Love

I've left my own old home of homes,
Green fields and every pleasant place;
The summer like a stranger comes,
I pause and hardly know her face.
I miss the hazel's happy green,
The blue bell's quiet hanging blooms,
Where envy's sneer was never seen,
Where staring malice never comes.

I miss the heath, its yellow furze,
Molehills and rabbit tracks that lead
Through beesom, ling, and teazel burrs
That spread a wilderness indeed;
The woodland oaks and all below
That their white powdered branches shield,
The mossy paths: the very crow
Croaks music in my native field.

I sit me in my corner chair
That seems to feel itself from home,
And hear bird music here and there
From hawthorn hedge and orchard come;
I hear, but all is strange and ne...

You'll love me yet! and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry
From seeds of April's sowing.

I plant a heartful now: some seed
At least is sure to strike,
And yield, what you'll not pluck indeed,
Not love, but, may be, like!

You'll look at least on love's remains,
A grave's one violet:
Your look? that pays a thousand pains.
What's death? You'll love me yet!

(For Aline)



Because the road was steep and long
    And through a dark and lonely land,
God set upon my lips a song
    And put a lantern in my hand.

Through miles on weary miles of night
    That stretch relentless in my way
My lantern burns serene and white,
    An unexhausted cup of day.

O golden lights and lights like wine,
    How dim your boasted splendors are.
Behold this little lamp of mine;
    It is more starlike than a star!

She is too kind, I think, for mortal things,
Too gentle for the gusty ways of earth;
God gave to her a shy and silver mirth,
And made her soul as clear
And softly singing as an orchard spring's
In sheltered hollows all the sunny year,
A spring that thru the leaning grass looks up
And holds all heaven in its clarid cup,
Mirror to holy meadows high and blue
With stars like drops of dew.

I love to think that never tears at night
Have made her eyes less bright;
That all her girlhood thru
Never a cry of love made over-tense
Her voice's innocence;
That in her hands have lain,
Flowers beaten by the rain,
And little birds before they learned to sing
Drowned in the sudden ecstasy of spring.

I love to think that with a wistful wonder
She ...

At last I put off love,
For twice ten years
The daysman of my thought,
And hope, and doing;
Being ashamed thereof,
And faint of fears
And desolations, wrought
In his pursuing,

Since first in youthtime those
Disquietings
That heart-enslavement brings
To hale and hoary,
Became my housefellows,
And, fool and blind,
I turned from kith and kind
To give him glory.

I was as children be
Who have no care;
I did not shrink or sigh,
I did not sicken;
But lo, Love beckoned me,
And I was bare,
And poor, and starved, and dry,
And fever-stricken.

Too many times ablaze
With fatuous fires,
Enkindled by his wiles
To new embraces,
Did I, by wilful ways
And baseless ires,
Return the anxious sm...

How sweet the music sounded
That summer long ago,
When you were by my side, love,
To list its gentle flow.

I saw your eyes a-shining,
I felt your rippling hair,
I kissed your pearly cheek, love,
And had no thought of care.

And gay or sad the music,
With subtle charm replete;
I found in after years, love
'Twas you that made it sweet.

For standing where we heard it,
I hear again the strain;
It wakes my heart, but thrills it
With sad, mysterious pain.

It pulses not so joyous
As when you stood with me,
And hand in hand we listened
To that low melody.

Oh, could the years turn back, love!
Oh, could events be changed
To what they were that time, love,
Before we were estranged;

Wert thou once ...

Nay, blame me not; I might have spared
Your patience many a trivial verse,
Yet these my earlier welcome shared,
So, let the better shield the worse.

And some might say, "Those ruder songs
Had freshness which the new have lost;
To spring the opening leaf belongs,
The chestnut-burs await the frost."

When those I wrote, my locks were brown,
When these I write - ah, well a-day!
The autumn thistle's silvery down
Is not the purple bloom of May.

Go, little book, whose pages hold
Those garnered years in loving trust;
How long before your blue and gold
Shall fade and whiten in the dust?

O sexton of the alcoved tomb,
Where souls in leathern cerements lie,
Tell me each living poet's doom!
How long before his book shall die?

Faint amorist, what, dost thou think
To taste Love's honey, and not drink
One dram of gall? or to devour
A world of sweet, and taste no sour?
Dost thou ever think to enter
Th' Elysian fields, that dar'st not venture
In Charon's barge? a lover's mind
Must use to sail with every wind.
He that loves and fears to try,
Learns his mistress to deny.
Doth she chide thee? 'tis to show it,
That thy coldness makes her do it:
Is she silent? is she mute?
Silence fully grants thy suit:
Doth she pout, and leave the room?
Then she goes to bid thee come:
Is she sick? why then be sure,
She invites thee to the cure:
Doth she cross thy suit with "No?"
Tush, she loves to hear thee woo:
Doth she call the faith of man
In question?    Nay, she loves thee than...

To this moment a rebel I throw down my arms,
Great Love, at first sight of Olinda's bright charms.
Make proud and secure by such forces as these,
You may now play the tyrant as soon as you please.

When Innocence, Beauty, and Wit do conspire
To betray, and engage, and inflame my Desire,
Why should I decline what I cannot avoid?
And let pleasing Hope by base Fear be destroyed?

Her innocence cannot contrive to undo me,
Her beauty's inclined, or why should it pursue me?
And Wit has to Pleasure been ever a friend,
Then what room for Despair, since Delight is Love's end?

There can be no danger in sweetness and youth,
Where Love is secured by good nature and truth;
On her beauty I'll gaze and of pleasure complain
While every kind look adds a link to my c...

How the sumac banners bent, dripping as if with blood,
What a mournful presence brooded upon the slumbrous air;
A mocking-bird screamed noisily in the depth of the silent wood,
And in my heart was crying the raven of despair,
Thrilling my being through with its bitter, bitter cry -
"It were better to die, it were better to die."

For she, my love, my fate, she sat by my side
On a fallen oak, her cheek all flushed with a bashful shame,
Telling me what her innocent heart had hid -
"For was not I her brother, her dear brother, all but in name."
I listened to her low words, but turned my face away -
Away from her eyes' soft light, and the mocking light of the day.

"He was noble and proud," she said, "and had chosen her from all
The haughty ladies, and great; she didn'...

    Though I see within thine eyes
    Sudden frown of cloudy skies,
    Yet I bid them "merry morn"
    For they tell me Love is born.
        So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
        For they tell me Love is born.

    Storms of mocking from thy lips
    Lash me still like airy whips;
    But to-day thy scorn I scorn
    For I know that Love is born.
        So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
        For I know that Love is born.

    O the hail that rattles fierce
    Through my hodden cloak to pierce!
    What care I if rags be torn?
    Love and I are beggars born!
        So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
        Love and I are beggars born.

Painted Upon a Porte Livre.


How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!

How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower-sown home,
The lights and shades, the purple stains,
And golden hues of bloom!

It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season’s frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.

Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy’s age renews its youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of, present truth.

A wizard of the Merrimac,
So old ancestral legends say,
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.

The d...

Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky)
The Moon re-entering her monthly round,
No faculty yet given me to espy
The dusky Shape within her arms imbound,
That thin memento of effulgence lost
Which some have named her Predecessor's ghost. .

Young, like the Crescent that above me shone,
Nought I perceived within it dull or dim;
All that appeared was suitable to One
Whose fancy had a thousand fields to skim;
To expectations spreading with wild growth,
And hope that kept with me her plighted troth.

I saw (ambition quickening at the view)
A silver boat launched on a boundless flood;
A pearly crest, like Dian's when it threw
Its brightest splendor round a leafy wood;
But not a hint from under-ground, no sign
Fit for the glimmering brow of Proserpi...

I met her, as we had privily planned,
Where passing feet beat busily:
She whispered: "Father is at hand!
He wished to walk with me."

His presence as he joined us there
Banished our words of warmth away;
We felt, with cloudings of despair,
What Love must lose that day.

Her crimson lips remained unkissed,
Our fingers kept no tender hold,
His lack of feeling made the tryst
Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.

A cynic ghost then rose and said,
"But is his love for her so small
That, nigh to yours, it may be read
As of no worth at all?

"You love her for her pink and white;
But what when their fresh splendours close?
His love will last her in despite
Of Time, and wrack, and foes."

WEYMOUTH.

Just as the dawn of Love was breaking
    Across the weary world of grey,
Just as my life once more was waking
    As roses waken late in May,
Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making,
    Stepped in and carried you away.

Memories have I none in keeping
    Of times I held you near my heart,
Of dreams when we were near to weeping
    That dawn should bid us rise and part;
Never, alas, I saw you sleeping
    With soft closed eyes and lips apart,

Breathing my name still through your dreaming. -
    Ah! had you stayed, such things had been!
But Fate, unheeding human scheming,
    Serenely reckless came between -
Fate with her cold eyes hard and gleaming
    Unseared by all the sorrow seen.

Ah! well-beloved, I never told you,
    I did...

Mary, I love to sing
About the flowers of Spring,
For they resemble thee.
In the earliest of the year
Thy beauties will appear,
And youthful modesty.

Here's the daisy's silver rim,
With gold eye never dim,
Spring's earliest flower so fair.
Here the pilewort's golden rays
Set the cow green in a blaze,
Like the sunshine in thy hair.

Here's forget-me-not so blue;
Is there any flower so true?
Can it speak my happy lot?
When we courted in disguise
This flower I used to prize,
For it said "Forget-me-not."

Speedwell! And when we meet
In the meadow paths so sweet,
Where the flowers I gave to thee
All grew beneath the sun,
May thy gentle heart be won,
And I be blest with thee.

As when the old moon lighted by the tender
    And radiant crescent of the new is seen,
And for a moment's space suggests the splendor
    Of what in its full prime it once has been,
So on my waning years you cast the glory
    Of youth and pleasure, for a little hour;
And life again seems like an unread story,
    And joy and hope both stir me with their power.

Can blooming June be fond of bleak December?
    I dare not wait to hear my heart reply.
I will forget the question -and remember
    Alone the priceless feast spread for mine eye,
That radiant hair that flows across the pillows,
    Like shimmering sunbeams over drifts of snow;
Those heaving breasts, like undulating billows,
    Whose dangers or delights but Love can know.

That crimson mou...

I know not, Time and Space so intervene,
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
Or, called at last, art now Heaven’s citizen;
But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,
Like an old friend, all day has been with me.
The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand
Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land
Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet
Keeps green the memory of his early debt.
To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words
Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,
Listening with quickened heart and ear intent
To each sharp clause of that stern argument,
I still can hear at times a softer note
Of the old pastoral music round me float,
While through the hot gleam of our civil strife