Loneliness

High up in the sky there, now, you know,
In this May twilight, our cottage is asleep,
Tenantless, and no creature there to go
Near it but Mrs. Fry's fat cows, and sheep
Dove-coloured, as is Cotswold. No one hears
Under that cherry-tree the night-jars yet,
The windows are uncurtained; on the stairs
Silence is but by tip-toe silence met.
All doors are fast there. It is a dwelling put by
From use for a little, or long, up there in the sky.

Empty; a walled-in silence, in this twilight of May -
Home for lovers, and friendly withdrawing, and sleep,
With none to love there, nor laugh, nor climb from the day
To the candles and linen ... Yet in the silence creep,
This minute, I know, little ghosts, little virtuous lives,
Breathing upon that still, insensible place,

I know not why my soul is rack'd
Why I ne'er smile as was my wont:
I only know that, as a fact,
I don't.
I used to roam o'er glen and glade
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
And not unfrequently I made
A joke.

A minstrel's fire within me burn'd,
I'd sing, as one whose heart must break,
Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd
To shake.
All day I sang; of love, of fame,
Of fights our fathers fought of yore,
Until the thing almost became
A bore.

I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
'Tis that I can't remember how
They go.
I could not range the hills till high
Above me stood the summer moon:
And as to dancing, I could fly
As soon.

The sports, to which with boyish glee
I sprang erewhil...

Ask not the pallid stranger's woe,
With beating heart and throbbing breast,
Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow,
As though the body needed rest. -

Whose 'wildered eye no object meets,
Nor cares to ken a friendly glance,
With silent grief his bosom beats, -
Now fixed, as in a deathlike trance.

Who looks around with fearful eye,
And shuns all converse with man kind,
As though some one his griefs might spy,
And soothe them with a kindred mind.

A friend or foe to him the same,
He looks on each with equal eye;
The difference lies but in the name,
To none for comfort can he fly. -

'Twas deep despair, and sorrow's trace,
To him too keenly given,
Whose memory, time could not efface -
His peace was lodged in Heaven. -

    I.


As the blind Milton's memory of light,
The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone,
Wrought joys for them surpassing all things known
In our restricted sphere of sound and sight, -
So while the glaring streets of brick and stone
Vex with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night,
I will give rein to Fancy, taking flight
From dismal now and here, and dwell alone
With new-enfranchised senses.    All day long,
Think ye 't is I, who sit 'twixt darkened walls,
While ye chase beauty over land and sea?
Uplift on wings of some rare poet's song,
Where the wide billow laughs and leaps and falls,
I soar cloud-high, free as the the winds are free.



    II.


Who grasps the substance? who 'mid shadows strays?
He who within some...

As if a phantom caress'd me,
I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore;
But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore--the one I loved, that caress'd me,
As I lean and look through the glimmering light--that one has utterly disappear'd,
And those appear that are hateful to me, and mock me.

I Had this thought awhile ago,
‘My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.’

And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;

That every year I have cried, ‘At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call.’

That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

I

Il pleut doucement sur la ville.--RIMBAUD

Tears fall within mine heart,
As rain upon the town:
Whence does this languor start,
Possessing all mine heart?

O sweet fall of the rain
Upon the earth and roofs!
Unto an heart in pain,
O music of the rain!

Tears that have no reason
Fall in my sorry heart:
What! there was no treason?
This grief hath no reason.

Nay! the more desolate,
Because, I know not why,
(Neither for love nor hate)
Mine heart is desolate.


II

COLLOQUE SENTIMENTAL

Into the lonely park all frozen fast,
Awhile ago there were two forms who passed.

Lo, are their lips fallen and their eyes dead,
Hardly shall a man hear the words they said.

In...

Of all the blessings which my life has known,
I value most, and most praise God for three:
Want, Loneliness, and Pain, those comrades true,

Who masqueraded in the garb of foes
For many a year, and filled my heart with dread.
Yet fickle joys, like false, pretentious friends,
Have proved less worthy than this trio.    First,

Want taught me labour, led me up the steep
And toilsome paths to hills of pure delight,
Trod only by the feet that know fatigue,
And yet press on until the heights appear.

Then loneliness and hunger of the heart
Sent me upreaching to the realms of space,
Till all the silences grew eloquent,
And all their loving forces hailed me friend.

Last, pain taught prayer! placed in my hand the staff
Of close communion with the o...

The need to love that all the stars obey
Entered my heart and banished all beside.
Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;
Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.

Before the beauty of the west on fire,
The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed,
Cloud-like arose the image of desire,
And cast out peace and maddened solitude.

I sought the City and the hopes it held:
With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled,
As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled
Shut out the fair horizons of the world -

A truant from the fields and rustic joy,
In my changed thought that image even so
Shut out the gods I worshipped as a boy
And all the pure delights I used to know.

Often the veil has trembled at some tide
Of lovely reminiscence ...

    Kiss me and comfort my heart
    Maiden honest and fine.
    I am the pilgrim boy
    Lame, but hunting the shrine;

    Fleeing away from the sweets,
    Seeking the dust and rain,
    Sworn to the staff and road,
    Scorning pleasure and pain;

    Nevertheless my mouth
    Would rest like a bird an hour
    And find in your curls a nest
    And find in your breast a bower:

    Nevertheless my eyes
    Would lose themselves in your own,
    Rivers that seek the sea,
    Angels before the throne:

    Kiss me and comfort my heart,
    For love can never be mine:
    Passion, hunger and pain,
    These are the only wine

    Of the pilgrim bound to the road.
    He would rob no man of his own.
    Yo...

I.

As down life's morning stream we glide,
Full oft some Flower stoops o'er its side,
And beckons to the smiling shore,
Where roses strew the landscape o'er:
Yet as we reach that Flower to clasp,
It seems to mock the cheated grasp,
And whisper soft, with siren glee,
"My bloom is not oh not for thee!"


II.

Within Youth's flowery vale I tread,
By some entrancing shadow led
And Echo to my call replies
Yet, as she answers, lo, she flies!
And, as I seem to reach her cell
The grotto, where she weaves her spell
The Nymph's sweet voice afar I hear
So Love departs, as we draw near!


III.

Upon a mountain's dizzy height,
Ambition's temple gleams with light:
Proud forms are moving fair within,
And bid u...

When the lad for longing sighs,
Mute and dull of cheer and pale,
If at death's own door he lies,
Maiden, you can heal his ail.

Lovers' ills are all to buy:
The wan look, the hollow tone,
The hung head, the sunken eye,
You can have them for your own.

Buy them, buy them: eve and morn
Lovers' ills are all to sell.
Then you can lie down forlorn;
But the lover will be well.

I.

Thy dark eyes open’d not,
Nor first reveal’d themselves to English air,
For there is nothing here
Which, from the outward to the inward brought,
Moulded thy baby thought.
Far off from human neighborhood
Thou wert born, on a summer morn,
A mile beneath the cedar-wood.
Thy bounteous forehead was not fann’d
With breezes from our oaken glades,
But thou wert nursed in some delicious land
Of lavish lights, and floating shades;
And flattering thy childish thought
The oriental fairy brought,
At the moment of thy birth,
From old well-heads of haunted rills,
And the hearts of purple hills,
And shadow’d coves on a sunny shore,
The choicest wealth of all the earth,
Jewel or shell, or starry ore,
To deck thy cradle, Eleanore.

Come out and walk. The last few drops of light
Drain silently out of the cloudy blue;
The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,
The fields are wet with dew.

All's quiet in the wood but, far away,
Down the hillside and out across the plain,
Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,
The softly panting train.

Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see
The flowers, save dark or light against the grass,
Or glimmering silver on a scented tree
That trembles as we pass.

Hark now! So far, so far ... that distant song ...
Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.
The dusk is full of sounds, that all along
The muttering boughs repeat.

So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt.
Wind, or the blood that beats within our e...

The waterfall, deep in the wood,
Talked drowsily with solitude,
A soft, insistent sound of foam,
That filled with sleep the forest's dome,
Where, like some dream of dusk, she stood
Accentuating solitude.

The crickets' tinkling chips of sound
Strewed dim the twilight-twinkling ground;
A whippoorwill began to cry,
And glimmering through the sober sky
A bat went on its drunken round,
Its shadow following on the ground.

Then from a bush, an elder-copse,
That spiced the dark with musky tops,
What seemed, at first, a shadow came
And took her hand and spoke her name,
And kissed her where, in starry drops,
The dew orbed on the elder-tops.

The glaucous glow of fireflies
Flickered the dusk; and foxlike eyes
Peered from the shadows; ...

I broke the spell that held me long,
The dear, dear witchery of song.
I said, the poet's idle lore
Shall waste my prime of years no more,
For Poetry, though heavenly born,
Consorts with poverty and scorn.

I broke the spell, nor deemed its power
Could fetter me another hour.
Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget
Its causes were around me yet?
For wheresoe'er I looked, the while,
Was nature's everlasting smile.

Still came and lingered on my sight
Of flowers and streams the bloom and light,
And glory of the stars and sun;
And these and poetry are one.
They, ere the world had held me long,
Recalled me to the love of song.

Roving, roving, as it seems,
Una lights my clouded dreams;
Still for journeys she is dressed;
We wander far by east and west.

In the homestead, homely thought,
At my work I ramble not;

If from home chance draw me wide,
Half-seen Una sits beside.

In my house and garden-plot,
Though beloved, I miss her not;
But one I seek in foreign places,
One face explore in foreign faces.

At home a deeper thought may light
The inward sky with chrysolite,
And I greet from far the ray,
Aurora of a dearer day.

But if upon the seas I sail,
Or trundle on the glowing rail,
I am but a thought of hers,
Loveliest of travellers.

So the gentle poet's name
To foreign parts is blown by fame,
Seek him in his native town,

It is autumn; not without,
    But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
    It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
    Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
    Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
    Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves
    Comes no murmur from the mill.