Nature

I love the fitful gust that shakes
The casement all the day,
And from the glossy elm tree takes
The faded leaves away,
Twirling them by the window pane
With thousand others down the lane.

I love to see the shaking twig
Dance till the shut of eve,
The sparrow on the cottage rig,
Whose chirp would make believe
That Spring was just now flirting by,
In Summer's lap with flowers to lie.

I love to see the cottage smoke
Curl upwards through the trees,
The pigeons nestled round the cote
On November days like these;
The cock upon the dunghill crowing,
The mill sails on the heath a-going.

The feather from the raven's breast
Falls on the stubble lea,
The acorns near the old crow's nest
Drop pattering down the tree;
The grun...

Nature's imperfect child, to whom
The world is wrapt in viewless gloom,
Can unresisted still impart
The fondest wishes of his heart.

And he, to whose impervious ear
The sweetest sounds no charms dispense,
Can bid his inmost soul appear
In clear, tho' silent, eloquence.

But we, my Julia, not so blest,
Are doom'd a diff'rent fate to prove, -
To feel each joy and hope supprest
That flow from pure, but hidden, love.

    'T is pleasant to bear recollections in mind
    Of joys that time hurries away--
    To look back on smiles that have passed like the wind,
    And compare them with frowns of to-day.
    'T was the constant delight of Old Robin, forsooth,
    On the past with clear vision to dwell--
    To recount the fond loves and the raptures of youth,
    And tales of lost pleasures to tell.

    "'T is now many years," like a child, he would say,
    "Since I joined in the sports of the green--
    Since I tied up the flowers for the garland of May,
    And danced with the holiday queen.
    My memory looks backward in sorrowful pride,
    And I think, till my eyes dim with tears,
    Of the past, where my happiness withered and died,
    And the present dull, desol...

Have I dreamed? or was it real,
    What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal
In the land of the Ideal
    Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?

What! are these the guests whose glances
    Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies,
That with dithyrambic dances
    As with magic circles bound me?

Ah! how cold are their caresses!
    Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
And from loose dishevelled tresses
    Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!

O my songs! whose winsome measures
    Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures
    Fade and perish with the capture?

Fair they seemed,...

From The Purgatorio Of Dante, Canto 28, Lines 1-51.


And earnest to explore within - around -
The divine wood, whose thick green living woof
Tempered the young day to the sight - I wound

Up the green slope, beneath the forest's roof,
With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain's steep,
And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof

Against the air, that in that stillness deep
And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,
The slow, soft stroke of a continuous...

In which the ... leaves tremblingly were
All bent towards that part where earliest
The sacred hill obscures the morning air.

Yet were they not so shaken from the rest,
But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,
Incessantly renewing their blithe quest,

With per...

I hear a merry noise indeed:
Is it the geese and ducks that take
Their first plunge in a quiet pond
That into scores of ripples break,
Or children make this merry sound?

I see an oak tree, its strong back
Could not be bent an inch though all
Its leaves were stone, or iron even:
A boy, with many a lusty call,
Rides on a bough bareback through Heaven.

I see two children dig a hole
And plant in it a cherry-stone:
"We'll come to-morrow," one child said,
"And then the tree will be full grown,
And all its boughs have cherries red."

Ah, children, what a life to lead:
You love the flowers, but when they're past
No flowers are missed by your bright eyes;
And when cold winter comes at last,
Snowflakes shall be your butterflies.

Down the green slope he bounded. Raven curls
From his white shoulders by the winds were swept,
And the clear color of his sunny cheek
Was bright with motion. Through his open lips
Shone visibly a delicate line of pearl,
Like a white vein within a rosy shell,
And his dark eye's clear brilliance, as it lay
Beneath his lashes, like a drop of dew
Hid in the moss, stole out as covertly
As starlight from the edging of a cloud.
I never saw a boy so beautiful.
His step was like the stooping of a bird,
And his limbs melted into grace like things
Shaped by the wind of summer. He was like
A painter's fine conception - such an one
As he would have of Ganymede, and weep
Upon his pallet that he could not win
The vision to his easel. Who could paint
The young and s...

The frog half fearful jumps across the path,
And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve
Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath;
My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive,
Till past,--and then the cricket sings more strong,
And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear
The short night weary with their fretting song.
Up from behind the molehill jumps the hare,
Cheat of his chosen bed, and from the bank
The yellowhammer flutters in short fears
From off its nest hid in the grasses rank,
And drops again when no more noise it hears.
Thus nature's human link and endless thrall,
Proud man, still seems the enemy of all.

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name,
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless for ever. Motionless?
No, they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
Flaps his broad wings,...

POET.

Enchanting spirit! at thy votive shrine
I lowly bend one simple wreath to twine;
O come from thy ideal world and fling
Thy airy fingers o'er my rugged string;
Sweep the dark chords of thought and give to earth
The wild sweet song that tells thy heavenly birth--


FANCY.

Happiness, when from earth she fled,
    I passed on her heaven-ward flight,--
"Take this wreath," the spirit said,
    "And bathe it in floods of light;
To the sons of sorrow this token give,
And bid them follow my steps and live!"

I took the wreath from her radiant hand,
    Each flower was a silver star;
I turned this dark earth to a fairy land,
    When I hither drove my car;
But I wove the wreath round my tresses bright,
And man only saw its...

Noëra, when sad Fall
Has grayed the fallow;
Leaf-cramped the wood-brook's brawl
In pool and shallow;
When, by the woodside, tall
Stands sere the mallow.

Noëra, when gray gold
And golden gray
The crackling hollows fold
By every way,
Shall I thy face behold,
Dear bit of May?

When webs are cribs for dew,
And gossamers
Streak by you, silver-blue;
When silence stirs
One leaf, of rusty hue,
Among the burrs:

Noëra, through the wood,
Or through the grain,
Come, with the hoiden mood
Of wind and rain
Fresh in thy sunny blood,
Sweetheart, again.

Noëra, when the corn,
Reaped on the fields,
The asters' stars adorn;
And purple shields
Of ironweeds lie torn
Among the wealds:

N...

A TALE OF TRANSFORMATIONS.


A little Brook, that babbled under grass,
Once saw a Poet pass--
A Poet with long hair and saddened eyes,
Who went his weary way with woeful sighs.
And on another time,
This Brook did hear that Poet read his rueful rhyme.
Now in the poem that he read,
This Poet said--
"Oh! little Brook that babblest under grass!
(Ah me! Alack! Ah, well-a-day! Alas!)
Say, are you what you seem?
Or is your life, like other lives, a dream?
What time your babbling mocks my mortal moods,
Fair Naïad of the stream!
And are you, in good sooth,
Could purblind poesy perceive the truth,
A water-sprite,
Who sometimes, for man's dangerous delight,
Puts on a human form and face,
To wear them with a superhuman grace?

Awake, my Muse! awake each slumb'ring string,
And (mighty subject!) of a Mushroom sing,
Fair to the eye, and pleasant to the taste;
Charm'd by the note, a pigmy group, in haste,
Lay down their grainy loads, as slow they move
Thro' lanes of reed and grass, to them a grove!
As if an Orpheus thou, they gather round,
Erect their tiny ears, and drink the sound.
Gray was the sky, save where the eastern ray
O'er fragrant hills proclaim'd th' approaching day;
Rurilla, loveliest virgin of the plain,
With spirits light, and mind without a stain,
Rose from her simple bed, refresh'd with rest;
Ah, Sleep! with marble finger had'st thou prest
Her lovely eyelids till a later hour,
And by a blissful vision's fairy pow'r
Hadst thou impress'd her mind with forms of love,
T...

Sundown--and silence--and deep peace,--
Night's benediction and release;--
The tints of day die out and cease.

This morn I heard the Sabbath bells
Across the breezy upland swells;--
My path lay down the woodland dells.

To-day, I said, the dust of creeds,
The wind of words reach not my needs;--
I worship with the birds and weeds.

From height to height the sunbeam sprung,
The wild vine, touched with vermeil, clung,
The mountain brooklet leapt and sung.

The white lamp of the lily made
A tender light in deepest shade,--
The solitary place was glad.

The very air was tremulous,--
I felt its deep and reverent hush,--
God burned before me in the bush!

And nature prayed with folded palm,
And looks that wear perpetual c...

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhung a molehill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound
With joy; and, often an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toils from day to day--
How true she warped the moss, to form a nest,
And modelled it within with wood and clay;
And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted-over shells of greeny blue;
And there I witnessed in the sunny hours
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as that sunshine and the laughing sky.

Life with you Lambs, like day, is just begun,
Yet Nature seems to them a heavenly guide.
Does joy approach? they meet the coming tide;
And sullenness avoid, as now they shun
Pale twilight's lingering glooms, and in the sun
Couch near their dams, with quiet satisfied;
Or gambol, each with his shadow at his side,
Varying its shape wherever he may run.
As they from turf yet hoar with sleepy dew
All turn, and court the shining and the green,
Where herbs look up, and opening flowers are seen;
Why to God's goodness cannot We be true,
And so, His gifts and promises between,
Feed to the last on pleasures ever new?

When on the leaves the rain persists,
And every gust brings showers down;
When all the woodland smokes with mists,
I take the old road out of town
Into the hills through which it twists.

I find the vale where catnip grows,
Where boneset blooms, with moisture bowed;
The vale through which the red creek flows,
Turbid with hill-washed clay, and loud
As some wild horn a hunter blows.

Around the root the beetle glides,
A living beryl; and the ant,
Large, agate-red, a garnet, slides
Beneath the rock; and every plant
Is roof for some frail thing that hides.

Like knots against the trunks of trees
The lichen-colored moths are pressed;
And, wedged in hollow blooms, the bees
Seem clots of pollen; in its nest
The wasp has crawled and lies ...

Hail, mildly pleasing Solitude,
Companion of the wise and good,
But from whose holy piercing eye
The herd of fools and villains fly.
Oh! how I love with thee to walk,
And listen to thy whispered talk,
Which innocence and truth imparts,
And melts the most obdurate hearts.
A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
And still in every shape you please.
Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
A lone philosopher you seem;
Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain;
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face;
Then, calmed to friendship, you assume
The gentle looking Hertford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she
(Her Musidora fo...