Nature

I have seen things that charmed the heart to rest:
Faint moonlight on the towers of ancient towns,
Flattering the soul to dream of old renowns;
The first clear silver on the mountain crest
Where the lone eagle by his chilly nest
Called the lone soul to brood serenely free;
Still pools of sunlight shimmering in the sea,
Calm after storm, wherein the storm seemed blest.

But here a peace deeper than peace is furled,
Enshrined and chaliced from the changeful hour;
The snow is still, yet lives in its own light.
Here is the peace which brooded day and night,
Before the heart of man with its wild power
Had ever spurned or trampled the great world.

Brook, of the listening grass,
Brook of the sun-fleckt wings,
Brook of the same wild way and flickering spell!
Must you begone? Will you forever pass,
After so many years and dear to tell?--
Brook of all hoverings ...
Brook that I kneel above;
Brook of my love.

Ah, but I have a charm to trouble you;
A spell that shall subdue
Your all-escaping heart, unheedful one
And unremembering!
Now, when I make my prayer
To your wild brightness there
That will but run and run,
O mindless Water!--
Hark,--now will I bring
A grace as wild,--my little yearling daughter,
My Alison.

Heed well that threat;
And tremble for your hill-born liberty
So bright to see!--
Your shadow-dappled way, unthwarted yet,
And the high hills whence all...

Ye brown old oaks that spread the silent wood,
How soothing sweet your stillness used to be;
And still could bless, when wrapt in musing mood,
But now confusion suits the best to me.
"Is it for love," the breezes seem to say,
"That you forsake our woodland silence here?
Is it for love, you roam so far away
From these still shades you valu'd once so dear?"
"No, breezes, no!"--I answer with a sigh,
"Love never could so much my bosom grieve;
Turnhill, my friend!--alas! so soon to die--
That is the grief which presses me to leave:
Though noise can't heal, it may some balm bestow;
But silence rankles in the wounds of woe."

The sad nights are here and the sad mornings,
The air is filled with portents and with warnings,
Clouds that vastly loom and winds that cry,
A mournful prescience
Of bright things going hence;
Red leaves are blown about the widowed sky,
And late disconsolate blooms
Dankly bestrew
The garden walks, as in deserted rooms
The parted guest, in haste to bid adieu,
Trinklets and shreds forgotten left behind,
Torn letters and a ribbon once so brave -
Wreckage none cares to save,
And hearts grow sad to find;
And phantom echoes, as of old foot-falls,
Wander and weary out in the thin air,
And the last cricket calls -
A tiny sorrow, shrilling "Where? ah! where?"

Let me talk of years evanished, let me harp upon the time
When we trod these sands together, in our boyhood’s golden prime;
Let me lift again the curtain, while I gaze upon the past,
As the sailor glances homewards, watching from the topmost mast.
Here we rested on the grasses, in the glorious summer hours,
When the waters hurried seaward, fringed with ferns and forest flowers;
When our youthful eyes, rejoicing, saw the sunlight round the spray
In a rainbow-wreath of splendour, glittering underneath the day;
Sunlight flashing past the billows, falling cliffs and crags among,
Clothing hopeful friendship basking on the shores of Wollongong.

Echoes of departed voices, whispers from forgotten dreams,
Come across my spirit, like the murmurs of melodious streams.
Here we both hav...

I am a part of all you see
In Nature; part of all you feel:
I am the impact of the bee
Upon the blossom; in the tree
I am the sap, that shall reveal
The leaf, the bloom, that flows and flutes
Up from the darkness through its roots.

I am the vermeil of the rose,
The perfume breathing in its veins;
The gold within the mist that glows
Along the west and overflows
The heaven with light; the dew that rains
Its freshness down and strings with spheres
Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

I am the egg that folds the bird,
The song that beaks and breaks its shell;
The laughter and the wandering word
The water says; and, dimly heard,
The music of the blossom's bell
When soft winds swing it; and the sound
Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground....

I.

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy, will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

II.

"You cannot eat your cake and have it too."
- Proverb.


How fever'd is the man, who cannot look
Upon his mortal day...

It rained last night,
But fair weather has come back
This morning.

The green clusters of the palm-trees
Open and begin to throw shadows.

But sorrow drifts slowly down about me.

I come and go in my room,
Heart-heavy with memories.

The neighbour green casts shadows of green
On my blind;
The moss, soaked in dew,
Takes the least print
Like delicate velvet.

I see again a gauze tunic of oranged rose
With shadowy underclothes of grenade red.

How things still live again.

I go and sit by the day balustrade

And do nothing

Except count the plains
And the mountains
And the valleys
And the rivers
That separate from my Spring.

From the Chinese (early nineteenth century).

The light has left the hill-side. Yesterday
These skies shewed blue against the dusky trees,
The leaves' soft murmur in the evening breeze
Was music, and the waves danced in the bay.
Then was my heart, as ever, far away
With you, - and I could see you as one sees
A mirrored face, - and happiness and ease
And hope were mine, in spite of long delay.

After these months of waiting, this is all!
Hope, dead, lies coffined, shrouded in despair,
With all the blessings of the outer air
Forgot, 'neath the black covering of a pall.
Only the darkening of the woodland ways,
A heart's low moaning over wasted days.

On page of thine I cannot trace
The cold and heartless commonplace,
A statue's fixed and marble grace.

For ever as these lines I penned,
Still with the thought of thee will blend
That of some loved and common friend,

Who in life's desert track has made
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed
Beneath the same remembered shade.

And hence my pen unfettered moves
In freedom which the heart approves,
The negligence which friendship loves.

And wilt thou prize my poor gift less
For simple air and rustic dress,
And sign of haste and carelessness?

Oh, more than specious counterfeit
Of sentiment or studied wit,
A heart like thine should value it.

Yet half I fear my gift will be
Unto thy book, if not to thee,
Of more...

I


There came no change from week to week
On all the land, but all one way,
Like ghosts that cannot touch nor speak,
Day followed day.

Within the palace court the rounds
Of glare and shadow, day and night,
Went ever with the same dull sounds,
The same dull flight:

The motion of slow forms of state,
The far-off murmur of the street,
The din of couriers at the gate,
Half-mad with heat;

Sometimes a distant shout of boys
At play upon the terrace walk,
The shutting of great doors, and noise
Of muttered talk.

In one red corner of the wall,
That fronted with its granite stain
The town, the palms, and, beyond all,
The burning plain,

As listless as the hour, alone,
The poet by his broken lute
S...

[Showing curious reversal of epigram, 'La nature l'a fait sanglier; la civilisation l'a reduit a l'etat de cochon.']


But my good little man, you have made a mistake
    If you really are pleased to suppose
That the Thames is alight with the lyrics you make;
    We could all do the same if we chose.

From Solomon down, we may read, as we run,
    Of the ways of a man and a maid;
There is nothing that's new to us under the sun,
    And certainly not in the shade.

The erotic affairs that you fiddle aloud
    Are as vulgar as coin of the mint;
And you merely distinguish yourself from the crowd
    By the fact that you put 'em in print.

You're a 'prentice, my boy, in the primitive stage,
    And you itch, like a boy, to confess:
When you kno...

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

I.

Give me the patches on my pants, the freckles on my face--
The happy heart where cankering care had never found a place--
And let my bare feet walk again that dirt road down the hill
That led me to the river's brink, beyond the old Mock Mill!


II.

Give me the youthful friends I knew, now scattered far and wide--
The loved ones who have passed beyond the bounds of time and tide--
And let me see the rose's hue that mantled every cheek
When we were run-aways from school, a-fishing in the creek.


III.

Give me the stone-bruise on my heel, the hat without a crown--
The unkempt suit of yellow hair the sun had burnt to brown--
And let me go and soak myself, just where we used to walk,
In that old swimmin' pool we had, up on the Hanging...

Word of a little one born in the West,--
How like a sea-bird it comes from the sea,
Out of the league-weary waters' unrest
Blown with white wings, for a token, to me!

Blown with a skriel and a flurry of plumes
(Sea-spray and flight-rapture whirled in a gleam!)
Here for a sign of the comrade that looms
Large in the mist of my love as I dream.

He with the heart of an old violin,
Vibrant at every least stir in the place,
Lyric of woods where the thrushes begin,
Wave-questing wanderer, still for a space,--

What will the child of his be (so I muse),
Wood-flower, sea-flower, star-flower rare?
Worlds here to choose from, and which will she choose,
She whose first world is an armsweep of air?

Baby Karlene, you are wondering now
Why you can...

One who was suffering tumult in his soul,
Yet failed to seek the sure relief of prayer,
Went forth, his course surrendering to the care
Of the fierce wind, while mid-day lightnings prowl
Insidiously, untimely thunders growl;
While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers, tear
The lingering remnant of their yellow hair,
And shivering wolves, surprised with darkness, howl
As if the sun were not. He raised his eye
Soul-smitten; for, that instant, did appear
Large space ('mid dreadful clouds) of purest sky,
An azure disc, shield of Tranquillity;
Invisible, unlooked-for, minister
Of providential goodness ever nigh!

He whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius,
Feels no dread within his heart
At the tempest or the rain.
He whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius,
Will to the rain-clouds,
Will to the hailstorm,
Sing in reply
As the lark sings,
Oh thou on high!

Him whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius,
Thou wilt raise above the mud-track
With thy fiery pinions.
He will wander,
As, with flowery feet,
Over Deucalion's dark flood,
Python-slaying, light, glorious,
Pythius Apollo.

Him whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius,
Thou wilt place upon thy fleecy pinion
When he sleepeth on the rock,
Thou wilt shelter with thy guardian wing
In the forest's midnight hour.

Him whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius,
Thou wilt wrap up warmly
In the snow-drift;
Tow'...

My back is turned on Spring and all her flowers,
The birds no longer charm from tree to tree;
The cuckoo had his home in this green world
Ten days before his voice was heard by me.

Had I an answer from a dear one's lips,
My love of life would soon regain its power;
And suckle my sweet dreams, that tug my heart,
And whimper to be nourished every hour.

Give me that answer now, and then my Muse,
That for my sweet life's sake must never die,
Will rise like that great wave that leaps and hangs
The sea-weed on a vessel's mast-top high.