Nature

I've watched too late; the morn is near;
One look at God's broad silent sky!
Oh, hopes and wishes vainly dear,
How in your very strength ye die!

Even while your glow is on the cheek,
And scarce the high pursuit begun,
The heart grows faint, the hand grows weak,
The task of life is left undone.

See where upon the horizon's brim,
Lies the still cloud in gloomy bars;
The waning moon, all pale and dim,
Goes up amid the eternal stars.

Late, in a flood of tender light,
She floated through the ethereal blue,
A softer sun, that shone all night
Upon the gathering beads of dew.

And still thou wanest, pallid moon!
The encroaching shadow grows apace;
Heaven's everlasting watchers soon
Shall see thee blotted from thy place.

Let us go far from here!
Here there is sadness in the early year:
Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:
The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate
Above the woodland and the meadowland;
And Spring hath taken fire in her hand
Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face,
Which was a flower of marvel once and grace,
And sweet serenity and stainless glow.
Delay not. Let us go.

Let us go far away
Into the sunrise of a fairer May:
Where all the nights resign them to the moon,
And drug their souls with odor and soft tune,
And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hours
Teach immortality with fadeless flowers;
And all the day the bee weights down the bloom,
And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume,
Like music, from the flower-bel...

In the rosy light of my day's fair morning,
    Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west,
Ere even a shadow of night gave warning
    When life seemed only a pleasure quest,
Why then all humour and comedy scorning -
    I liked high tragedy best.

I liked the challenge, the fierce fought duel,
    With a death or a parting in every act.
I liked the villain to be more cruel
    Than the basest villain could be in fact:
For it fed the fires of my mind with the fuel
    Of the things that my life lacked.

But as time passed on, and I met real sorrow,
    And she played at night on the stage -my heart,
I found I could not forget on the morrow
    The pain I had felt in her tragic part.
For alas! no longer I needed to borrow
    My grief from the act...

    A poem is perishable and,
    like it,
    so much of life is spent
    in intervals -
    the jarring second
    regaining consciousness,
    a post-mortem flick
    of the lank equestrian eyelid
    that signals morning's first crepuscular move.

    ... a little salad consciousness
    about the tumescent room
    with the sentient purr of a cat;
    her musky oils
    a green verdure
    lapping primordial scent
    to engross a little readiness
    as the day progresses
    to its Oedipal stage
    and arrested development.

Nowhere such a devious stream,
Save in fancy or in dream,
Winding slow through bush and brake
Links together lake and lake.

Walled with woods or sandy shelf,
Ever doubling on itself
Flows the stream, so still and slow
That it hardly seems to flow.

Never errant knight of old,
Lost in woodland or on wold,
Such a winding path pursued
Through the sylvan solitude.

Never school-boy in his quest
After hazel-nut or nest,
Through the forest in and out
Wandered loitering thus about.

In the mirror of its tide
Tangled thickets on each side
Hang inverted, and between
Floating cloud or sky serene.

Swift or swallow on the wing
Seems the only living thing,
Or the loon, that laughs and flies
Down to those reflect...

Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstacy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstacy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstacy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

When outside the icy rain
Comes leaping helter-skelter,
Shall I tie my restive brain
Snugly under shelter?

Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study,
When outside the winds blow strong
And the lanes are muddy?

With old wine and drowsy meats
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats?
Shall I drink with Shelley?

Tobacco's pleasant, firelight's good:
Poetry makes both better.
Clay is wet and so is mud,
Winter rains are wetter.

Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill,
For though the winds come frorely,
I'm away to the rain-blown hill
And the ghost of Sorley.

Under a daisied bank
There stands a rich red ruminating cow,
And hard against her flank
A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow.

The flowery river-ooze
Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail;
Few pilgrims but would choose
The peace of such a life in such a vale.

The maid breathes words - to vent,
It seems, her sense of Nature's scenery,
Of whose life, sentiment,
And essence, very part itself is she.

She bends a glance of pain,
And, at a moment, lets escape a tear;
Is it that passing train,
Whose alien whirr offends her country ear? -

Nay! Phyllis does not dwell
On visual and familiar things like these;
What moves her is the spell
Of inner themes and inner poetries:

Could but by Sunday morn
Her gay ...

In Scotland’s realms, where trees are few,
Nor even shrubs abound;
But where, however bleak the view,
Some better things are found;


For husband there and wife may boast
There union undefiled,
And false ones are as rare almost
As hedgerows in the wild—


In Scotland’s realm forlorn and bare
The history chanced of late—
The history of a wedded pair,
A chaffinch and his mate.


The spring drew near, each felt a breast
With genial instinct fill’d;
They pair’d, and would have built a nest,
But found not where to build.


The heaths uncover’d and the moors
Except with snow and sleet,
Sea-beaten rocks and naked shores
Could yield them no retreat.


Long time a breeding-place they sought,
Til...

No ripple stirs the water,
No song-bird wakes the grove,
Calm noon-tide sways his sceptre,
And hushes even love.

On earth the sun-god bending
Poureth his wondrous store;
The soft-tongued tide, advancing,
Laps the unconscious shore.

The long, low isle of marsh-land
Stretches in weary waste,
By sloping sand-banks guarded,
By winding weeds embraced.

Comes clearly from the open
The plash of distant oars, -
Over the rocky headland
The snow-white sea-gull soars.

I see as if through dream-clouds,
I hear from far away.
The scorched air breathes its opiate,
The drowsy fancies stay;

I have no hopes or longings,
I scarce can feel your kiss, -
For thought, and joy and worship,
Another hour than this!

Come [Harriet]! sweet is the hour,
Soft Zephyrs breathe gently around,
The anemone's night-boding flower,
Has sunk its pale head on the ground.

'Tis thus the world's keenness hath torn,
Some mild heart that expands to its blast,
'Tis thus that the wretched forlorn,
Sinks poor and neglected at last. -

The world with its keenness and woe,
Has no charms or attraction for me,
Its unkindness with grief has laid low,
The heart which is faithful to thee.
The high trees that wave past the moon,
As I walk in their umbrage with you,
All declare I must part with you soon,
All bid you a tender adieu! -

Then [Harriet]! dearest farewell,
You and I love, may ne'er meet again;
These woods and these meadows can tell
How soft and how sweet was t...

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being ...

Record we too, with just and faithful pen,
That many hooded Cenobites there are,
Who in their private cells have yet a care
Of public quiet; unambitious Men,
Counselors for the world, of piercing ken;
Whose fervent exhortations from afar
Move Princes to their duty, peace or war;
And oft-times in the most forbidding den
Of solitude, with love of science strong,
How patiently the yoke of thought they bear
How subtly glide its finest threads along!
Spirits that crowd the intellectual sphere
With mazy boundaries, as the astronomer
With orb and cycle girds the starry throng.

    The winds have talked with him confidingly;
        The trees have whispered to him; and the night
        Hath held him gently as a mother might,
    And taught him all sad tones of melody:
    The mountains have bowed to him; and the sea,
        In clamorous waves, and murmurs exquisite,
        Hath told him all her sorrow and delight -
    Her legends fair - her darkest mystery.
        His verse blooms like a flower, night and day;
    Bees cluster round his rhymes; and twitterings
        Of lark and swallow, in an endless May,
    Are mingling with the tender songs he sings. -
        Nor shall he cease to sing - in every lay
        Of Nature's voice he sings - and will alway.

Since early this morning the world has seemed surging
    With unworded rhythm, and rhyme without thought.
It may be the Muses take this way of urging
    The patience and pains by which poems are wrought.
It may be some singer who passed into glory,
    With songs all unfinished, is lingering near
And trying to tell me the rest of the story,
    Which I am too dull of perception to hear.

I hear not, I see not; but feel the sweet swinging
    And swaying of metre, in sunlight and shade,
The still arch of Space with such music is ringing
    As never an audible orchestra made.
The moments glide by me, and each one is dancing;
    Aquiver with life is each leaf on the tree,
And out on the ocean is movement entrancing,
    As billow with billow goes racing with ...

When Love was born of heavenly line,
What dire intrigues disturbed Cythera's joy!
Till Venus cried, "A mother's heart is mine;
None but myself shall nurse my boy,"

But, infant as he was, the child
In that divine embrace enchanted lay;
And, by the beauty of the vase beguiled,
Forgot the beverage--and pined away.

"And must my offspring languish in my sight?"
(Alive to all a mother's pain,
The Queen of Beauty thus her court addressed)
"No: Let the most discreet of all my train
Receive him to her breast:
Think all, he is the God of young delight."

Then TENDERNESS with CANDOUR joined,
And GAIETY the charming office sought;
Nor even DELICACY stayed behind:
But none of those fair Graces brought

Wherewith to nurse the child--and still...

It is the dawn! the rosy day awakes;
From her bright hair pale showers of dew she shakes,
And through the heavens her early pathway takes;
    Why art thou sleeping?

It is the noon! the sun looks laughing down
On hamlet still, on busy shore, and town,
On forest glade, and deep dark waters lone;
    Why art thou sleeping?

It is the sunset! daylight's crimson veil
Floats o'er the mountain tops, while twilight pale
Calls up her vaporous shrouds from every vale;
    Why art thou sleeping?

It is the night! o'er the moon's livid brow,
Like shadowy locks, the clouds their darkness throw,
All evil spirits wake to wander now;
    Why art thou sleeping?

I.

    I round the threshold wandering here,
    Vainly the tempest and the rain invoke,
    That they may keep my lady prisoner.

    And yet the wind was howling in the woods,
    The roving thunder bellowing in the clouds,
    Before the dawn had risen in the sky.

    O ye dear clouds! O heaven! O earth! O trees!
    My lady goes! Have mercy, if on earth
    Unhappy lovers ever mercy find!

    Awake, ye whirlwinds! storm-charged clouds, awake,
    O'erwhelm me with your floods, until the sun
    To other lands brings back the light of day!

    Heaven opens; the wind falls; the grass, the leaves
    Are motionless, around; the dazzling sun
    In my tear-laden eyes remorseless shines.


II.

    The light of d...