Nature

Into the darkness and the hush of night
    Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
    And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
    The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light,
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
    The unprofitable splendor and display,
    The agitations, and the cares that prey
    Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
    Molests us; all its records we erase
    From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
    With trivial incidents of time and place,
    And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

Down in the vale the lazy sheep
    Are roaming at their will,
But I would be away to weep
    Upon the windy hill,

For Summer's song is in my heart,
    Her kiss is on my brow,
As here I kneel alone, apart,
    To consecrate our vow.

Ah, doubly poor the gift shall be
    That links my soul with hers,
For she has given her all to me
    While I can give but tears!

We see the sky, - we love it day by day;
We feel the wind of Spring, from blossoms winging;
We meet with souls tender as tints in May:
For these large ecstasies what are we bringing?

There is no price, best friend, for greatest meed.
Laid on the altar of our true affection,
Wild flowers of love for me must intercede:
And lo! I win your unexcelled protection.

How sweet are Spring wild flowers! They grow past the counting.
How sweet are the wood-paths that thread through the grove!
But sweeter than all the wild flowers of the mountain
Is the beauty that walks here--the maiden I love.
Her black hair in tangles
The rose briar mangles;
Her lips and soft cheeks,
Where love ever speaks:
O there's nothing so sweet as the maiden I love.

It was down in the wild flowers, among brakes and brambles,
I met the sweet maiden so dear to my eye,
In one of my Sunday morn midsummer rambles,
Among the sweet wild blossoms blooming close by.
Her hair it was coal black,
Hung loose down her back;
In her hand she held posies
Of blooming primroses,
The maiden who passed on the morning of love.

Coal black was her silk h...

There was a little lawny islet
By anemone and violet,
Like mosaic, paven:
And its roof was flowers and leaves
Which the summer's breath enweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
Each a gem engraven; -
Girt by many an azure wave
With which the clouds and mountains pave
A lake's blue chasm.

The oleander on the wall
Grows crimson in the dawning light,
Though the grey shadows of the night
Lie yet on Florence like a pall.

The dew is bright upon the hill,
And bright the blossoms overhead,
But ah! the grasshoppers have fled,
The little Attic song is still.

Only the leaves are gently stirred
By the soft breathing of the gale,
And in the almond-scented vale
The lonely nightingale is heard.

The day will make thee silent soon,
O nightingale sing on for love!
While yet upon the shadowy grove
Splinter the arrows of the moon.

Before across the silent lawn
In sea-green vest the morning steals,
And to love's frightened eyes reveals
The long white fingers of the dawn

Fast climbing up the eastern sky
To gras...

Thus in altemate uproar and sad peace,
Amazed were those Titans utterly.
O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;
For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:
A solitary sorrow best befits
Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.
Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find
Many a fallen old Divinity
Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.
Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,
And not a wind of heaven but will breathe
In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute;
For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse.
Flush everything that hath a vermeil hue,
Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,
And let the clouds of even and of morn
Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills;
Let the red wine within the goblet boil,
Cold as a bubbling well; let fain...

I knew it the first of the summer,
    I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
    But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
    Couldn't we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
    To bind us, and nothing more?

There was not a word of folly
    Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
    Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects -
    The moon and the worlds above, -
And our talk was tinctured with science,
    And everything else, save love.

A wholly Platonic friendship
    You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
    The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
    Though both...

    When things are holding wonted pace
    In wonted paths, without a trace
    Or hint of neighbouring wonder,
    Sometimes, from other realms, a tone,
    A scent, a vision, swift, alone,
    Breaks common life asunder.

    Howe'er it comes, whate'er its door,
    It makes you ponder something more--
    Unseen with seen things linking:
    To neighbours met one festive night,
    Was given a quaint and lovely sight,
    That set some of them thinking.

    They stand, in music's fetters bound
    By a clear brook of warbled sound,
    A canzonet of Haydn,
    When the door slowly comes ajar--
    A little further--just as far
    As shows a tiny maiden.

    Softly she enters, her pink toes
    Daintily peeping, as she goes,...

When April weeps, she wakes the flowers
That slept the winter through.
Oh, did they dream those frosty hours
That she would be untrue
And not awaken them in time
To smile their smiles of love,
To hear the robin's merry chime,
And gentle cooing dove?

And when they feel their mother's tears
So gently o'er them weep,
Will they tell her of their simple fears
And visions while asleep?
And will they tell her that they dreamed,
Beneath their sheets of snow,
Such weary dreamings that it seemed
The winter ne'er would go?

They'll soon be wide-awake and up,
In dainty robes arrayed,
Blue violet, gold buttercup,
And quaker-lady staid.
Wild eglantine and clustering thorn
Will grace the byway lanes,
Whilst woodland flowers the dells ...

During a heavy storm it chanced
That from his room a cockney glanced
At the fierce tempest as it broke,
While to his neighbour thus he spoke:
"The thunder has our awe inspired,
Our barns by lightning have been fired,
Our sins to punish, I suppose;
But in return, to soothe our woes,
See how the rain in torrents fell,
Making the harvest promise well!
But is't a rainbow that I spy
Extending o'er the dark-grey sky?
With it I'm sure we may dispense,
The colour'd cheat! The vain pretence!"
Dame Iris straightway thus replied:
"Dost dare my beauty to deride?
In realms of space God station'd me
A type of better worlds to be
To eyes that from life's sorrows rove
In cheerful hope to Heav'n above,
And, through the mists that hover here
God and his...

The little cottage stood alone, the pride
Of solitude surrounded every side.
Bean fields in blossom almost reached the wall;
A garden with its hawthorn hedge was all
The space between.--Green light did pass
Through one small window, where a looking-glass
Placed in the parlour, richly there revealed
A spacious landscape and a blooming field.
The pasture cows that herded on the moor
Printed their footsteps to the very door,
Where little summer flowers with seasons blow
And scarcely gave the eldern leave to grow.
The cuckoo that one listens far away
Sung in the orchard trees for half the day;
And where the robin lives, the village guest,
In the old weedy hedge the leafy nest
Of the coy nightingale was yearly found,
Safe from all eyes as in the loneliest grou...

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath,
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks,
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

    I

    When the clouds hide the sun away
    The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
    And when the rain adown it streams
    'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.

    When the clouds vanish and the rain
    Stops, and the sun comes out again,
    It shimmers golden in the sun
    Almost too bright to look upon.

    But soon beneath the steady rays
    The roof is dried and reft of blaze,
    'Tis dusty yellow traversed through
    By long thin lines of deepest blue.

    Then at the last, as night draws near,
    The lines grow faint and disappear,
    The roof becomes a purple mist,
    A great square darkening amethyst

    Which sinks into the gathering shade
    Till separate form and colour fade,
    And ...

It is the sacred hour: above the far
Low emerald hills that northward fold,
Calmly, upon the blue the evening star
Floats, wreathed in dusky gold.
The winds have sung all day; but now they lie
Faint, sleeping; and the evening sounds awake.
The slow bell tolls across the water: I
Am haunted by the spirit of the lake.
It seems as though the sounding of the bell
Intoned the low song of the water-soul,
And at some moments I can hardly tell
The long-resounding echo from the toll.
O thou mysterious lake, thy spell
Holds all who round thy fruitful margin dwell.
Oft have I seen home-going peasants' eyes
Lit with the peace that emanates from thee.
Those who among thy waters plunge, arise
Filled with new wisdom and serenity.
Thy veins are in the mountains. I h...

Glory and loveliness have pass'd away;
For if we wander out in early morn,
No wreathed incense do we see upborne
Into the east, to meet the smiling day:
No crowd of nymphs soft voic'd and young, and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,
Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
But there are left delights as high as these,
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time, when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,
A leafy luxury, seeing I could please
With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

If, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
At first imagin’d lay
The sacred world; and by procession sure
From those still deeps, in form and colour drest,
Seasons alternating, and night and day,
The long-mus’d thought to north south east and west
Took then its all-seen way:

O waking on a world which thus-wise springs!
Whether it needs thee count
Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things
Ages or hours: O waking on Life’s stream!
By lonely pureness to the all-pure Fount
(Only by this thou canst) the colour’d dream
Of Life remount.

Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow;
And faint the city gleams;
Rare the lone pastoral huts: marvel not thou!
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams:
Alon...

Arranging long-locked drawers and shelves
Of cabinets, shut up for years,
What a strange task we've set ourselves!
How still the lonely room appears!
How strange this mass of ancient treasures,
Mementos of past pains and pleasures;
These volumes, clasped with costly stone,
With print all faded, gilding gone;

These fans of leaves from Indian trees,
These crimson shells, from Indian seas,
These tiny portraits, set in rings,
Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things;
Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith,
And worn till the receiver's death,
Now stored with cameos, china, shells,
In this old closet's dusty cells.

I scarcely think, for ten long years,
A hand has touched these relics old;
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears
The growth...