Nature

April calling, April calling,
April calling me!
I hear the voice of April there
In each old apple tree:
Bee-boom and wild perfume,
And wood-brook melody,
O hark, my heart, and hear, my heart,
The April Ecstasy!

Hark to the hills, the oldtime hills,
That talk with sea and sky!
Or speak in murmurs with God's winds
Who on their bosoms lie:
Bird-call and waterfall
And white clouds blowing by,
O hark, my heart, O hear, my heart,
The April's cosmic cry!

There runs a whisper through the woods,
The word of bough to bough,
A sound of dead things donning green,
Of Beauty waking now:
Fern-bower and wilding flower,
Each like a prayer or vow,
O see, my heart, O look, my heart,
Where Earth crowns white her brow!

And ...

Once again my songs I sing thee,
    Now the spell is broken;
Brothers, yet again I bring thee
    Songs of love the token.
Of my joy and of my sorrow
    Gladly, sadly bringing;--
Summer not a song would borrow--
    Winter sets me singing.

O when life turns sad and lonely,
    When our joys are dead;
When are heard the ravens only
    In the trees o'erhead;
When the stormwind on the bowers
    Wreaks its wicked will,
When the frost paints lying flowers,
    How should I be still?

When the clouds are low descending,
    And the sun is drowned;
When the winter knows no ending,
    And the cold is crowned;
When with evil gloom oppressed
    Lie the ruins bare;
When a sigh escapes the breast,
    Takes us unaware;

Last eve the sun went down
Like a globe of glorious fire;
Into a sea of gold
I watched the orb expire.
It seemed the fitting end
For the brightness it had shed,
And the cloudlets he had kissed
Long lingered over head.

All vegetation drooped,
As if with pleasure faint:
The lily closed its cup
To guard 'gainst storm and taint.
The cool refreshing dew
Fell softly to the earth,
All lovely things to cheer,
And call more beauties forth.

And as I sat and thought
On Nature's wond'rous plan,
I felt with some regret,
How small a thing is man.
However bright he be,
His efforts are confined,
Yet maybe, if he will,
Leave some rich fruits behind.


The sun that kissed the flowers,
And made the earth look gay...

The day is done, and the darkness
    Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
    From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
    Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
    That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
    That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
    As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
    Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
    And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
    Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
    Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
    The...

Nought is but beauty weareth, near and far,
Under the pale, blue sky and lonely star.
This is that quick hour when the city turns
Her troubled harsh distortion and blind care
Into brief loveliness seen everywhere,
While in the fuming west the low sun smouldering burns.

Not brick nor marble the rich beauty owns,
Not this is held in starward-pointing stones.
Sun, wind and smoke the threefold magic stir,
Kissing each favourless poor ruin with kiss
Like that when lovers lovers lure to bliss,
And earth than towered heaven awhile is heavenlier.

Tall shafts that show the sky how far away!
The thousand-window'd house gilded with day
That fades to night; the arches low, the streamer
Everywhere of the ruddy'd smoke.... Is aught
Of loveliness so rich e'er sol...

Not any flower that blows
But shining watch doth keep;
Every swift changing chequered hour it knows
Now to break forth in beauty; now to sleep.

This for the roving bee
Keeps open house, and this
Stainless and clear is, that in darkness she
May lure the moth to where her nectar is.

Lovely beyond the rest
Are these of all delight: -
The tiny pimpernel that noon loves best,
The primrose palely burning through the night.

One 'neath day's burning sky
With ruby decks her place,
The other when Eve's chariot glideth by
Lifts her dim torch to light that dreaming face.

A necklace in the depth of blue
Of scintillating, silvery pearls,
Which peering eagerly we view
As gracefully it curves and whirls,
Safely and swiftly, far away
They seek the groves of date and lime;
Naught can arrest and naught dismay
From heights so lofty and sublime.

In dreams alone their wintry home
Can haunt them with its ice and snow;
Mingled with visions as they come
Of shimmering waves where lilies grow
And open lakes are fresh and clear,
Fit mirror for a plumaged breast,
Shaded by moss-grown trees. 'Tis here
They'll dip and dive in gleeful rest.

Vanished! and vainly do we try
To trace upon the distant air
That scroll which written on the sky
Told of the hand which led them there.
Could we upon our heavenward way
Fr...

Who beckons the green ivy up
Its solitary tower of stone?
What spirit lures the bindweed's cup
    Unfaltering on?
Calls even the starry lichen to climb
By agelong inches endless Time?

Who bids the hollyhock uplift
Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high;
Fling wide her petals - silent, swift,
    Lovely to the sky?
Since as she kindled, so she will fade,
Flower above flower in squalor laid.

Ever the heavy billow rears
All its sea-length in green, hushed wall;
But totters as the shore it nears,
    Foams to its fall;
Where was its mark? on what vain quest
Rose that great water from its rest?

So creeps ambition on; so climb
Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high,
Forgets his birth, small space, brief time,
    That he sh...

The sandy spits, the shore-lock’d lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;
The soft Mediterranean breaks
At my feet, free.

Dotting the fields of corn and vine
Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl’d olives stand;
Behind, that lovely mountain-line!
While by the strand

Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away
To where the lighthouse beacons bright
Far in the bay.

Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone,
So moonlit, saw me once of yore
Wander unquiet, and my own
Vext heart deplore!

But now that trouble is forgot;
Thy memory, thy pain, to-night,
My brother! and thine early lot,
Possess me quite.

The murmur of this Midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave
There where Gibraltar’s cann...

There's a rustle in the woodlands, and a sighing in the breeze,
For the Little Folk are busy in the bushes and the trees;
They are packing up their treasures, every one with nimble hand,
Ready for the coming journey back to sunny Fairyland.

They have gathered up the jewels from their beds of mossy green,
With all the dewy diamonds that summer morns have seen;
The silver from the lichen and the powdered gold dust, too,
Where the buttercups have flourished and the dandelions grew.

They packed away the birdies' songs, then, lest we should be sad,
They left the Robin's carol out, to make the winter glad;
They packed the fragrance of the flowers, then, lest we should forget,
Out of the pearly scented box they dropped a Violet.

Then o'er a leafy carpet, by the silent ...

'Mid the waving Woods of Wytham,
    Now so far, so far from me,
    Where the grand old beeches be,
And the deer-herds feeding by them:
'Mid the mossy Woods of Wytham,
    Oft I roam in memory;

Down the grand wide-arching alleys,
    Marged by plumy ferns and flowers,
    Whence all through the noontide hours
Many a fearless leveret sallies;
For amid those grassy alleys
    Never hound nor huntsman scours.

Still I see, through leafy casements,
    Wytham Hall so quaint and old,
    Remnant of the age of gold,
Gabled o'er from roof to basement
In most fanciful enlacement,
    Looking far o'er wood and wold;

With the mere outspread before it;
    Whitest swans upon its tide,
    That in mystic beauty glide;
And the wil...

A poet of one mood in all my lays,
    Ranging all life to sing one only love,
    Like a west wind across the world I move,
Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.

The countries change, but not the west-wind days
    Which are my songs.    My soft skies shine above,
    And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.

I make the whole world answer to my art
    And sweet monotonous meanings.    In your ears
I change not ever, bearing, for my part,
    One thought that is the treasure of my years,
A small cloud full of rain upon my heart
    And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears.

Female Beauty at Venice.--No longer what it was in the time of Titian.-- His mistress.--Various Forms in which he has painted her.--Venus.--Divine and profane Love.--La Fragilita d'Amore--Paul Veronese.--His Women.-- Marriage of Cana.--Character of Italian Beauty.--Raphael's Fornarina.-- Modesty.


Thy brave, thy learned have passed away:
Thy beautiful!--ah, where are they?
The forms, the faces that once shone,
    Models of grace, in Titian's eye,
Where are they now, while flowers live on
    In ruined places, why, oh! why
    Must Beauty thus with Glory die?
That maid whose lips would still have moved,
    Could art have breathed a spirit through them;
Whose varying charms her artist loved
    More fondly every time he drew them,
(So oft beneath his touch they ...

Burn, O evening hearth, and waken
    Pleasant visions, as of old!
Though the house by winds be shaken,
    Safe I keep this room of gold!

Ah, no longer wizard Fancy
    Builds her castles in the air,
Luring me by necromancy
    Up the never-ending stair!

But, instead, she builds me bridges
    Over many a dark ravine,
Where beneath the gusty ridges
    Cataracts dash and roar unseen.

And I cross them, little heeding
    Blast of wind or torrent's roar,
As I follow the receding
    Footsteps that have gone before.

Naught avails the imploring gesture,
    Naught avails the cry of pain!
When I touch the flying vesture,
    'T is the gray robe of the rain.

Baffled I return, and, leaning
    O'er the parapets ...

Oh, what is so pure as the glad summer rain,
That falls on the grass where the sunlight has lain?
And what is so fair as the flowers that lie
All bathed in the tears of the soft summer sky?

The blue of the heavens is dimmed by the rain
That wears away sorrow and washes out pain;
But we know that the flowers we cherish would die
Were it not for the tears of the cloud-laden sky.

The rose is the sweeter when kissed by the rain,
And hearts are the dearer where sorrow has lain;
The sky is the fairer that rain-clouds have swept,
And no eyes are so bright as the eyes that have wept.

Oh, they are so happy, these flowers that die,
They laugh in the sunshine, oh, why cannot I?
They droop in the shadow, they smile in the sun,
Yet they die in the winter when ...

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.


This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that lies between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery


Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.


Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway
The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest,
Out worn with changing moods, vain hopes' delay,


With conscious thought o'erburdened and oppressed.
The mystery and the shadow wax too deep;
She longs to merge both sense and thought in sleep.

Frequently the woods are pink,
Frequently are brown;
Frequently the hills undress
Behind my native town.

Oft a head is crested
I was wont to see,
And as oft a cranny
Where it used to be.

And the earth, they tell me,
On its axis turned, --
Wonderful rotation
By but twelve performed!

Take me away into a storm of snow
So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill,
But listen to the murmuring overflow
Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill!

Take me away into the sunset's glow,
That holds a summer in a glorious bloom;
Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow
On the sky's mountains, in the evening gloom!

Give me an entrance to the limpid lake
When moonbeams shine across its purity!
A life there is, within the life we take
So commonly, for which 't were well to die.