Nature

“The Poet’s age is sad: for why?
In youth, the natural world could show
No common object but his eye
At once involved with alien glow,
His own soul’s iris-bow.

“And now a flower is just a flower:
Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man,
Simply themselves, uncinct by dower
Of dyes which, when life’s day began,
Round each in glory ran.”

Friend, did you need an optic glass,
Which were your choice? A lens to drape
In ruby, emerald, chrysopras,
Each object, or reveal its shape
Clear outlined, past escape,

The naked very thing? so clear
That, when you had the chance to gaze,
You found its inmost self appear
Through outer seeming, truth ablaze,
Not falsehood’s fancy-haze?

How many a year, my Asolo,
Since, one step ju...

Like music heard in mellow chime,
The charm of her transforming time
    Upon my senses steals
As softly as from sunny walls,
In day's decline, their shadow falls
    Across the sleeping fields.

A fair, illumined book
Is nature's page whereon I look
    While "autumn turns the leaves;"
And many a thought of her designs
Between those rare, resplendent lines
    My fancy interweaves.

I dream of aborigines,
Who must have copied from the trees
    The fashions of the day:
Those gorgeous topknots for the head,
Of yellow tufts and feathers red,
    With beads and sinews gay.

I wonder if the saints behold
Such pageantry of colors bold
    Beyond the radiant sky;
And if the tints of Paradise
Are heightened by the strange...

A track of moonlight on a quiet lake,
Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore
Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make
Such harmonies as keep the woods awake,
And listening all night long for their sweet sake
A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er
By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light
On viewless stems, with folded wings of white;
A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen
Where the low westering day, with gold and green,
Purple and amber, softly blended, fills
The wooded vales, and melts among the hills;
A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest
On the calm bosom of a stormless sea,
Bearing alike upon its placid breast,
With earthly flowers and heavenly' stars impressed,
The hues of time and of eternity
Such are the pictures which th...

"What hast thou seen in the olden time,
    Dark ruin, lone and gray?"
"Full many a race from thy native clime,
    And the bright earth, pass away.
The organ has pealed in these roofless aisles,
    And priests have knelt to pray
At the altar, where now the daisy smiles
    O'er their silent beds of clay.

"I've seen the strong man a wailing child,
    By his mother offered here;
I've seen him a warrior fierce and wild;
    I've seen him on his bier,
His warlike harness beside him laid
    In the silent earth to rust;
His plumed helm and trusty blade
    To moulder into dust!

"I've seen the stern reformer scorn
    The things once deemed divine,
And the bigot's zeal with gems adorn
    The altar's sacred shrine.
I've seen the si...

Enough of climbing toil! Ambition treads
Here, as 'mid busier scenes, ground steep and rough,
Or slippery even to peril! and each step,
As we for most uncertain recompence
Mount toward the empire of the fickle clouds,
Each weary step, dwarfing the world below,
Induces, for its old familiar sights,
Unacceptable feelings of contempt,
With wonder mixed that Man could e'er be tied,
In anxious bondage, to such nice array
And formal fellowship of petty things!
Oh! 'tis the 'heart' that magnifies this life,
Making a truth and beauty of her own;
And moss-grown alleys, circumscribing shades,
And gurgling rills, assist her in the work
More efficaciously than realms outspread,
As in a map, before the adventurer's gaze
Ocean and Earth contending for regard.
The ...

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been, a most familiar bird,
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child, with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away, forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

Drifting, drifting down the River,
Tawny current and foam-flecked tide,
Sorrowful songs of lonely boatmen,
Mournful forests on either side.

Thine are the outcrops' glittering blocks,
The quartz where the rich pyrites gleam,
The golden treasure of unhewn rocks
And the loose gold in the stream.

But, - the dim vast forests along the shore,
That whisper wonderful things o' nights, -
These are things that I value more,
My beautiful "surface rights."

Drifting, drifting down the River, -
Stars a-tremble about the sky -
Ah, my lover, my heart is breaking,
Breaking, breaking, I know not why.

Why is Love such a sorrowful thing?
This I never could understand;
Pain and passion are linked together,
Ever I find them hand in hand.
...

The rain is due to fall,
The wind blows softly.

The branches of the cinnamon are moving,
The begonias stir on the green mounds.

Bright are the flying leaves,
The falling flowers are many.

The wind lifted the dry dust,
And he is lifting the wet dust;
Here and there the wind moves everything

He passes under light gauze
And touches me.

I am alone with the beating of my heart.

There are leagues of sky,
And the water is flowing very fast.

Why do the birds let their feathers
Fall among the clouds?

I would have them carry my letters,
But the sky is long.

The stream flows east
And not one wave comes back with news.

The scented magnolias are shining still,
But always a few are falling....

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;

FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY, 1804.


Lady! where'er you roam, whatever land
Woos the bright touches of that artist hand;
Whether you sketch the valley's golden meads,
Where mazy Linth his lingering current leads;[1]
Enamored catch the mellow hues that sleep,
At eve, on Meillerie's immortal steep;
Or musing o'er the Lake, at day's decline,
Mark the last shadow on that holy shrine,[2]
Where, many a night, the shade of Tell complains
Of Gallia's triumph and Helvetia's chains;
Oh! lay the pencil for a moment by,
Turn from the canvas that creative eye,
And let its splendor, like the morning ray
Upon a shepherd's harp, illume my lay.

Yet, Lady, no--for song so rude as mine,
Chase not the wonders of your art divine;
Still, radiant...

It is the year's high noon,
The earth sweet incense yields,
And o'er the fresh, green fields
Bends the clear sky of June.

I leave the crowded streets,
The hum of busy life,
Its clamor and its strife,
To breathe thy perfumed sweets.

O rare and golden hours!
The bird's melodious song,
Wavelike, is borne along
Upon a strand of flowers.

I wander far away,
Where, through the forest trees,
Sports the cool summer breeze,
In wild and wanton play.

A patriarchal elm
Its stately form uprears,
Which twice a hundred years
Has ruled this woodland realm.

I sit beneath its shade,
And watch, with careless eye,
The brook that babbles by,
And cools the leafy glade.

In truth I wonder not,
That in the...

..."Una selva oscura." - Dante.


Awake or sleeping (for I know not which)
I was or was not mazed within a wood
Where every mother-bird brought up her brood
Safe in some leafy niche
Of oak or ash, of cypress or of beech,

Of silvery aspen trembling delicately,
Of plane or warmer-tinted sycamore,
Of elm that dies in secret from the core,
Of ivy weak and free,
Of pines, of all green lofty things that be.

Such birds they seemed as challenged each desire;
Like spots of azure heaven upon the wing,
Like downy emeralds that alight and sing,
Like actual coals on fire,
Like anything they seemed, and everything.

Such mirth they made, such warblings and such chat
With tongue of music in a well-tuned beak,
They seemed to speak more wis...

I

Here are the orchard trees all large with fruit;
And yonder fields are golden with young grain.
In little journeys, branchward from the nest,
A mother bird, with sweet insistent cries,
Urges her young to use their untried wings.
A purring Tabby, stretched upon the sward,
Shuts and expands her velvet paws in joy,
While sturdy kittens nuzzle at her breast.

O mighty Maker of the Universe,
Am I not part and parcel of Thy World,
And one with Nature?    Wherefore, then, in me
Must this great reproductive impulse lie
Hidden, ashamed, unnourished, and denied,
Until it starves to slow and tortuous death?
I knew the hope of spring-time; like the tree
Now ripe with fruit, I budded, and then bloomed;
We laughed together through the young May morns;

(To W. E. H.)


Here, in this sequestered close
Bloom the hyacinth and rose;
Here beside the modest stock
Flaunts the flaring hollyhock;
Here, without a pang, one sees
Ranks, conditions, and degrees.

All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting place;
Peach, and apricot, and fig
Here will ripen, and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,--
More had not Alcinoüs!

Here, in alleys cool and green,
Far ahead the thrush is seen;
Here along the southern wall
Keeps the bee his festival;
All is quiet else--afar
Sounds of toil and turmoil are.

Here be shadows large and long;
Here be spaces meet for song;
Grant, O garden-god, that I,
Now that none profane is nigh,--
Now that mood and moment please,

Nature, when she made thee, dear,
Begged the treasures of the year.
For thy cheeks, all pink and white,
Spring gave apple blossoms light;
Summer, for thy matchless eyes,
Gave the azure of her skies;
Autumn spun her gold and red
In a mass of silken thread,
Gold and red and sunlight rare
For the wonder of thy hair!
Surly Winter would impart
But his coldness, for thy heart.

Dearest, let the love I bring
Turn thy Winter into Spring.
What are Summer, Spring and Fall,
If thy Winter chills them all?

Thinking of these, of beautiful brief things,
Of things that are of sense and spirit made,
Of meadow flowers, dense hedges and dark bushes
With roses trailing over nests of thrushes;

Of dews so pure and bright and flush'd and cool,
And like the flowers as brief as beautiful;
Thinking of the tall grass and daisies tall
And whispered music of the waving bents;

Of these that like a simple child I love
Since they are life and life is flowers and grass;
Thinking of trees, and water at their feet
Answering the trees with murmur childlike sweet;

Thinking of those high thoughts that passed like the wind
Yet left their brightness lying on the mind,
As the white blossoms the raw airs shake down
That lie awhile yet lovely on the chill grass;

Think...

My heart shall be thy garden.    Come, my own,
    Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
    Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal, thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
    Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
    But ah, the birds, the birds!    Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine?    O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine
    To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
            Sing one song only from our alder-trees.

My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
    Flit to the silent world and other summers,
            With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

Nature in charms is exhaustless, in beauty ever reviving;
And, like Nature, fair art is inexhaustible too.
Hail, thou honored old man! for both in thy heart thou preservest
Living sensations, and thus ne'er-ending youth is thy lot!