Nature

O bird that somewhere yonder sings,
    In the dim hour 'twixt dreams and dawn,
Lone in the hush of sleeping things,
    In some sky sanctuary withdrawn;
Your perfect song is too like pain,
And will not let me sleep again.

I think you must be more than bird,
    A little creature of soft wings,
Not yours this deep and thrilling word -
    Some morning planet 'tis that sings;
Surely from no small feathered throat
    Wells that august, eternal note.

As some old language of the dead,
    In one resounding syllable,
Says Rome and Greece and all is said -
    A simple word a child may spell;
So in your liquid note impearled
Sings the long epic of the world.

Unfathomed sweetness of your song,
    With ancient anguish at its core,

The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling
In a dim library, just behind the chair
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling
A song about some Lovers at a Fair,
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were beastly things and never there.

And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking
About the tragic poem I'd been writing,...
An old man's life of beer and whisky drinking,
His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;
And how at last, into a fever sinking,
Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting.

But suddenly I saw the bright green cover
Of a thin pretty book right down below;
I snatched it up and turned the pages over,
To find it full of poetry, and so
Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover,
And turn...

    Over the downs in sunlight clear
    Forth we went in the spring of the year:
    Plunder of April's gold we sought,
    Little of April's anger thought.

    Caught in a copse without defence
    Low we crouched to the rain-squall dense:
    Sure, if misery man can vex,
    There it beat on our bended necks.

    Yet when again we wander on
    Suddenly all that gloom is gone:
    Under and over through the wood,
    Life is astir, and life is good.

    Violets purple, violets white,
    Delicate windflowers dancing light,
    Primrose, mercury, moscatel,
    Shimmer in diamonds round the dell.

    Squirrel is climbing swift and lithe,
    Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe,
    Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap,
  ...

The farmer's goose, who in the stubble
Has fed without restraint or trouble,
Grown fat with corn and sitting still,
Can scarce get o'er the barn-door sill;
And hardly waddles forth to cool
Her belly in the neighbouring pool!
Nor loudly cackles at the door;
For cackling shows the goose is poor.
    But, when she must be turn'd to graze,
And round the barren common strays,
Hard exercise, and harder fare,
Soon make my dame grow lank and spare;
Her body light, she tries her wings,
And scorns the ground, and upward springs;
While all the parish, as she flies,
Hear sounds harmonious from the skies.
    Such is the poet fresh in pay,
The third night's profits of his play;
His morning draughts till noon can swill,
Among his brethren of the quill:
W...

Lovely insect, haste away,
Greet once more the sunny day;
Leave, O leave the murky barn,
Ere trapping spiders thee discern;
Soon as seen, they will beset
Thy golden wings with filmy net,
Then all in vain to set thee free,
Hopes all lost for liberty.
Never think that I belie,
Never fear a winter sky;
Budding oaks may now be seen,
Starry daisies deck the green,
Primrose groups the woods adorn,
Cloudless skies, and blossom'd thorn;
These all prove that spring is here,
Haste away then, never fear.
Skim o'er hill and valley free,
Perch upon the blossom'd tree;
Though my garden would be best,
Couldst thou but contended rest:
There the school-boy has no power
Thee to chase from flower to flower,
Harbour none for cruel sport,
Far awa...

A Conversation

We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.

`Now, Matthew!' said I, `let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon;

`Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made!'

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee:

`No check, no stay, this streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

The prim daisy's golden eye
On the fallow land doth lie,
Though the Spring is just begun:
Pewits watch it all the day,
And the skylark's nest of hay
Is there by its dried leaves in the sun.

There the pilewort, all in gold,
'Neath the ridge of finest mould,
Blooms to cheer the ploughman's eye:
There the mouse his hole hath made,
And 'neath the golden shade
Hides secure when the hawk is prowling by.

Here's the speedwell's sapphire blue:
Was there anything more true
To the vernal season still?
Here it decks the bank alone,
Where the milkmaid throws a stone
At noon, to cross the rapid, flooded rill.

Here the cowslip, chill with cold,
On the rushy bed behold,
It looks for sunshine all the day.
Here the honey bee will come,...

Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes?

To laud and eulogise the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?

Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.

'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay:
Not so the battles of our modern day.

Too often now the conquering hero struts,
A Gulliver among the Lilliputs.

Success no longer rests on skill or fate,
But on the movements of a syndicate.

Of old, men fought and deemed it right and just,
To-day the warrior fights because he must;

And in his secret soul feels shame because
He desecrates the higher manhood's laws.

Oh, there are worthier themes for poet's pen
In th...

When in summer thou walkest
In the meads by the river,
And to thyself talkest,
Dost thou think of one ever--
A lost and a lorn one
That adores thee and loves thee?
And when happy morn's gone,
And nature's calm moves thee,
Leaving thee to thy sleep like an angel at rest,
Does the one who adores thee still live in thy breast?

Does nature eer give thee
Love's past happy vision,
And wrap thee and leave thee
In fancies elysian?
Thy beauty I clung to,
As leaves to the tree;
When thou fair and young too
Looked lightly on me,
Till love came upon thee like the sun to the west
And shed its perfuming and bloom on thy breast.

Dawn-cool, dew-cool
Gleams the surface of my pool
Bird haunted, fern enchanted,
Where but tempered spirits rule;
Stars do not trace their mystic lines
In my confines;
I take a double night within my breast
A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves,
And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl
Puff at his velvet horn
And the wolves howl.
Even daylight comes with a touch of gold
Not overbold,
And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers,
Below the balsam bowers,
Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield.
Too small even for a thirsty fawn
To quench upon,
I hold my crystal at one level
There where you see the liquid bevel
Break in silver and go free
Singing to its destiny.

Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
...

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud, and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,<...

Could this early bliss but rest

Constant for one single hour!
But e'en now the humid West

Scatters many a vernal shower.
Should the verdure give me joy?

'Tis to it I owe the shade;
Soon will storms its bloom destroy,

Soon will Autumn bid it fade.

Eagerly thy portion seize,

If thou wouldst possess the fruit!
Fast begin to ripen these,

And the rest already shoot.
With each heavy storm of rain

Change comes o'er thy valley fair;
Once, alas! but not again

Can the same stream hold thee e'er.

And thyself, what erst at least

Firm as rocks appear'd to rise,
Walls and palaces thou seest

But with ever-changing eyes.
Fled for ever now the lip

That with kisses used to glo...

Now it is nearly time when, quivering on its stem,
Each flower, like a censer, sprinkles out its scent;
Sounds and perfumes are mingling in the evening air;
Waltz of a mournfulness and languid vertigo!

Each flower, like a censer, sprinkles out its scent,
The violin is trembling like a grieving heart,
Waltz of a mournfulness and languid vertigo!
The sad and lovely sky spreads like an altar-cloth;

The violin is trembling like a grieving heart,
A tender heart, that hates non-being, vast and black!
The sad and lovely sky spreads like an altar-cloth;
The sun is drowning in its dark, congealing blood.

A tender heart that hates non-being, vast and black
Assembles every glowing vestige of the past!
The sun is drowning in its dark, congealing blood...
In m...

Twilight. Red in the West.
Dimness. A glow on the wood.
The teams plod home to rest.
The wild duck come to glean.
O souls not understood,
What a wild cry in the pool;
What things have the farm ducks seen
That they cry so--huddle and cry?
Only the soul that goes.
Eager. Eager. Flying.
Over the globe of the moon,
Over the wood that glows.
Wings linked. Necks a-strain,
A rush and a wild crying.

A cry of the long pain
In the reeds of a steel lagoon,
In a land that no man knows.

O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy,
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill,
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully deParted
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell,
Oh, nothing of the dross of ours,
Yet all the beauty, all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers,
Adorn yon world afar, afar,
The wandering star.

'Twas a sweet time for Nesace, for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns, a temporary rest,
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away, away, 'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul,<...

"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa where Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd embower."
- Paradise Lost.


"Vallombrosa, I longed in thy shadiest wood
To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!"
Fond wish that was granted at last, and the Flood,
That lulled me asleep bids me listen once more.
Its murmur how soft! as it falls down the steep,
Near that Cell, yon sequestered Retreat high in air
Where our Milton was wont lonely vigils to keep
For converse with God, sought through study and prayer.

The Monks still repeat the tradition with pride,
And its truth who shall doubt? for his Spirit is here;
In the cloud-piercing rocks doth her grandeur abide,
In the pines pointing heavenward her beauty austere;
In the flower-be...

'Tis eventide; the noisy brook is hushed
Or murmurs only as a tired child,
Worn out with play; the tangled weeds lie still
Within the marshy hollow.    Quaint and dark
The willows bend above the brooklet's tide,
Reflecting shadowy images therein.
The dark-browed trees, with faces to the sky,
Shut out the light that fades in crimson lines
Along the western sky.    And yonder shade
Of purple marks the cloud, the storm-god rides
In moods of angry fire.

            The woods are filled
With wild-wood blossoms drinking in the dew.
Their scented breath is sweeter than the maid's
Who stands at eve and drinks in love and hope
From every budding flower.

                All day the sun
With fiery breath has held his hot, long reign;
The leaves have...