Nature

The day is dead; and in the west
The slender crescent of the moon--
Diana's crystal-kindled crest--
Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.
What is the murmur in the dell?
The stealthy whisper and the drip?--
A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?
Or Naiad o'er her fountain well?--
Who, with white fingers for her comb,
Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls
Showers slim minnows and pale pearls,
And hollow music of the foam.
What is it in the vistaed ways
That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?--
The naked limbs of one who flees?
An Oread who hesitates
Before the Satyr form that waits,
Crouching to leap, that there she sees?
Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilie...

I’ve sung of Honor’s golden hair
And Hero’s auburn tresses,
Of Bella’s back abundance, where
The sun throws his caresses;
I’ve sung of curl, and coil, and braid;
On meshes I’ve dilated,
Until at last I’m sore afraid
There’s nothing re the hair of maid
That I have left unstated.

‘Twill much relieve the constant strain
Of rhyming to extol her
When on the roof of Sophie’s brain
Appears a bright cupola.
The poet’s verse will freshly run,
Effects will come much faster,
If he may tell the darling one
Her skull is glowing like the sun
And smooth as alabaster.

New stimulus the singer nerves,
When beauty, scorning switches,
Adds to her many swelling curves
A baldness that bewitches.
We’ve sung too many wigs, I swear,
And n...

    O sacred souls that grandly sing
        The secret songs of human hearts,
        Where your wild music madly starts,
    The sorrows into raptures spring!
    Within the warbles of your chimes
        Man reads the longings of his days,
        And finds, amid your lofty lays,
    Glad music for his gloomy times.

    How sweet the mute, melodious cries
        Which only lives like yours may hear,
        Where pleasures thrill the singer's ear
    With laughing strains of lullabies!
    You know soft voices, rich with love,
        That mingle in the fields and woods,
        To bless the silent solitudes
    With carols coming from above.

    Your golden harps resound alway,
        Where valley bound with blossom lies,
        An...

O Lady, leave thy silken thread
And flowery tapestrie:
There's living roses on the bush,
And blossoms on the tree;
Stoop where thou wilt, thy careless hand
Some random bud will meet;
Thou canst not tread, but thou wilt find
The daisy at thy feet.

'Tis like the birthday of the world,
When earth was born in bloom;
The light is made of many dyes,
The air is all perfume;
There's crimson buds, and white and blue -
The very rainbow showers
Have turn'd to blossoms where they fell,
And sown the earth with flowers.

There's fairy tulips in the east,
The garden of the sun;
The very streams reflect the hues,
And blossom as they run:
While Morn opes like a crimson rose,
Still wet with pearly showers;
Then, lady, leave the silken th...

And I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
Beholding me with quick-averted glance
Pass on the other side! But still these hues
Remain unalter'd, and these features wear
The look of Infancy and Innocence.
I search myself in vain, and find no trace
Of what I was: those lightly-arching lines
Dark and o'erhanging now; and that mild face
Settled in these strong lineaments!--There were
Who form'd high hopes and flattering ones of thee
Young...

Ah, hapless JUNE! circles yon lunar Sphere
    Yet the dim Halo? whose cold powers ordain
    Long o'er these vales shou'd sweep, in misty train,
    The pale continuous showers, that sullying smear
Thy radiant lilies, towering on the plain;
    Bend low, with rivel'd leaves of canker'd stain,
    Thy drench'd and heavy rose. - Yet pledg'd and dear
    Fair Hope still holds the promise of the Year;
Suspends her anchor on the silver horn
    Of the next wexing Orb, tho', JUNE, thy Day,
    Robb'd of its golden eve, and rosy morn,
And gloomy as the Winter's rigid sway,
    Leads sunless, lingering, disappointing Hours
    Thro' the song-silent glades and dropping bowers.

        Little brook! Little brook!
        You have such a happy look -
Such a very merry manner, as you swerve and
        curve and crook -
    And your ripples, one and one,
    Reach each other's hands and run
        Like laughing little children in the sun!

    Little brook, sing to me:
    Sing about a bumblebee
That tumbled from a lily-bell and grumbled
            mumblingly,
    Because he wet the film
    Of his wings, and had to swim,
        While the water-bugs raced round and
            laughed at him!

    Little brook-sing a song
    Of a leaf that sailed along
Down the golden-braided centre of your current
        swift and strong,
    And a dragon-fly that lit
    On the tilting rim of it,
        And ro...

I

Serene and beautiful and very wise,
Most erudite in curious Grecian lore,
You lay and read your learned books, and bore
A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs.
The song within your heart could never rise
Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Nor could you look on Beauty's face before
A poet's burning mouth had touched your eyes.

Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
Love's voice is through your song; above and under
And in each note to echo and remain.


II

Because Mankind is glad and brave and young,
Full of gay flames that white and scarlet glow,
All joys and passions that Mankind may know<...

I have found out a gift for my fair;
I know where the fossils abound,
Where the footprints of Aves declare
The birds that once walked on the ground.
Oh, come, and in technical speech
We’ll walk this Devonian shore,
Or on some Silurian beach
We’ll wander, my love, evermore.

I will show thee the sinuous track
By the slow-moving Annelid made,
Or the Trilobite that, farther back,
In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid;
Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb,
The Plesiosaurus embalmed;
In his Oolitic prime and his bloom,
Iguanodon safe and unharmed.

You wished I remember it well,
And I loved you the more for that wish
For a perfect cystedian shell
And a whole holocephalic fish.
And oh, if Earth’s strata contains
In its lowest Silur...

Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
The rabbits and the pismires brood
On broken gold, and shards, and beads
Where Priam's ancient palace stood.

The floors of many a gallant house
Are matted with the roots of grass;
The glow-worm and the nimble mouse
Among her ruins flit and pass.

And there, in orts of blackened bone,
The widowed Trojan beauties lie,
And Simois babbles over stone
And waps and gurgles to the sky.

Once there were merry days in Troy,
Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,
The passing chariots did annoy
The sunning housewives at their wheels.

And many a lovely Trojan maid
Set Trojan lads to lovely things;
The game of life was nobly played,
They played the game like Queens and Kings.

So that, when ...

So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time un-proved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!

What! are we not glad-hearted?
Is there no deed to do?
Is not all fear departed
And Spring-tide blossomed new?

The sails swell out above us,
The sea-ridge lifts the keel;
For They have called who love us,
Who bear the gifts that heal:

A crown for him that winneth,
A bed for him that fails,
A glory that beginneth
In never-dying tales.

Yet now the pain is ended
And the glad hand grips the sword,
Look on thy life amended
And deal out due award.

Think of the thankless morning,
The gifts of noon unused;
Think of the eve of scorning,
The night of prayer refused.

And yet.    The life be...

I am not prone to moralize
In scientific doubt
On certain facts that Nature tries
To puzzle us about, -
For I am no philosopher
Of wise elucidation,
But speak of things as they occur,
From simple observation.

I notice little things - to wit: -
I never missed a train
Because I didn't run for it;
I never knew it rain
That my umbrella wasn't lent, -
Or, when in my possession,
The sun but wore, to all intent,
A jocular expression.


I never knew a creditor
To dun me for a debt
But I was "cramped" or "busted;" or
I never knew one yet,
When I had plenty in my purse,
To make the least invasion, -
As I, accordingly perverse,
Have courted no occasion.

Nor do I claim to comprehend
What Natu...

When the moon a golden-pale
Lustre on my casement flings,
An enchanted nightingale
In the haunted silence sings.

Strange the song, its wondrous words
Taken from the primal tongue,
Known to men, and beasts, and birds,
When the care-worn world was young

Listening low, I hear the stars
Through her strains move solemnly,
And on lonesome banks and bars
Hear the sobbing of the sea.

And my memory dimly gropes
Hints to gather from her song
Of forgotten fears and hopes,
Joys and griefs forgotten long.

And I feel once more the strife
Of a passion, fierce and grand,
That, in some long-vanished life,
Held my soul at its command.

Ah, my Love, in robes of white
Standing by a moonlit sea,
Like a lily of the night,

I passed a cottage 'twixt the town and wood,
And marked its garden, blossoming bright and bold,
And breathing many a scent. Awhile I stood
Near pink and marigold.

It seemed a place of prayer; of love and peace;
Where gray Content with children at his knees,
Like blessings manifold,
Rested among the trees.

An old man came into the garden-plot;
And 'mid the tansy and the scarlet sage
Found for himseft a dim and quiet spot
Wherein to turn a page:

For in his hand he bore a well-thumbed book,
Upon whose pages now and then he'd look;
And then, as if with age,
His hoary head he shook.

I said to him:"You have a lovely place.
How rich your garden blooms! How sweet its shade!
How good to sit here in the eve and face
Those hills of ...

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre,
'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dea...

Minnie and Winnie
Slept in a shell.
Sleep, little ladies!
And they slept well.

Pink was the shell within,
Silver without;
Sounds of the great sea
Wander'd about.

Sleep, little ladies!
Wake not soon!
Echo on echo
Dies to the moon.

Two bright stars
Peep'd into the shell.
"What are you dreaming of?
Who can tell?"

Started a green linnet
Out of the croft;
Wake, little ladies,
The sun is aloft!

Fairest and loveliest of the sun-born train
That o'er the varying year alternate reign;
Whose eye, soft-beaming with thy father's fire,
Fond Nature woos with ever-fresh desire,
Enchanting Spring! O let thy votary's lay
Invite thy angel smile, thy genial sway!

Still do thy beauties, to my partial heart,
Whene'er I gaze, superior joys impart:
When winter's cloudy veil thou draw'st away                            }
And, vested with the sun's mild, dewy ray,                            }
First to the longing earth thy charms thou dost display; }
Or when Aurora, to the lark's gay song,
Full of thy spirit, lightly trips along;
With joyful kisses greets the first-born flowers,
And o'er them breathes thy warm, refreshing showers;
Or when, on shadowy pillow in the west...

Out from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask,
(All straighter, liker Masks rejected - this preferr'd,)
This common curtain of the face, contain'd in me for me, in you for you, in each for each,
(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears - O heaven!
The passionate, teeming plays this curtain hid!)
This glaze of God's serenest, purest sky,
This film of Satan's seething pit,
This heart's geography's map - this limitless small continent - this soundless sea;
Out from the convolutions of this globe,
This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon - than Jupiter, Venus, Mars;
This condensation of the Universe - (nay, here the only Universe,
Here the idea all in this mystic handful wrapt;)
These burin'd eyes, flashing to you, to pass to future time,
To launch and spin through space revolvin...