Nature

My bark is out upon the sea--
            The moon's above;
Her light a presence seems to me
            Like woman's love.
My native land I've left behind--
            Afar I roam;
In other climes no hearts I'll find
            Like those at home.

Of all yon sisterhood of stars,
            But one is true:
She paves my path with silver bars,
            And beams like you,
Whose purity the waves recall
            In music's flow,
As round my bark they rise and fall
            In liquid snow.

The fresh'ning breeze now swells our sails!
            A storm is on!
The weary moon's dim lustre fails--
            The stars are gone!
Not so fades Love's eternal light
            When storm-clouds weep;
I know one heart...

The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,
And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;
Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,
And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.
Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes
Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries
Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs
With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.
And now a heron, now a kingfisher,
Flits in the willows where the riffle seems
At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,
Fluttering the silence with a little stir.
Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,
And the near world a figment of her dreams.

The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,
And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;
Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,
And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.
Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes
Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries
Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs
With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.
And now a heron, now a kingfisher,
Flits in the willows where the riffle seems
At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,
Fluttering the silence with a little stir.
Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,
And the near world a figment of her dreams.

White as white butterflies that each one dons
    Her face their wide white wings to shade withal,
Many moon-daisies throng the water-spring.
    While couched in rising barley titlarks call,
And bees alit upon their martagons
    Do hang a-murmuring, a-murmuring.

They chide, it may be, alien tribes that flew
    And rifled their best blossom, counted on
And dreamed on in the hive ere dangerous dew
    That clogs bee-wings had dried; but when outshone
Long shafts of gold (made all for them) of power
To charm it away, those thieves had sucked the flower.

Now must they go; a-murmuring they go,
    And little thrushes twitter in the nest;
The world is made for them, and even so
    The clouds are; they have seen no stars, the breast
Of their soft moth...

I push on through the shaggy wood,
I round the hill: 't is here it stood;
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,

Yet seems to make a passing stay,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead's door.

But dumbly sits the shattered house,
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.

On what was once a garden-ground
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture's pale.

Ah, strange and savage, where he shines,
The sun seems staring through those pines
That once the vanished home could bless
With intimate, sweet loneliness....

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
    Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
    And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.

It is not so.    That which we most desire,
    With understanding, we at last obtain,
    In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.

Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
    The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
    And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.

We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
    With products of the soul we load the hold;
    Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?

T...

Lichens of green and grey on every side;
And green and grey the rocks beneath our feet;
Above our heads the canvas stretching wide;
And over all, enchantment rare and sweet.

Fair Rosseau slumbers in an atmosphere
That kisses her to passionless soft dreams.
O! joy of living we have found thee here,
And life lacks nothing, so complete it seems.

The velvet air, stirred by some elfin wings,
Comes swinging up the waters and then stills
Its voice so low that floating by it sings
Like distant harps among the distant hills.

Across the lake the rugged islands lie,
Fir-crowned and grim; and further in the view
Some shadows seeming swung 'twixt cloud and sky,
Are countless shores, a symphony of blue.

Some northern sorceress, when day is done,

XXIII.


I love the lyric muse!
For when mankind ran wild in groves,
Came holy Orpheus with his songs
And turned men's hearts from bestial loves,
From brutal force and savage wrongs;
Came Amphion, too, and on his lyre
Made such sweet music all the day
That rocks, instinct with warm desire,
Pursued him in his glorious way.

I love the lyric muse!
Hers was the wisdom that of yore
Taught man the rights of fellow-man--
Taught him to worship God the more
And to revere love's holy ban;
Hers was the hand that jotted down
The laws correcting divers wrongs--
And so came honor and renown
To bards and to their noble songs.

I love the lyric muse!
Old Homer sung unto the lyre,
Tyrtaeus, too, in ancient days--
Still, warmed...

A Beautiful Little Girl.

Fair as some sea-child, in her coral bower,
    Decked with the rare, rich treasures of the deep;
Mild as the spirit of the dream whose power
    Bears back the infant's soul to heaven, in sleep
Brightens the hues of summer's first-born flower
    Pure as the tears repentant mourners weep
O'er deeds to which the siren, Sin, beguiled, -
Art thou, sweet, smiling, bright-eyed cherub child.

Thy presence is a spell of holiness,
    From which unhallowed thoughts shrink blushing back, -
Thy smile is a warm light that shines to bless,
    As beams the beacon o'er the wanderer's track, -
Thy voice is music, at whose sounds Distress
    Unbinds her writhing victim from the rack
Of misery, and charmed by what she hears,
Forgets her w...

Now first we stand and understand,
And sunder false from true,
And handle boldly with the hand,
And see and shape and do.

Dash back that ocean with a pier,
Strow yonder mountain flat,
A railway there, a tunnel here,
Mix me this Zone with that!

Bring me my horse—my horse? my wings
That I may soar the sky,
For Thought into the outward springs,
I find her with the eye.

O will she, moonlike, sway the main,
And bring or chase the storm,
Who was a shadow in the brain,
And is a living form?

Far as the Future vaults her skies,
From this my vantage ground
To those still-working energies
I spy nor term nor bound.

As we surpass our fathers’ skill,
Our sons will shame our own;
A thousand things are hidden still

A cottager leaned whispering by her hives,
    Telling the bees some news, as they lit down,
    And entered one by one their waxen town.
Larks passioning hung o'er their brooding wives,
And all the sunny hills where heather thrives
    Lay satisfied with peace. A stately crown
    Of trees enringed the upper headland brown,
And reedy pools, wherein the moor-hen dives,
Glittered and gleamed.
    A resting-place for light,
They that were bred here love it; but they say,
    "We shall not have it long; in three years' time
A hundred pits will cast out fires by night,
Down yon still glen their smoke shall trail its way,
And the white ash lie thick in lieu of rime."

            Aye, but she?
            Your other sister and my other soul
            Grave Silence, lovelier
            Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
            Clio, not you,
            Not you, Calliope,
            Nor all your wanton line,
            Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
            For Silence once departed,
            For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
            Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
        Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
        Thalia, not you,
        Not you, Melpomene,
        Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,
        I seek in this great hall,
        But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.
        I se...

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Where the pensive silence pleaches
Green a roof of cool perfume,
Have you felt an awe imperious
As when, in a church, mysterious
Windows paint with God the gloom?
In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
Where the sun's sloped splendor bleaches
Every wave to foaming snow,
Have you felt a music solemn
As when minster arch and column
Echo organ-worship low?

In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the light and shade are blent;
Where the forest-bird beseeches,
And the breeze is brimmed with scent,
Is it joy or melancholy
That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly,
To our spirit's betterment?
In the shadow of the beeches
Lay me where no eye perceives;<...

A saturated meadow,
Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
A circle scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall;
Where winds were quite excluded,
And the air was stifling sweet
With the breath of many flowers,
A temple of the hear.

There we bowed us in the burning,
As the sun's right worship is,
To pick where none could miss them
A thousand orchises;
For though the grass was scattered,
yet every second spear
Seemed tipped with wings of color,
That tinged the atmosphere.

We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the spot,
That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot;
Or if not all so favored,
Obtain such grace of hours,
that none should mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.

Yon vale among the mountains,
So sheltered from the sea,
That lake which lies so lonely,
Shall tell their tale to thee.

Here stood a stately convent
Where now the waters sleep,
Here floated sweeter music
Than comes from yonder deep.
Above the holy building
The summer cloud would rest,
And listen where to heaven
Rose hymns to God addressed;
For the hills took up the chanting,
And from their emerald wall
The sounds they loved, would, lingering,
In fainter accents fall.

Hard by, beside a streamlet
Fast flowing from a well,
A nun, in long past ages,
Had built her sainted cell:
To her in dreams 'twas given
As sacred task and charge,
To keep unchanged for ever
The bright Spring's mossy marge.
"Peace shall with joys...

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And f...

By the burnished laurel line
Glimmering flows the singing stream;
Oily eddies crease and shine
O'er white pebbles, white as cream.

Richest roses bud or die
All about the splendid park;
Fountains glass a wily eye
Where the fawns browse in the dark.

Amber-belted through the night
Floats the alabaster moon,
Stooping o'er th' acacia white
Where my mandolin I tune.

By the twinkling mere I sing
Where lake lilies stretch pale eyes,
And a bulbul there doth fling
Music at the moon who flies.

With a broken syrinx there,
From enameled beds of buds,
Rises Pan in hoof and hair -
Moonlight his dim sculpture floods.

The pale jessamines have felt
The large passion of her gaze;
See! they part - their glories melt

Pure fount, that, welling from this wooded hill,
Dost wander forth, as into life's wide vale,
Thou to the traveller dost tell no tale
Of other years; a lone, unnoticed rill,
In thy forsaken track, unheard of men,
Melting thy own sweet music through the glen.
Time was when other sounds and songs arose;
When o'er the pensive scene, at evening's close,
The distant bell was heard; or the full chant,
At morn, came sounding high and jubilant;
Or, stealing on the wildered pilgrim's way,
The moonlight "Miserere" died away,
Like all things earthly.
Stranger, mark the spot;
No echoes of the chiding world intrude.
The structure rose and vanished; solitude
Possessed the woods again; old Time forgot,
Passing to wider spoil, its place and name.
Since then, even as...