Nature

Buildings above the leafless trees
Loom high as castles in a dream,

While one by one the lamps come out
To thread the twilight with a gleam.

There is no sign of leaf or bud,
A hush is over everything.

Silent as women wait for love,
The world is waiting for the spring.

Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky
When storms prepare to part,
I ask not proud Philosophy
To teach me what thou art;

Still seem; as to my childhood's sight,
A midway station given
For happy spirits to alight
Betwixt the earth and heaven.

Can all that Optics teach unfold
Thy form to please me so,
As when I dreamt of gems and gold
Hid in thy radiant bow?

When Science from Creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws!

And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams,
But words of the Most High,
Have told why first thy robe of beams
Was woven in the sky.

When o'er the green, undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's gray fa...

Serene she looks, she wears an angel's form,
Her arching eyes are fix'd upon the sky,
Gloomy, yet glist'ning 'tween black curls wip'd by,
Like a bright rainbow painted on the storm:
Her blue-vein'd breasts religion's comforts warm,
The bible open'd on her lap doth lie.
What mixing beauties in her face appear!
Charms more than mortal lighten up her smiles;
Strong Faith and Hope unite her soul to cheer,
And Resignation makes her smiles more dear.
No earthly thoughts her purity defile;
As vap'ring clouds by summer's suns are driven,
Sin's temptings from the scriptures' charm recoil,
And all her soul transported seems in heaven.

Over the dripping roofs and sunk snow-barrows
The bells are ringing loud and strangely near,
The shout of children dins upon mine ear
Shrilly, and like a flight of silvery arrows
Showers the sweet gossip of the British sparrows,
Gathered in noisy knots of one or two,
To joke and chatter just as mortals do
Over the days long tale of joys and sorrows;

Talk before bed-time of bold deeds together
Of thefts and fights, of hard-times and the weather,
Till sleep disarm them, to each little brain
Bringing tucked wings and many a blissful dream,
Visions of wind and sun, of field and stream,
And busy barn-yards with their scattered grain.

Thro' changing Months a well-attemper'd Mind
    Welcomes their gentle or terrific pace. -
    When o'er retreating Autumn's golden grace
    Tempestuous Winter spreads in every wind
Naked asperity, our musings find
    Grandeur increasing, as the Glooms efface
    Variety and glow. - Each solemn trace
    Exalts the thoughts, from sensual joys refin'd.
Then blended in our rapt ideas rise
    The vanish'd charms, that summer-suns reveal,
    With all of desolation, that now lies
Dreary before us; - teach the Soul to feel
    Awe in the Present, pleasure in the Past,
    And to see vernal Morns in Hope's perspective cast.

October 27th, 1782.

God gave to mortals birth,

In his own image too;
Then came Himself to earth,

A mortal kind and true.

                    1821.*
-
Barbarians oft endeavour

Gods for themselves to make
But they're more hideous ever

Than dragon or than snake.

                    1821.*
-
What shall I teach thee, the very first thing?
Fain would I learn o'er my shadow to spring!

                    1827.*
-
"What is science, rightly known?
'Tis the strength of life alone.
Life canst thou engender never,
Life must be life's parent ever.

                    1827.*
-
It matters not, I ween,

Where worms our friends consume,
Beneath the turf so green,

Or 'neath a marble tomb.
R...

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thiun ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nore share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its fl...

Like as a dryad, from her native bole
Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge,
To a slow river at whose silent verge
Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll,
Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal
Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup,
Bend till thine image from the pool beam up
Arched with blue heaven like an aureole.
See how adorable in fancy then
Lives the fair face it mirrors even so,
O thou whose beauty moving among men
Is like the wind's way on the woods below,
Filling all nature where its pathway lies
With arms that supplicate and trembling sighs.

Whether it be that we in letters trace
The pure exactness of a wood bird's strain,
And name it song; or with the brush attain
The high perfection of a wildflower's face;
Or mold in difficult marble all the grace
We know as man; or from the wind and rain
Catch elemental rapture of refrain
And mark in music to due time and place:
The aim of Art is Nature; to unfold
Her truth and beauty to the souls of men
In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast
Nothing so new but 'tis long eons old;
Nothing so old but 'tis as young as when
The mind conceived it in the ages past.

Whether it be that we in letters trace
The pure exactness of a wood bird's strain,
And name it song; or with the brush attain
The high perfection of a wildflower's face;
Or mold in difficult marble all the grace
We know as man; or from the wind and rain
Catch elemental rapture of refrain
And mark in music to due time and place:
The aim of Art is Nature; to unfold
Her truth and beauty to the souls of men
In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast
Nothing so new but 'tis long eons old;
Nothing so old but 'tis as young as when
The mind conceived it in the ages past.

Toward even when the day leans down
    To kiss the upturned face of night,
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town
    I know a spot of calm delight.
Like crimson arrows from a quiver
    The red rays pierce the waters flowing
While we go dreaming, singing, rowing
    To Leudemann's-on-the-River.

The hills, like some glad mocking-bird,
    Send back our laughter and our singing,
While faint - and yet more faint is heard
    The steeple bells all sweetly ringing.
Some message did the winds deliver
    To each glad heart that August night,
All heard, but all heard not aright;
    By Leudemann's-on-the-River.

Night falls as in some foreign clime,
    Between the hills that slope and rise.
So dusk the shades at landing time,
    We could n...

Green in light are the hills, and a calm wind flowing
Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of Spring;
Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going,
Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.

Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying,
Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove
Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying,
Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.

Oh, now begone sullen care - this light is my seeing;
I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls;
Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being
Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls.

    Spring, among her sylvan shades,
    And the gladness of her glades,
        Once in dreamy hours was straying,
    Where sweet Music with her throngs
    Of glad melodies and songs
        In the happy vales was playing.

    Pan beheld the fairy maids
    As they gamboled in the shades,
        And he swore they should not sever.
    But that o'er the blooming land,
    Heart to heart and hand in hand,
        They should wander on forever.

    Thus when come the gentle days
    O'er the wildwood's tangled ways,
        There is found no gloomy weather;
    For among the leafy bowers
    And the valleys bright with flowers
        Spring and Music walk together!

I look down the lengthening distance
    Far back to youth's valley of hope.
How strange seemed the ways of existence,
    How infinite life and its scope!

What dreams, what ambitions came thronging
    To people a world of my own!
How the heart in my bosom was longing,
    For pleasures and places unknown.

But the hill-tops of pleasure and beauty
    Were covered with mist at the dawn;
And only the rugged road Duty
    Shone clear, as my feet wandered on.

I loved not the path and its leading,
    I hated the rocks and the dust;
But a Voice from the Silence was pleading,
    It spoke but one syllable - "Trust."

I saw, as the morning grew older,
    The fair flowered hills of delight;
And the feet of my comrades grew bolder,

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea,
Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!
On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks,
On the cliff-side the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.
In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lull'd by the rills,
Lie wrapped in their blankets
Asleep on the hills.
What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flower'd broom?
What sweet-breathing presence
Out-perfumes the thyme?
What v...

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caressed,
Have left her solitude!

I ween, that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Unchecked through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue,
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's so...

In this sombre garden close
What has come and passed, who knows?
What red passion, what white pain
Haunted this dim walk in vain?

Underneath the ivied wall,
Where the silent shadows fall,
Lies the pathway chill and damp
Where the world-quit dreamers tramp.

Just across, where sunlight burns,
Smiling at the mourning ferns,
Stand the roses, side by side,
Nodding in their useless pride.

Ferns and roses, who shall say
What you witness day by day?
Covert smile or dropping eye,
As the monks go pacing by.

Has the novice come to-day
Here beneath the wall to pray?
Has the young monk, lately chidden,
Sung his lyric, sweet, forbidden?

Tell me, roses, did you note
That pale father's throbbing throat?
Did you hear ...

(For Aline)



Now by what whim of wanton chance
    Do radiant eyes know sombre days?
And feet that shod in light should dance
    Walk weary and laborious ways?

But rays from Heaven, white and whole,
    May penetrate the gloom of earth;
And tears but nourish, in your soul,
    The glory of celestial mirth.

The darts of toil and sorrow, sent
    Against your peaceful beauty, are
As foolish and as impotent
    As winds that blow against a star.