Nature

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
C...

    Imagination's eyes
    Outreach and distance far
    The vision of the greatest star
    That measures instantaneously -
    Enisled therein as in a sea -
    Its cincture of the system-laden skies.
    Abysses closed about with night
    A tribute yield
    To her retardless sight;
    And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores
    Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores.
    She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield,
    And through the obstruction of his vestment dire,
    Pierces the centermost sublimity
    Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire
    Heaves upward like a monstrous sea,
    And inly riven by Titanic throes,
    Fills all his frame with outward cataract
    Of separate and immingling torrent streams.
    Her eyes e...

We sat at twilight nigh the sea,
    The fog hung gray and weird.
Through the thick film uncannily
    The broken moon appeared.


We heard the billows crack and plunge,
    We saw nor waves nor ships.
Earth sucked the vapors like a sponge,
    The salt spray wet our lips.


Closer the woof of white mist drew,
    Before, behind, beside.
How could that phantom moon break through,
    Above that shrouded tide?


The roaring waters filled the ear,
    A white blank foiled the sight.
Close-gathering shadows near, more near,
    Brought the blind, awful night.


O friends who passed unseen, unknown!
    O dashing, troubled sea!
Still stand we on a rock alone,
Walled round by mystery.

You may boast about the landscapes fair so far across the sea
Of castled Rhine, and southern France, and favored Italy--
But have you seen, when Springtime flings the scented blossoms down,
The forests and the meadows green around old Shakertown?

You may boast of some that bask beneath perpetual Summer's smiles--
Those "Eden's of the eastern wave"--the sunny Grecian isles--
And others that perhaps you've seen, of beauty and renown,
But come and view the country spread around old Shakertown!

O come and boast that you have been where Nature's lavish hand
Bestowed the gifts of wood and field that vie with any land--
Where valleys wear a velvet robe--the hills an emerald crown
Of bluegrass shimmering in the sun, around old Shakertown!

O come to old Kentucky then, an...

The grass is wet with heavy dew,
The leaves have changed their bright green hue,
To brighter red, or golden;
The morning sun shines with a glow,
As bright and pure as long ago,
In time ye left the olden.

One tree is cloth'd with scarlet dress,
And one, with brown leaf'd loveliness,
Delights the eye that gazes;
While others varied tints display,
But all, in beauteous array,
Delight us, and amaze us.

We see the trees in beauty clad,
But still that beauty makes us sad,
E'en while we may admire,
For death has caus'd that sudden bloom
Stern death, the tenant of the tomb,
Or funereal pyre.

The ruthless, bitter, biting air
Hath dried the life which flourish'd there,
Throughout the warmer seasons;
The nourishment hath ceas'd ...

Love, do not count your labour lost
    Though I turn sullen, grim, retired
Even at your side; my thought is crossed
    With fancies by old longings fired.

And when I answer you, some days
    Vaguely and wildly, do not fear
That my love walks forbidden ways,
    Breaking the ties that hold it here.

If I speak gruffly, this mood is
    Mere indignation at my own
Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;
    I forget the gentler tone.

'You,' now that you have come to be
    My one beginning, prime and end,
I count at last as wholly 'me,'
    Lover no longer nor yet friend.

Friendship is flattery, though close hid;
    Must I then flatter my own mind?
And must (which laws of shame forbid)
    Blind love of you make self-love b...

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.

Among the fields the camomile
Seems blown mist in the lightning's glare:
Cool, rainy odors drench the air;
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.
The way that I shall take to-night
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with double darkness, till,
Between the boughs, a window's light
Shines out upon the hill.
The fence; and then the path that goes
Around a trailer-tangled rock,
Through puckered pink and hollyhock,
Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,
And door whereat I knock.
Bright on the oldtime flower place
The lamp streams through the foggy pane;
The door is opened to the rain:
And in the door her happy face
And outstretched arms again.

The song of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.

The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!

I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.

Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?

.    .    .    .    .

And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:

“Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,” saith the water,
“With the moss on their feet?

“Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers
The golden and purple
Of honey-s...

You say you're glad I write - oh, say not so!
    My fount of song, dear friend, 's a bitter well;
And when the numbers freely from it flow,
    'Tis that my heart, and eyes, o'erflow as well.

Castalia, fam'd of yore, - the spring divine,
    Apollo's smile upon its current wears:
Moore and Anacreon, found its waves were wine,
    To me, it flows a sullen stream of tears.

Swift and silent and strong
    Under the low-browed arches,
Through culverts, and under bridges,
Sweeping with long forced marches
Down to the ultimate ridges,--
    The sand, and the reeds, and the midges,
And the down-dropping tassels of larches,
    That border the ocean of song.

Swift and silent and deep
    Through the noisome and smoke-grimed city,
Turning the wheels and the spindles,
    And the great looms that have no pity,--
Weight, and pulley, and windlass,
    And steel that flashes and kindles,
And hears no forest-learnt ditty,
    Not even in dreams and sleep.

Blithe and merry and sweet
    Over its shallows singing,--
I hear before I awaken
    The Bound of the church-bells ringing,
And the sound of the leaves wi...

In this still place, remote from men,
Sleeps Ossian, in the NARROW GLEN;
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek streamlet, only one:
He sang of battles, and the breath
Of stormy war, and violent death;
And should, methinks, when all was past,
Have rightfully been laid at last
Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent
As by a spirit turbulent;
Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,
And everything unreconciled;
In some complaining, dim retreat,
For fear and melancholy meet;
But this is calm; there cannot be
A more entire tranquillity.
Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?
Or is it but a groundless creed?
What matters it? I blame them not
Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot
Was moved; and in such way expressed
Their notion ...

I.

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs

after many a vanish’d face,

Many a planet by many a sun may roll

with the dust of a vanish’d race.



II.

Raving politics, never at rest–as this poor

earth’s pale history runs,–

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the

gleam of a million million of suns?



III.

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side,

truthless violence mourn’d by the Wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a

popular torrent of lies upon lies;



IV.

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious

annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause,

trumpets of vi...

The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
In silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage,
The kingdom of sleep.

And watched in their sleeping
By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
O wonderful night.
When night doth her glories
Of starshine unfold,
'Tis then that the stories
Of bush-land are told.

Unnumbered I hold them
In memories bright,
But who could unfold them,
Or read them aright?
Beyond all denials
The stars in their glories,
The breeze in the myalls,
Are part of these stories.

The waving of grasses,
The song of the river
That sings as it passes
For ever and ever,
The hobble-chains' rattle,
...

Had fallen a fragrant shower;
The leaves were dripping yet;
Each fern and rain-weighed flower
Around were gleaming wet;
On ev'ry bosky bower
A million gems were set.

The dust's moist odors sifted
Cool with the summer rain,
Mixed with the musk that drifted
From orchard and from plain; -
Her garden's fence white lifted
Its length along the lane.

The moon the clouds had shattered
In curdled peaks of pearl;
The honeysuckle scattered
Warm odors from each curl,
Where the white moonlight, flattered,
Hung molten 'round a girl.

Then grew the night completer
With light and cloud and air;
Aromas sweet blew sweeter,
Sweet flowers fair, more fair;
Fleet feet and fast grew fleeter
Thro' that fair sorceress there.

Even as a dragon's eye that feels the stress
Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp
Suddenly glaring through sepulchral damp,
So burns yon Taper 'mid a black recess
Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless:
The lake below reflects it not; the sky,
Muffled in clouds, affords no company
To mitigate and cheer its loneliness.
Yet, round the body of that joyless Thing
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated in domestic ring
A gay society with faces bright,
Conversing, reading, laughing; or they sing,
While hearts and voices in the song unite.

Ranging the heights of Scawfell or Blackcomb,
In his lone course the Shepherd oft will pause,
And strive to fathom the mysterious laws
By which the clouds, arrayed in light or gloom,
On Mona settle, and the shapes assume
Of all her peaks and ridges. What he draws
From sense, faith, reason, fancy, of the cause,
He will take with him to the silent tomb.
Or, by his fire, a child upon his knee,
Haply the untaught Philosopher may speak
Of the strange sight, nor hide his theory
That satisfies the simple and the meek,
Blest in their pious ignorance, though weak
To cope with Sages undevoutly free.

'Tis not for the unfeeling, the falsely refined,
The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind,
And the small critic wielding his delicate pen,
That I sing of old Adam, the pride of old men.

He dwells in the centre of London's wide Town;
His staff is a sceptre, his grey hairs a crown;
And his bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streak
Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek.

'Mid the dews, in the sunshine of morn, 'mid the joy
Of the fields, he collected that bloom, when a boy,
That countenance there fashioned, which, spite of a stain
That his life hath received, to the last will remain.

A Farmer he was; and his house far and near
Was the boast of the country for excellent cheer:
How oft have I heard in sweet Tilsbury Vale
Of the...