Nature

Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love - or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds - or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down - or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I ...

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie: dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm-clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within that world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,

"Why urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
"Give o'er the thankless task; forsake
The fools who know not ill from good:
Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take
Thine ease among the multitude.
"Live out thyself; with others share
Thy proper life no more; assume
The unconcern of sun and air,
For life or death, or blight or bloom.
"The mountain pine looks calmly on
The fires that scourge the plains below,
Nor heeds the eagle in the sun
The small birds piping in the snow!
"The world is God's, not thine; let Him
Work out a change, if change must be:
The hand that planted best can trim
And nurse the old unfruitful tree."
So spake the Tempter, when ...

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?


II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis' image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief


III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon t...

I cannot forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame.
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,
When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of ...

A vision beauteous as the morn,
    With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming,
Slow glided o'er a field late shorn
    Where walked a poet idly dreaming.
He saw her, and joy lit his face,
    "Oh, vanish not at human speaking,"
He cried, "thou form of magic grace,
    Thou art the poem I am seeking.

"I've sought thee long! I claim thee now -
    My thought embodied, living, real."
She shook the tresses from her brow.
    "Nay, nay!" she said, "I am ideal.
I am the phantom of desire -
    The spirit of all great endeavor,
I am the voice that says, 'Come higher,'
    That calls men up and up forever.

"'Tis not alone thy thought supreme
    That here upon thy path has risen;
I am the artist's highest dream,
    The ray of light he cannot...

    So lone I stood, the very trees seemed drawn
        In conference with themselves. - Intense - intense
    Seemed everything; - the summer splendor on
        The sight, - magnificence!

    A babe's life might not lighter fail and die
        Than failed the sunlight - Though the hour was noon,
    The palm of midnight might not lighter lie
        Upon the brow of June.

    With eyes upraised, I saw the underwings
        Of swallows - gone the instant afterward -
    While from the elms there came strange twitterings,
        Stilled scarce ere they were heard.

    The river seemed to shiver; and, far down
        Its darkened length, I saw the sycamores
    Lean inward closer, under the vast frown
        That weighed above the shores.

Grey winter hath gone, like a wearisome guest,
And, behold, for repayment,
September comes in with the wind of the West
And the Spring in her raiment!
The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers,
While the forest discovers
Wild wings, with the halo of hyaline hours,
And the music of lovers.

September, the maid with the swift, silver feet!
She glides, and she graces
The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat,
With her blossomy traces;
Sweet month, with a mouth that is made of a rose,
She lightens and lingers
In spots where the harp of the evening glows,
Attuned by her fingers.

The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips
In a darling old fashion;
And the day goeth down with a song on its lips,
Whose key-note is pas...

I caught but a glimpse of him. Summer was here.
And I strayed from the town and its dust and heat.
And walked in a wood, while the noon was near,
Where the shadows were cool, and the atmosphere
Was misty with fragrances stirred by my feet
From surges of blossoms that billowed sheer
Of the grasses, green and sweet.

And I peered through a vista of leaning tree,
Tressed with long tangles of vines that swept
To the face of a river, that answered these
With vines in the wave like the vines in the breeze,
Till the yearning lips of the ripples crept
And kissed them, with quavering ecstasies,
And wistfully laughed and wept

And there, like a dream in swoon, I swear
I saw Pan lying, his limbs in the dew
And the shade, and his face in the dazzle and glare

An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

Coming down the mountain road
Light of heart and all alone,
I caught from every rill that flowed
A rapture of its own.

Heart and mind sang on together,
Rhymes began to meet and run
In the windy mountain weather
And the winter sun.

Clad in freshest light and sweet
Far and far the city lay
With her suburbs at her feet
Round the laughing bay.

Like an eagle lifted high
Half the radiant world I scanned,
Till the deep unclouded sky
Circled sea and land.

No more was thought a weary load,
Older comforts stirred within,
Coming down the mountain road
The earth and I were kin.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

The moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat North
Suddenly hid Love's moon away.
Believing every word I said,
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.
We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she'd not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that Love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
Although crowds g...

Yes, Nightingale, through all the summer-time
    We followed on, from moon to golden moon;
    From where Salerno day-dreams in the noon,
And the far rose of Pæstum once did climb.
    All the white way beside the girdling blue,
Through sun-shrill vines and campanile chime,
    We listened;--from the old year to the new.
        Brown bird, and where were you?

You, that Ravello lured not, throned on high
    And filled with singing out of sun-burned throats!
    Nor yet Minore of the flame-sailed boats;
Nor yet--of all bird-song should glorify--
    Assisi, Little Portion of the blest,
Assisi, in the bosom of the sky,
    Where God's own singer thatched his sunward nest;
        That little, heavenliest!

And north and north, to where the hedge-row...

Se 'l pensier che mi strugge.

HE SEEKS IN VAIN TO MITIGATE HIS WOE.


    Oh! that my cheeks were taught
By the fond, wasting thought
To wear such hues as could its influence speak;
Then the dear, scornful fair
Might all my ardour share;
And where Love slumbers now he might awake!
Less oft the hill and mead
My wearied feet should tread;
Less oft, perhaps, these eyes with tears should stream;
If she, who cold as snow,
With equal fire would glow--
She who dissolves me, and converts to flame.

Since Love exerts his sway,
And bears my sense away,
I chant uncouth and inharmonious songs:
Nor leaves, nor blossoms show,
Nor rind, upon the bough,
What is the nature that thereto belongs.
Love, and those beauteous eyes,

Dear Morris - here is your letter -
Can my answer reach you now?
Fate has left me your debtor,
You will remember how;
For I went away to Nantucket,
And you to the Isle of Orleans,
And when I was dawdling and dreaming
Over the ways and means
Of answering, the power was denied me,
Fate frowned and took her stand;
I have your unanswered letter
Here in my hand.
This - in your famous scribble,
It was ever a cryptic fist,
Cuneiform or Chaldaic
Meanings held in a mist.

Dear Morris, (now I'm inditing
And poring over your script)
I gather from the writing,
The coin that you had flipt,
Turned tails; and so you compel me
To meet you at Touchwood Hills:
Or, mayhap, you are trying to tell me
The sum of a painter's ills:
Is that...

My pansy pets are sleeping well
Beneath their quilt of snow;
How they can breathe I cannot tell,
Nor how their rootlets grow;
But soon the snow will melt away
And April showers descend;
Then shall appear in colors gay
Each little pansy friend.

Of pride it may not show a trace;
Of lowly mind, alway;
But will not blush to show its face
All through the lifelong day:
Its fragrance other flowers surpass,
In form more stately, too.
But when you see my pets in mass,
Thank God they ever grew.

For though the human face may frown,
Or show a heart of guile,
My pansy pets as you look down
Will look at you and smile;
Nor will they murmur if you should
Pluck off their brightest bloom;
Their mission is to do us good,
And smile a...

An Ant who in a brook would drink
Fell off the bank. He tried
To swim, and felt his courage sink -
This ocean seemed so wide.
But for a dove who flew above
He would have drowned and died.

The friendly Dove within her beak
A bridge of grass-stem bore:
On this the Ant, though worn and weak.
Contrived to reach the shore
Said he: "The tact of this kind act
I'll cherish evermore."

Behold! A barefoot wretch went by
With slingshot in his hand.
Said he: "You'll make a pigeon pie
That will be kind of grand."
He meant to murder the gentle bird -
Who did not understand.

The Ant then stung him on the heel
(So quick to see the sling).
He turned his head, and missed a meal:
The pigeon pie took wing.
And so the Dove lived on to...