Loneliness

I stood upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch
Was glorious with the sun's returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me; - bathed in light
They gathered mid-way round the wooded height,
And, in their fading glory, shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown,
As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance,
Through the grey mist thrust up its shattered lance,
And rocking on the cliff was left
The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft,
The veil of cloud was lifted, and below
Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow
Was darkened by the forest's shade,
Or glistened in the white cascade;
Where upward, in the mellow blush of day,
The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.

I heard...

Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.


The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme--myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:
The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings--on the walk in the street, and the pas...

When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,
And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,
And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,
My perished people who housed them here come back to me.

They come and seat them around in their mouldy places,
Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness,
A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces,
And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness.

"Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here,
A pale late plant of your once strong stock?" I say to them;
"A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere,
And on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?"

" - O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus:
Take of Life what it grants, wi...

Poi che 'l cammin m' è chiuso di mercede.

THOUGH FAR FROM LAURA, SOLITARY AND UNHAPPY, ENVY STILL PURSUES HIM.


    Since mercy's door is closed, alas! to me,
And hopeless paths my poor life separate
From her in whom, I know not by what fate,
The guerdon lay of all my constancy,
My heart that lacks not other food, on sighs
I feed: to sorrow born, I live on tears:
Nor therefore mourn I: sweeter far appears
My present grief than others can surmise.
On thy dear portrait rests alone my view,
Which nor Praxiteles nor Xeuxis drew,
But a more bold and cunning pencil framed.
What shore can hide me, or what distance shield,
If by my cruel exile yet untamed
Insatiate Envy finds me here concealed?

MACGREGOR.

As wind-drowned scents that bring to other hills
Disquieting memories of silences,
Broad silences beyond the memory;
As feathered swaying seeds, as wings of birds
Dappling the sky with honey-coloured gold;
Faint murmurs, clear, keen-winged of swift ideas
Break my small silences;
And I must hunt and come to tire of hunting
Strange laughing thoughts that roister through my mind,
Hopelessly swift to flit; and so I hunt
And come to tire of hunting.

"Under the flag
Of each his faction, they to battle bring
Their embryo atoms."
- Milton.


Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!
I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder;
Fair and foul I love together.
Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomine;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses ...

Sweet tiny flower of darkly hue,
Lone dweller in the pathless shade;
How much I love thy pensive blue
Of innocence so well display'd!

What time the watery skies are full
Of streaming dappled clouds so pale,
And sideling rocks, more white than wool,
Portending snowy sleet, or hail;

I 'gin to seek thy charming flower
Along each hedge-row's mossy seat,
Where, dithering many a cold bleak hour,
I've hugg'd myself in thy retreat.

What makes me cherish such fond taste,
What makes such raptures spring for thee,
Is, that thou lov'st the dreary waste
Which is so well belov'd by me.

For solitude should be my choice
Could I this labouring life resign,
To see the little birds rejoice,
And thy sweet flowers in clusters shine.

I spread a scanty board too late;
The old-time guests for whom I wait
Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
Ah! who could hear my messages
Across the dim unsounded seas
On which so many have sailed away!

Come, then, old friends, who linger yet,
And let us meet, as we have met,
Once more beneath this low sunshine;
And grateful for the good we’ve known,
The riddles solved, the ills outgrown,
Shake hands upon the border line.

The favor, asked too oft before,
From your indulgent ears, once more
I crave, and, if belated lays
To slower, feebler measures move,
The silent, sympathy of love
To me is dearer now than praise.

And ye, O younger friends, for whom
My hearth and heart keep open room,
Come smiling through the shadows long,<...

As Jane walked out below the hill,
She saw an old man standing still,
His eyes in tranced sorrow bound
On the broad stretch of barren ground.

His limbs were knarled like aged trees,
His thin beard wrapt about his knees,
His visage broad and parchment white,
Aglint with pale reflected light.

He seemed a creature fall'n afar
From some dim planet or faint star.
Jane scanned him very close, and soon
Cried, "'Tis the old man from the moon."

He raised his voice, a grating creak,
But only to himself would speak.
Groaning with tears in piteous pain,
"O! O! would I were home again."

Then Jane ran off, quick as she could,
To cheer his heart with drink and food.
But ah, too late came ale and bread,
She found the poor soul stretched ...

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

I.

Life and Thought have gone away
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide;
Careless tenants they!



II.

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.



III.

Close the door, the shutters close,
Or thro’ the windows we shall see
The nakedness and vacancy
Of the dark deserted house.



IV.

Come away; no more of mirth
Is here or merry-making sound.
The house was builded of the earth,
And shall fall again to ground.



V.

Come away; for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell,
But in a city glorious–
A great and distant city–have bought
A mansion incorruptib...

Sad as he sits on the white sea-stone
And the suave sea chuckles, and turns to the moon,
And the moon significant smiles at the cliffs and the boulders.
He sits like a shade by the flood alone
While I dance a tarantella on the rocks, and the croon
Of my mockery mocks at him over the waves' bright shoulders.

What can I do but dance alone,
Dance to the sliding sea and the moon,
For the moon on my breast and the air on my limbs and the foam on my feet?
For surely this earnest man has none
Of the night in his soul, and none of the tune
Of the waters within him; only the world's old wisdom to bleat.

I wish a wild sea-fellow would come down the glittering shingle,
A soulless neckar, with winking seas in his eyes
And falling waves in his arms, and the lost soul's k...

Looking for placer pangar,
    Loafing about in the hills,
Getting your grub with a rifle,
    Taking your drink from rills.
Getting your bed from the spruce tree,
    Taking your course by your dreams,
Just camping alone in the mountains,
    Siwashing along the streams.

Locating the hind sight on Nature,
    Traveling alone and far,
Thinking with no one to guide you,
    Digesting the things that are.
Back trailing the life that's past you,
    Peeping at what's in store,
Pondering over life's mistakes,
    Wondering, how many more.

Dreaming alone of childhood days,
    Regretting some things that are past,
Recalling lost opportunities,
    And chances too good to last.
Living your whole life over,
    Recalling the daily...

While gazing on the moon's light,
    A moment from her smile I turned,
To look at orbs, that, more bright,
    In lone and distant glory burned.
                But too far
                Each proud star,
    For me to feel its warming flame;
                Much more dear
                That mild sphere.
    Which near our planet smiling came;
Thus, Mary, be but thou my own;
    While brighter eyes unheeded play,
I'll love those moonlight looks alone,
    That bless my home and guide my way.

The day had sunk in dim showers,
    But midnight now, with lustre meet.
Illumined all the pale flowers,
    Like hope upon a mourner's cheek.
                I said (while
                The moon's smile
    Played o'er a stream, in d...

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: “The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

“Look where we will o’er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

“Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

“This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older.”

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

Lycidas

Thyrsis, the music of that murm'ring spring,
Is not so mournful as the strains you sing.
Nor rivers winding thro' the vales below,
So sweetly warble, or so smoothly flow.
Now sleeping flocks on their soft fleeces lie,
The moon, serene in glory, mounts the sky,
Wile silent birds forget their tuneful lays,
Oh sing of Daphne's fate, and Daphne's praise!

Thyrsis

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost,
Their beauty wither'd, and their verdure lost.
Here shall I try the sweet Alexis' strain,
That call'd the list'ning Dryads to the plain?
Thames heard the numbers as he flow'd along,
And bade his willows learn the moving song.

Lycidas

So may kind rains their vital moisture yield,
And swell the future harvest of t...

Great streets of silence led away
To neighborhoods of pause;
Here was no notice, no dissent,
No universe, no laws.

By clocks 't was morning, and for night
The bells at distance called;
But epoch had no basis here,
For period exhaled.

The song that once I dreamed about,
The tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without
The love of wind and wing
The perfect verses, to the tune
Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
Remain unwritten yet.

It is too late to write them now
The ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow,
As in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again;
But when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
I think I hear its words.

I think I hear the echo still
Of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill
And sunset fires the cones;
But only in the hours supreme,
With songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream,
This echo comes to me.

No longer doth the ear...