Loss

None ever knew I had wronged her,
That secret she kept to the end.
None knew that our ties had been stronger,
Than such as should bind friend to friend.
Her beauty and innocence gave her
Such charms as are lavished on few;
And vain was my earnest endeavour
To resist, - though I strove to be true.

She had given her heart to my keeping, -
'Twas a treasure more precious than gold;
And I guarded it, waking or sleeping,
Lest a strange breath should make it grow cold.
And I longed to be tender, yet honest, -
Alas! loved, - where to love was a sin, -
And passion was deaf to the warning,
Of a still small voice crying within.

I feasted my eyes on her beauty, -
I ravished my ears with her voice, -
And I felt as her bosom rose softly,
That my h...

I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where eer I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good bye.

I met her in the greenest dells
Where dewdrops pearl the wood blue bells
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town
Till een the breeze would knock me down,
The bees seemed singing ballads oer,
The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tong...

This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks before his death.


Among the thousands who with hail and cheer
Will welcome thy new year,
How few of all have passed, as thou and I,
So many milestones by!

We have grown old together; we have seen,
Our youth and age between,
Two generations leave us, and to-day
We with the third hold way,

Loving and loved. If thought must backward run
To those who, one by one,
In the great silence and the dark beyond
Vanished with farewells fond,

Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories still
Their vacant places fill,
And with the full-voiced greeting of new friends
A tenderer whisper blends.

Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood
Of mingled ill and good,

Alas! alas! this wasted Night
With all its Jasmin-scented air,
Its thousand stars, serenely bright!
I lie alone, and long for you,
Long for your Champa-scented hair,
Your tranquil eyes of twilight hue;

Long for the close-curved, delicate lips
- Their sinuous sweetness laid on mine -
Here, where the slender fountain drips,
Here, where the yellow roses glow,
Pale in the tender silver shine
The stars across the garden throw.

Alas! alas! poor passionate Youth!
Why must we spend these lonely nights?
The poets hardly speak the truth, -
Despite their praiseful litany,
His season is not all delights
Nor every night an ecstasy!

The very power and passion that make -
Might make - his days one golden dream,
How he must suffer ...

If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
    But who can answer, or who can trust,
    No dreams would harry the windblown dust?

Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
    Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
    Had I done aught better or otherwise?

Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
    But time for silence and song is done,
    You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!

W...

Alien blossoms! tell me why
    Seek ye such a lonely place,
Thus to bloom, and droop, and die
    Far away from all your race?

Wherefore, from the sunny bowers
    Where your beauteous kindred bloom,
Have ye come, O banished flowers!
    Thus to decorate a tomb?

"Mortal, dost thou question why
    Thus beside the grave we bloom?
Why we hither come to die,
    Aliens from our garden-home?

"'Twas Affection's gentle hand
    Placed us thus her dead so near; -
Tis at weeping Love's command
    That we breathe our fragrance here.

"Ask not why we wither here,
    Thou who ne'er hast tasted woe,
Who hast never felt the tear
    Of bereaved affection flow, -

"Ask not, till thy household band
    By death's cruel ...

The gulf of seven and fifty years
We stretch our welcoming hands across;
The distance but a pebble's toss
Between us and our youth appears.

For in life's school we linger on
The remnant of a once full list;
Conning our lessons, undismissed,
With faces to the setting sun.

And some have gone the unknown way,
And some await the call to rest;
Who knoweth whether it is best
For those who went or those who stay?

And yet despite of loss and ill,
If faith and love and hope remain,
Our length of days is not in vain,
And life is well worth living still.

Still to a gracious Providence
The thanks of grateful hearts are due,
For blessings when our lives were new,
For all the good vouchsafed us since.

The pain that spared us...

Say, Townshend, what can London boast
To pay thee for the pleasures lost,
The health to-day resign'd,
When spring from this her favorite seat
Bade winter hasten his retreat,
And met the western wind.

Oh knew'st thou how the balmy air,
The sun, the azure heavens prepare
To heal thy languid frame,
No more would noisy courts ingage;
In vain would lying faction's rage
Thy sacred leisure claim.
Oft I look'd forth, and oft admir'd;
Till with the studious volume tir'd
I sought the open day;
And, sure, I cry'd, the rural gods
Expect me in their green abodes,
And chide my tardy lay.
But ah in vain my restless feet
Trac'd every silent shady seat
Which knew their forms of old:
Nor Naiad by her fountain laid,
Nor Wood-nymph tripping thr...

1.
Orphan Hours, the Year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry Hours, smile instead,
For the Year is but asleep.
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.

2.
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the death-cold Year to-day;
Solemn Hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.

3.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the Year: - be calm and mild,
Trembling Hours, she will arise
With new love within her eyes.

4.
January gray is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weep...

Rain will fall on the fading flowers,
Winds will blow through the dripping tree,
When Fall leads in her tattered Hours
With Death to keep them company.
All night long in the weeping weather,
All night long in the garden grey,
A ghost and a dream will talk together
And sad are the things they will have to say:
Old sad things of the bough that's broken;
Heartbreak things of the leaf that's dead;
Old sad things no tongue hath spoken;
Sorrowful things no man hath said.

"Alive?" And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.

"She lives, in a plenteous well-being,
To-day as aforehand;
The dead bore the name though a rare one -
The name that bore she."

She lived . . . I, afar in the city
Of frenzy-led factions,
Had squandered green years and maturer
In bowing the knee

To Baals illusive and specious,
Till chance had there voiced me
That one I loved vainly in nonage
Had ceased her to be.

The passion the planets had scowled on,
And change had let dwindle,
Her death-rumour smartly relifted
To full apogee.

I mounted a steed in the dawning
With acheful remembrance,
And made for the ancient West Highway
To far E...

Our Poet, who has taught the Western breeze
To waft his songs before him o'er the seas,
Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach
Borne on the spreading tide of English speech
Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach.

Where shall the singing bird a stranger be
That finds a nest for him in every tree?
How shall he travel who can never go
Where his own voice the echoes do not know,
Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow?

Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign
Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine,
Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres,
That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers,
That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears!

Forgive the simple words that sound li...

The sloe was lost in flower,
The April elm was dim;
That was the lover’s hour,
The hour for lies and him.

If thorns are all the bower,
If north winds freeze the fir,
Why, ‘tis another’s hour,
The hour for truth and her.

(For Robert Cortez Holliday)



If I should live in a forest
    And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
    Would make a home for me.

I'd go where the old oaks gather,
    Serene and good and strong,
And they would not sigh and tremble
    And vex me with a song.

The pleasantest sort of poet
    Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an old white beard and wrinkles
    About his kind old eyes.

For these young flippertigibbets
    A-rhyming their hours away
They won't be still like honest men
    And listen to what you say.

The young poet screams forever
    About his sex and his soul;
But the old man listens, and smokes his pipe,
    And polishes its bowl.

There should be a...

Darkly falls the autumn twilight, rustles by the crisp leaf sere,
Sadly wail the lonely night-winds, sweeping sea-ward, chill and drear,
Sullen dash the restless waters 'gainst a bleak and rock-bound shore,
While the sea-birds' weird voices mingle with their surging roar.

Vainly seeks the eye a flow'ret 'mid the desolation drear,
Or a spray of pleasant verdure which the gloomy scene might cheer;
Nought but frowning crags and boulders, and long sea-weeds, ghastly, dank,
With the mosses and pale lichens, to the wet rocks clinging rank.

See, the fog clouds thickly rolling o'er the landscape far and wide,
Till the tall cliffs look like phantoms, seeking 'mid their shrouds to hide;
On they come, the misty masses of the wreathing vapour white,
Filling hill and mead and valley, b...

The blast skims
over the string
of takeoff lights
and
relinquishing
place and time
lofts to
separation:
the plume, rose
sliver, grows
across the
high-lit evening
sky: by this
Mays Landing creek
shot pinecones,
skinned huckleberry
bush, laurel
swaths define
an unbelievably
particular stop.

1.
So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,
And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;
Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become
A star among the stars of mortal night,
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite
With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.

2.
The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,
Is ended, - and the fruit is at thy feet!
No longer where the woods to frame a bower
With interlaced branches mix and meet,
Or where with sound like many voices sweet,
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green,
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;
Bu...

Fall fell:so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I

figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is

behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or

should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is

something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I