touches us in all
The flowers of...

Roses are sweet to smell and see,
And lilies on the stem;
But rarer, stranger buds there be,
And she was like to them.

The little moon that April brings,
More lovely shade than light,
That, setting, silvers lonely hills
Upon the verge of night -

Close to the world of my poor heart
So stole she, still and clear;
Now that she's gone, O dark, and dark,
The solitude, the fear.

THE TWILIGHT HOUR.

Slowly I dawn on the sleepless eye,
Like a dreaming thought of eternity;
But darkness hangs on my misty vest,
Like the shade of care on the sleeper's breast;
A light that is felt--but dimly seen,
Like hope that hangs life and death between;
And the weary watcher will sighing say,
"Lord, I thank thee! 'twill soon be day;"
The lingering night of pain is past,
Morning breaks in the east at last.

    Mortal!--thou mayst see in me
A type of feeble infancy,--
A dim, uncertain, struggling ray,
The promise of a future day!


THE MORNING HOUR.

    Like a maid on her bridal morn I rise,
With the smile on her lip and the tear in her eyes;
Whilst the breeze my crimson banner unfurls,
I wreathe my locks with the...

Now the shiades o’ the elems da stratch muore an muore,
Vrom the low-zinkàn zun in the west o’ the sky;
An’ the mâidens da stan out in clusters avore
The doors, var to chatty an’ zee vo’ke goo by.

An’ ther cuombs be a-zet in ther bunches o’ hiair,
An’ ther curdles1 da hang roun’ ther necks lily-white,
An’ ther cheëaks tha be ruosy, ther shoulders be biare,
Ther looks tha be merry, ther lims tha be light.

An’ the times have a been but tha cëant be noo muore
When I, too, had my jây under evemen’s dim sky,
When my Fanny did stan’ out wi’ others avore
Her door, var to chatty an’ zee vo’ke goo by.

An’ up there, in the green, is her own honey-zuck,
That her brother trâin’d up roun’ her winder; an’ there
Is the ruose an’ the jessamy, where she did pluck
...

Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.

Midnight, and in the darkness not a sound,
So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;
Only the white immortal stars shall know,
Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,
How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp.
I think you are not wholly careless now,
Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour,
Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep,
Floors that have borne me when a gale of joy
Lifted my soul and made me half a god.
Farewell! Across the threshold many feet
Shall pass, but never Sappho's feet again.
Girls shall come in whom love has made aware
Of all their swaying beauty they shall sing,
But never Sappho's voice, like golden fire,
Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters.
There shall be swallows bringing back the spring
Over t...

        I.


The shadow of the houses leave behind,
In the cool boscage of the grove reclined,
The wine of friendship from love's goblet drink,
And entertain with cheerful speech the mind.


Drink, friend! behold, the dreary winter's gone,
The mantle of old age has time withdrawn.
The sunbeam glitters in the morning dew,
O'er hill and vale youth's bloom is surging on.


Cup-bearer! quench with snow the goblet's fire,
Even as the wise man cools and stills his ire.
Look, when the jar is drained, upon the brim
The light foam melteth with the heart's desire.


Cup-bearer! bring anear the silver bowl,
And with the glowing gold fulfil the whole,
Unto the weak new vigor it imparts,
And without lance subdues the hero's soul.

And you're the poet of this concern?
    I've seed your name in print
A dozen times, but I'll be dern
    I'd 'a' never 'a' took the hint
O' the size you are - fer I'd pictured you
    A kind of a tallish man -
Dark-complected and sallor too,
    And on the consumpted plan.

'Stid o' that you're little and small,
    With a milk-and-water face -
'Thout no snap in your eyes at all,
    Er nothin' to suit the case!
Kind o'look like a - I don't know -
    One o' these fair-ground chaps
That runs a thingamajig to blow,
    Er a candy-stand perhaps.

'Ll I've allus thought that poetry
    Was a sort of a - some disease -
Fer I knowed a poet once, and he
    Was techy and hard to please,
And moody-like, and kindo' sad
    And didn'...

The grey gulls drift across the bay
Softly and still as flakes of snow
Against the thinning fog. All day
I sat and watched them come and go;
And now at last the sun was set,
Filling the waves with colored fire
Till each seemed like a jewelled spire
Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon
From peak and cliff and minaret
The city's lights began to wink,
Each like a friendly word. The moon
Began to broaden out her shield,
Spurting with silver. Straight before
The brown hills lay like quiet beasts
Stretched out beside a well-loved door,
And filling earth and sky and field
With the calm heaving of their breasts.

Nothing was gone, nothing was changed,
The smallest wave was unestranged
By all the long ache of the years
Since last I saw them, ...

Brother of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
A burial verse for thee.

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire?
--The life thou lived'st we know not,
But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of brokers;
Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.

Yet lingering, yearning, joining soul with thine,
If not thy past we chant, we chant the future,
Select, adorn the future.


Lo, Soul, the graves of heroes!
The pride of lands--the gratitudes of men,
The statues of the manifold famous dead, Old World and New,
The kings, inventors, generals, poets, (stretch wide thy vision, Soul,)
The exce...

I come, ye little noisy Crew,
Not long your pastime to prevent;
I heard the blessing which to you
Our common Friend and Father sent.
I kissed his cheek before he died;
And when his breath was fled,
I raised, while kneeling by his side,
His hand:, it dropped like lead.
Your hands, dear Little-ones, do all
That can be done, will never fall
Like his till they are dead.
By night or day blow foul or fair,
Ne'er will the best of all your train
Play with the locks of his white hair,
Or stand between his knees again.
Here did he sit confined for hours;
But he could see the woods and plains,
Could hear the wind and mark the showers
Come streaming down the streaming panes.
Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound
He rests a prisoner of the ground....

ONCE through the forest

Alone I went;
To seek for nothing

My thoughts were bent.

I saw i' the shadow

A flower stand there
As stars it glisten'd,

As eyes 'twas fair.

I sought to pluck it,

It gently said:
"Shall I be gather'd

Only to fade?"

With all its roots

I dug it with care,
And took it home

To my garden fair.

In silent corner

Soon it was set;
There grows it ever,

There blooms it yet.

I passed through the gates of the city,
The streets were strange and still,
Through the doors of the open churches
The organs were moaning shrill.

Through the doors and the great high windows
I heard the murmur of prayer,
And the sound of their solemn singing
Streamed out on the sunlit air;

A sound of some great burden
That lay on the world's dark breast,
Of the old, and the sick, and the lonely,
And the weary that cried for rest.

I strayed through the midst of the city
Like one distracted or mad.
"Oh, Life! Oh, Life!" I kept saying,
And the very word seemed sad.

I passed through the gates of the city,
And I heard the small birds sing,
I laid me down in the meadows
Afar from the bell-ringing.

In the depth and t...

Methinks 'twere no unprecedented feat
Should some benignant Minister of air
Lift, and encircle with a cloudy chair,
The One for whom my heart shall ever beat
With tenderest love; or, if a safer seat
Atween his downy wings be furnished, there
Would lodge her, and the cherished burden bear
O'er hill and valley to this dim retreat!
Rough ways my steps have trod; too rough and long
For her companionship; here dwells soft ease:
With sweets that she partakes not some distaste
Mingles, and lurking consciousness of wrong;
Languish the flowers; the waters seem to waste
Their vocal charm; their sparklings cease to please.

I had no where to go,
    I had no money to spend:
"O come with me," the Beaver said,
    "I live at the world's end."

"Does the world ever end!"
    To the Beaver then said I:
"O yes! the green world ends," he said,
    "Up there in the blue sky."

I walked along with him to home,
    At the edge of a singing stream -
The little faces in the town
    Seemed made out of a dream.

I sat down in the little house,
    And ate with the kind things -
Then suddenly a bird comes out
    Of the bushes, and he sings:

"Have you no home? O take my nest,
    It almost is the sky;"
And then there came along the creek
    A purple dragon-fly.

"Have you no home?" he said;
    "O come along with me,
Get on my wings - t...