Nature

Ah, Posthumus!    our years hence fly
And leave no sound:    nor piety,
Or prayers, or vow
Can keep the wrinkle from the brow;
But we must on,
As fate does lead or draw us; none,
None, Posthumus, could e'er decline
The doom of cruel Proserpine.

The pleasing wife, the house, the ground
Must all be left, no one plant found
To follow thee,
Save only the curst cypress-tree!
--A merry mind
Looks forward, scorns what's left behind;
Let's live, my Wickes, then, while we may,
And here enjoy our holiday.

We've seen the past best times, and these
Will ne'er return; we see the seas,
And moons to wane,
But they fill up their ebbs again;
But vanish'd man,
Like to a lily lost, ne'er can,
Ne'er can repullulate, or bring
His days...

Threats come which no submission may assuage,
No sacrifice avert, no power dispute;
The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute,
And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,
The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage;
The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit;
And the green lizard and the gilded newt
Lead unmolested lives, and die of age.
The owl of evening and the woodland fox
For their abode the shrines of Waltham choose:
Proud Glastonbury can no more refuse
To stoop her head before these desperate shocks
She whose high pomp displaced, as story tells,
Arimathean Joseph's wattled cells.

The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But what's the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
You'll only skip the page, you'll look
For newer pictures in this book;
You've read of sunsets rich as mine.

A fresh wind fills the evening air
With horrid crying of night birds....
But what reads new or curious there
When cold winds fly across the air?
You'll only frown; you'll turn the page,
But find no glimpse of your "New Age
Of Poetry" in my worn-out words.

Must winds that cut like blades of steel
And sunsets swimming in Volnay,
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: "Write something new:
We've read this poem, that on...

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason...

The sunsets fall and the sunsets fade,
But still I walk this shadowy land;
And grapple the dark and only the dark
In my search for a loving hand.

For it’s here a still, deep woodland lies,
With spurs of pine and sheaves of fern;
But I wander wild, and wail like a child
For a face that will never return!

And it’s here a mighty water flows,
With drifts of wind and wimpled waves;
But the darling head of a dear one dead
Is hidden beneath its caves.

Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer.
They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near
Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live,
Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive
Treading as in jungles free leopards do,
Printless as evelight, instant as dew.
The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheep
Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep
Delicate and far their counsels wild,
Never to be folded reconciled
To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are;
Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar,
These you may not hinder, unconfined
Beautiful flocks of the mind.

My Flower Room is such a little place,
Scarce twenty feet by nine; yet in that space
I have met God; yea, many a radiant hour
Have talked with Him, the All-Embracing-Cause,
About His laws.
And He has shown me, in each vine and flower
Such miracles of power
That day by day this Flower Room of mine
Has come to be a shrine.

Fed by the self-same soil and atmosphere
Pale, tender shoots appear
Rising to greet the light in that sweet room.
One speeds to crimson bloom;
One slowly creeps to unassuming grace;
One climbs, one trails;
One drinks the light and moisture;
One exhales.

Up through the earth together, stem by stem
Two plants push swiftly in a floral race;
Till one sends forth a blossom like a gem;
And one gives only fragrance

    "I mean to build a hall anon,
    And shape two turrets there,
    And a broad newelled stair,
And a cool well for crystal water;
    Yes; I will build a hall anon,
    Plant roses love shall feed upon,
    And apple trees and pear."

    He set to build the manor-hall,
    And shaped the turrets there,
    And the broad newelled stair,
And the cool well for crystal water;
    He built for me that manor-hall,
    And planted many trees withal,
    But no rose anywhere.

    And as he planted never a rose
    That bears the flower of love,
    Though other flowers throve
A frost-wind moved our souls to sever
    Since he had planted never a rose;
    And misconceits raised horrid shows,
    And agonies came thereof.

...

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orcahrd white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.

God, who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, 'Sit aloof;'
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,--
Ever, when twain together play,
Shall the harp be dumb.

Many may come,
But one shall sing;
Two touch the string,
The harp is dumb.
Though there come a million,
Wise Saadi dwells alone.

Yet Saadi loved the race of men,--
No churl, immured in cave or den;
In bower and hall
He wants them all,<...

    "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
    When a new planet swims within his ken."

I who had sought afar from earth
    The faery land to greet,
Now find content within its girth,
    And wonder nigh my feet.

To-day a nearer love I choose
    And seek no distant sphere,
For aureoled by faery dews
    The dear brown breasts appear.

With rainbow radiance come and go
    The airy breaths of day,
And eve is all a pearly glow
    With moonlit winds a-play.

The lips of twilight burn my brow,
    The arms of night caress:
Glimmer her white eyes drooping now
    With grave old tenderness.

I close mine eyes from dream to be
    The diamond-rayed again,
As in the ancient hours ere we
    Forgot ourselves t...

She dwelt within a convent wall
Beside the "blue Moselle,"
And pure and simple was her life
As is the tale I tell.

She never shrank from penance rude,
And was so young and fair,
It was a holy, holy thing,
To see her at her prayer.

Her cheek was very thin and pale;
You would have turned in fear,
If 't were not for the hectic spot
That glowed so soft and clear.

And always, as the evening chime
With measured cadence fell,
Her vespers o'er, she sought alone
A little garden dell.

And when she came to us again,
She moved with lighter air;
We thought the angels ministered
To her while kneeling there.

One eve I followed on her way,
And asked her of her life.
A faint blush mantled cheek and brow,
The sign...

1

Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear!
All the house is asleep, but we know very well
That the jealous, the jealous old bald-pate may hear.
Tho' you've padded his night-cap O sweet Isabel!
Tho' your feet are more light than a Fairy's feet,
Who dances on bubbles where brooklets meet,
Hush, hush! soft tiptoe! hush, hush my dear!
For less than a nothing the jealous can hear.

2

No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is there
On the river, all's still, and the night's sleepy eye
Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care,
Charm'd to death by the drone of the humming May-fly;
And the Moon, whether prudish or complaisant,
Hath fled to her bower, well knowing I want
No light in the dusk, no torch in the gloom,
But my Isabel's eyes, and her li...

"I was walking, dearest mother,
    This morning, by the brook,
And tired at last I rested me
    Within a shady nook.

"There all was still and lonely,
    And suddenly I heard
A little voice,--a sweeter one
    Than note of any bird.

"I looked above, around me,
    I saw not whence it came;
And yet that tone of music
    Was calling me by name.

"The violet beside me
    Bloomed with its purple cup,
And a tiny face, so lovely,
    Amidst its leaves peeped up.

"Again the silver music,--
    The voice I loved to hear,--
Upon its sweet breath floated,
    And bade me not to fear.

"'I am the elf,' it whispered,
    'Who in the violet dwells,
And every blossom hides one
    Within its fragrant cells.<...

When white and ruby dawn among the rakes
Breaks in, she's with the harrying Ideal,
And by some strange retributive appeal
Within the sleepy brute, an angel wakes.

The perfect blue of Spiritual Skies
For the lost man who dreams and suffers, this
Pierces him, fascinates like the abyss.
And so, dear Goddess, lucid, pure and wise,

Over debris the orgies leave behind
Your memory, more rosy, more divine
Constantly flickers in my vision's sight.

The sun has blackened candles of the night;
Your phantom does the same, o conquering one,
Resplendent soul, of the immortal sun!

Heaven speaks! Oh Nature listen and rejoice!
Oh spread from pole to pole this gracious voice!
"Say every breast of human frame, that proves
"The boundless force with which a parent loves;
"Say, can a mother from her yearning heart
"Bid the soft image of her child depart?
"She! whom strong instinct arms with strength to bear
"All forms of ill, to shield that dearest care;
"She! who with anguish stung, with madness wild,
"Will rush on death to save her threaten'd child;
"All selfish feelings banish'd from her breast,
"Her life one aim to make another's blest.
"When her vex'd infant to her bosom clings,
"When round her neck his eager arms he flings;
"Breathes to her list'ning soul his melting sigh,
"And lifts suffus'd with tears his asking eye!
"Will she for all ...

The leafless trees, the untidy stack
    Last rainy summer raised in haste,
Watch the sky turn from fair to black
    And watch the river fill and waste;

But never a footstep comes to trouble
    The sea-gulls in the new-sown corn,
Or pigeons rising from late stubble
    And flashing lighter as they turn.

Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine
    Sharp on the road or soft on grass:
Silence divides along my line
    And shuts behind me as I pass.

No other comes, no labourer
    To cut his shaggy truss of hay,
Along the road no traveller,
    Day after day, day after day.

And even I, when I come here,
    Move softly on, subdued and still,
Lonely as death, though I can hear
    Men shouting on the other hill.

Day aft...

Serene was morning with clear, winnowed air,
    But threatening soon the low, blue mass of cloud
Rose in the west, with mutterings faint and rare
    At first, but waxing frequent and more loud.
    Thick sultry mists the distant hill-tops shroud;
The sunshine dies; athwart black skies of lead
Flash noiselessly thin threads of lightning red.


Breathless the earth seems waiting some wild blow,
    Dreaded, but far too close to ward or shun.
Scared birds aloft fly aimless, and below
    Naught stirs in fields whence light and life are gone,
    Save floating leaves, with wisps of straw and down,
Upon the heavy air; 'neath blue-black skies,
Livid and yellow the green landscape lies.


And all the while the dreadful thunder breaks,
    Within the ...