Nature

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
    That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
    But how fair--this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.

We know, we know how all too bright
    The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;--
    We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,

And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
    And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
    With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.

O days, we ponder, left alone,
    Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
    As seeds the colour of the flower....

You are the first wild violet of the year;
Young grass you are, and apple-bloom, and spray
Of honeysuckle; you are dawn of day.
And the first snow-fall! It is you I hear
When the March robin calls me loud and clear.
Or lonely rill goes singing on its way
Like some small flute of heav'n; or when the gray
Sad wood-dove calls and early stars appear.

And you it is within the wayside shrine
Carved tenderly; and in the folded wings
On some neglected tomb; and in the vine
And leaf and saint of old imaginings
On some forgotten missal, little things
We would not barter for things more divine!

(After the German of Goethe, Faust, II)


When on the mountain tops ray-crowned Apollo
Turns his swift arrows, dart on glittering dart,
Let but a rock glint green, the wild goats follow
Glad-grazing shyly on each sparse-grown part.

Rolled into plunging torrents spring the fountains;
And slope and vale and meadowland grow green;
While on ridg'd levels of a hundred mountains,
Far fleece by fleece, the woolly flocks convene.

With measured stride, deliberate and steady,
The scattered cattle seek the beetling steep,
But shelter for th' assembled herd is ready
In many hollows that the walled rocks heap:

The lairs of Pan; and, lo, in murmuring places,
In bushy clefts, what woodland Nymphs arouse!
Where, full of yearning for the azure spaces,

The beauty of this rainy day,
All silver-green and dripping gray,
Has stolen quite my heart away
From all the tasks I meant to do,
Made me forget the resolute blue
And energetic gold of things . . .
So soft a song the rain-bird sings.

Yet am I glad to miss awhile
The sun's huge domineering smile,
The busy spaces mile on mile,
Shut in behind this shimmering screen
Of falling pearls and phantom green;
As in a cloister walled with rain,
Safe from intrusions, voices vain,
And hurry of invading feet,
Inviolate in my retreat:
Myself, my books, my pipe, my fire -
So runs my rainy-day desire.

Or I old letters may con o'er,
And dream on faces seen no more,
The buried treasure of the years,
Too visionary now for tears;
Open old ...

I.

What be those crown’d forms high over the sacred fountain?
Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain,
And over the flight of the Ages! O Goddesses, help me up thither!
Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither.
Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,
And stand with my head in the zenith, and roll my voice from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever thro’ Earth and her listening nations,
And mixt with the great sphere-music of stars and of constellations.


II.

What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,
Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?
On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening;
Poet, that evergreen laurel i...

I.

Under rocks whereon the rose
Like a strip of morning glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honey-dew;
Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,
Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
Drips the spring my boyhood knew.

II.

Myrrh and music everywhere
Haunt its cascades; like the hair
That a naiad tosses cool,
Swimming strangely beautiful,
With white fragrance for her bosom,
For her mouth a breath of song:
Under leaf and branch and blossom
Flows the woodland spring along,
Sparkling, singing flows along.

III.

Still the wet wan mornings touch
Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
Slender stars as dusk may have
Pierce the ros...

Pleasures newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet:
February last, my heart
First at sight of thee was glad;
All unheard of as thou art,
Thou must needs, I think, have had,
Celandine! and long ago,
Praise of which I nothing know.

I have not a doubt but he,
Whosoe'er the man might be,
Who the first with pointed rays
(Workman worthy to be sainted)
Set the sign-board in a blaze,
When the rising sun he painted,
Took the fancy from a glance
At thy glittering countenance.

Soon as gentle breezes bring
News of winter's vanishing,
And the children build their bowers,
Sticking 'kerchief-plots of mould
All about with full-blown flowers,
Thick as sheep in shepherd's fold!
With the proudest thou art there,
Mantling i...

Fair Lady! can I sing of flowers
That in Madeira bloom and fade,
I who ne'er sate within their bowers,
Nor through their sunny lawns have strayed?
How they in sprightly dance are worn
By Shepherd-groom or May-day queen,
Or holy festal pomps adorn,
These eyes have never seen.

Yet tho' to me the pencil's art
No like remembrances can give,
Your portraits still may reach the heart
And there for gentle pleasure live;
While Fancy ranging with free scope
Shall on some lovely Alien set
A name with us endeared to hope,
To peace, or fond regret.

Still as we look with nicer care,
Some new resemblance we may trace:
A 'Heart's-ease' will perhaps be there,
A 'Speedwell' may not want its place.
And so may we, with charmed mind
Beholding w...

When you and I were young, the days
Were filled with scent of pink and rose,
And full of joy from dawn till close,
From morning's mist till evening's haze.
And when the robin sung his song
The verdant woodland ways along,
We whistled louder than he sung.
And school was joy, and work was sport
For which the hours were all too short,
When you and I were young, my boy,
When you and I were young.

When you and I were young, the woods
Brimmed bravely o'er with every joy
To charm the happy-hearted boy.
The quail turned out her timid broods;
The prickly copse, a hostess fine,
Held high black cups of harmless wine;
And low the laden grape-vine swung
With beads of night-kissed amethyst
Where buzzing lovers held their tryst,
When you and I were ...

I tore this weed from the rank, dark soil
    Where it grew in the monkish time,
I trimmed it close and set it again
    In a border of modern rhyme.

I.
Long years ago, when the Devil was loose
    And faith was sorely tried,
Three monks of Basle went out to walk
    In the quiet eventide.

A breeze as pure as the breath of Heaven
    Blew fresh through the cloister-shades,
A sky as glad as the smile of Heaven
    Blushed rose o'er the minster-glades.

But scorning the lures of summer and sense,
    The monks passed on in their walk;
Their eyes were abased, their senses slept,
    Their souls were in their talk.

In the tough grim talk of the monkish days
    They hammered and slashed about, -
Dry husks of logic, - old scrap...

    Sweet naiveté of feature,
        Simple, wild, enchanting elf,
    Not to thee, but thanks to nature,
        Thou art acting but thyself.

    Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected,
        Spurning nature, torturing art;
    Loves and graces all rejected,
        Then indeed thou'dst act a part.

R. B.

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
    And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
    Points to the misty main,

It drives me in upon myself
    And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
    And still more pleasant dreams,

I read whatever bards have sung
    Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
    Come thronging back to me.

In fancy I can hear again
    The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
    The sea at Elsinore.

I see the convent's gleaming wall
    Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
    And castles by the Rhine.

I journey on by park and spire,
    Beneath centennial trees,
Throug...

I.

Beneath an old beech-tree
They sat together,
Fair as a flower was she
Of summer weather.
They spoke of life and love,
While, through the boughs above,
The sunlight, like a dove,
Dropped many a feather.

II.

And there the violet,
The bluet near it,
Made blurs of azure wet
As if some spirit,
Or woodland dream, had gone
Sprinkling the earth with dawn,
When only Fay and Faun
Could see or hear it.

III.

She with her young, sweet face
And eyes gray-beaming,
Made of that forest place
A spot for dreaming:
A spot for Oreads
To smooth their nut-brown braids,
For Dryads of the glades
To dance in, gleaming.

IV.

So dim the place, so blest,
One had not wondered
H...

I had rather write one word upon the rock
Of ages than ten thousand in the sand.
The rock of ages! lo I cannot reach
Its lofty shoulders with my puny hand:
I can but touch the sands about its feet.
Yea, I have painted pictures for the blind,
And sung my sweetest songs to ears of stone.
What matter if the dust of ages drift
Five fathoms deep above my grave unknown,
For I have sung and loved the songs I sung.
Who sings for fame the Muses may disown;
Who sings for gold will sing an idle song;
But he who sings because sweet music springs
Unbidden from his heart and warbles long,
May haply touch another heart unknown.
There is sweeter poetry in the hearts of men
Than ever poet wrote or minstrel sung;
For words are clumsy wings for burning thought.
The ful...

Two nymphs, both nearly of an age,
Of numerous charms possess’d,
A warm dispute once chanced to wage,
Whose temper was the best.


The worth of each had been complete,
Had both alike been mild:
But one, although her smile was sweet,
Frown’d oftener than she smiled.


And in her humour, when she frown’d,
Would raise her voice, and roar,
And shake with fury to the ground
The garland that she wore.


The other was of gentler cast,
From all such frenzy clear,
Her frowns were seldom known to last,
And never proved severe.


To poets of renown in song
The nymphs referr’d the cause,
Who, strange to tell, all judg’d it wrong,
And gave misplaced applause.


They gentle call’d, and kind and soft,

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
    The poet trembles at his own long gaze
    That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him for ever;
    The music that he listens to betrays
    His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.

His dreams are far among the silent hills;
    His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain
With winds at night; strange recognition thrills
    His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;
He knows his sweet mirth in the mountain rills,
    His weary tears that touch him with the rain.

It is full summer now, the heart of June;
Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
Rich autumn time, the season's usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June's messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of their own loveliness some violets lie
That will not look the gold sun in the face
...

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
--Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
    When you thought, and chose the hills.

'If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music's sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
    Unconsoled by sympathy.'

But how dared you use me so?    For you bring my ripe years low
To your child's whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
    But you mark not, through the years.

'To the mountain leads my way.    If the plains are green to-day,
These my ba...