Nature

The world grows green on a thousand hills -
    By a thousand willows the bees are humming,
And a million birds by a million rills,
    Sing of the golden season coming.
But, gazing out on the sun-kist lea,
    And hearing a thrush and a blue-bird singing,
I feel that the Summer is all for me,
    And all for me are the joys it is bringing.

All for me the bumble-bee
    Drones his song in the perfect weather;
And, just on purpose to sing to me,
    Thrush and blue-bird came North together.
Just for me, in red and white,
    Bloom and blossom the fields of clover;
And all for me and my delight
    The wild Wind follows and plays the lover.

The mighty sun, with a scorching kiss
    (I have read, and heard, and do not doubt it)
Has burned up...

1.
The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
And evening's breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

2.
There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;
And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
The dust and straws are driven up and down,
And whirled about the pavement of the town.

3.
Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and forever
It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the...
You, being changed, will find it then as now.

Fair flower! that fall'n beneath the angry blast,
Which marks with wither'd sweets its fearful way,
I grieve to see thee on the low earth cast,
While beauty's trembling tints fade fast away.
But who is she, that from the mountain's head
Comes gaily on, cheering the child of earth?
The walks of woe bloom bright beneath her tread,
And Nature smiles with renovated mirth?
'Tis Health! She comes: and, hark! the vallies ring,
And, hark! the echoing hills repeat the sound:
She sheds the new-blown blossoms of the spring,
And all their fragrance floats her footsteps round.
And, hark! she whispers in the zephyr's voice,
Lift up thy head, fair floweret, and rejoice!

A shallow stream, from fountains
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lake ward Bearcamp River;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.

Alone the dead trees yielding
To the dull axe Time is wielding,
The shy mink and the otter,
And golden leaves and red,
By countless autumns shed,
Had floated down its water.

From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
Came a skilled seafaring man,
With his dory, to the right place;
Over hill and plain he brought her,
Where the boatless Beareamp water
Comes winding down from White-Face.

Quoth the skipper: “Ere she floats forth;
I’m sure my pretty boat’s worth,
At least, a name as pretty.”
On her painted side he wrote it,
And the flag that o...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)
        (What the Carpenter Said)


    The moon's a cottage with a door.
    Some folks can see it plain.
    Look, you may catch a glint of light,
    A sparkle through the pane,
    Showing the place is brighter still
    Within, though bright without.
    There, at a cosy open fire
    Strange babes are grouped about.
    The children of the wind and tide -
    The urchins of the sky,
    Drying their wings from storms and things
    So they again can fly.

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? - Are they alive? - Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the...

A timid child with heart oppressed
By images of sin,
I slunk into the bush for rest,
And found my fairy kin.

The fire I carried kept me warm:
The friendly air was chill.
The laggards of the lowing storm
Trailed gloom along the hill.

I watched the crawling monsters melt
And saw their shadows wane
As on my satin skin I felt
The fingers of the rain.

The sunlight was a golden beer,
I drank a magic draught;
The sky was clear and, void of fear,
I stood erect and laughed.

And sudden laughter, idly free,
About me trilled and rang,
And love was shed from every tree,
And little bushes sang.

The bay of conscience’ bloody hound
That tears the world apart
Has never drowned the silent sound
Within my happy hea...

Oft is the medal faithful to its trust
When temples, columns, towers, are laid in dust;
And 'tis a common ordinance of fate
That things obscure and small outlive the great:
Hence, when yon mansion and the flowery trim
Of this fair garden, and its alleys dim,
And all its stately trees, are passed away,
This little Niche, unconscious of decay,
Perchance may still survive. And be it known
That it was scooped within the living stone,
Not by the sluggish and ungrateful pains
Of labourer plodding for his daily gains,
But by an industry that wrought in love;
With help from female hands, that proudly strove
To aid the work, what time these walks and bowers
Were shaped to cheer dark winter's lonely hours.

    I.


A    dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof,
Of the entangling waltz.    Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark to the music!    How beneath the strain
Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs
One fundamental chord of constant pain,
The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs.
So yearns, though all the dancing waves rejoice,
The troubled sea's disconsolate, deep voice.



    II.


Who shall proclaim the golden fable false
Of Orpheus' miracles?    This subtl...

Hark! ah, the nightingale
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark! what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain
That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain

Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,
Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse
With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes
The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame?
Dost thou once more ass...

Tan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle - k.t.l.

When winds that move not its calm surface sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind. - But when the roar
Of Ocean's gray abyss resounds, and foam
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
I turn from the drear aspect to the home
Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot
Has chosen. - But I my languid limbs will fling
Beneath the plane, where the brook's murmuring
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.

Among the mountains were we nursed, loved Stream
Thou near the eagle's nest, within brief sail,
I, of his bold wing floating on the gale,
Where thy deep voice could lull me! Faint the beam
Of human life when first allowed to gleam
On mortal notice. Glory of the vale,
Such thy meek outset, with a crown, though frail,
Kept in perpetual verdure by the steam
Of thy soft breath! Less vivid wreath entwined
Nemaean victor's brow; less bright was worn,
Meed of some Roman chief, in triumph borne
With captives chained; and shedding from his car
The sunset splendours of a finished war
Upon the proud enslavers of mankind!

The cat she walks on padded claws,
The wolf on the hills lays stealthy paws,
Feathered birds in the rain-sweet sky
At their ease in the air, flit low, flit high.

The oak's blind, tender roots pierce deep,
His green crest towers, dimmed in sleep,
Under the stars whose thrones are set
Where never prince hath journeyed yet.

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their...

"Come, sit thee by my side once more,
    'Tis long since thus we' met;
And though our dream of love is o'er,
    Its sweetness lingers yet.
Its transient day has long been past,
    Its flame has ceased to burn, -
But Memory holds its spirit fast,
    Safe in her sacred urn.

"I will not chide thy wanderings,
    Nor ask why thou couldst flee
A heart whose deep affection's springs
    Poured forth such love for thee!
We may not curb the restless mind,
    Nor teach the wayward heart
To love against its will, nor bind
    It with the chains of art.

"I would but tell thee how, in tears
    And bitterness, my soul
Has yearned with dreams, through long, long, years,
    Which it could not control.
And how the thought that clingeth t...

Lines Found Among The Papers Of A Harvard Undergraduate

The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
Is all my Latin, all my Greek;
The only sciences I know
Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet geography;
No scholarship have I but such
As teaches me to love her much.

Why should I strive to read the skies,
Who know the midnight of her eyes?
Why should I go so very far
To learn what heavenly bodies are!
Not Berenice's starry hair
With Fanny's tresses can compare;
Not Venus on a cloudless night,
Enslaving Science with her light,
Ever reveals so much as when
SHE stares and droops her lids again.

If Nature's secrets are forbidden
To mortals, she may keep them hidden.
AEons and aeons we pro...

Matlock! amid thy hoary-hanging views,
Thy glens that smile sequestered, and thy nooks
Which yon forsaken crag all dark o'erlooks;
Once more I court the long neglected Muse,
As erst when by the mossy brink and falls
Of solitary Wainsbeck, or the side
Of Clysdale's cliffs, where first her voice she tried,
I strayed a pensive boy. Since then, the thralls
That wait life's upland road have chilled her breast,
And much, as much they might, her wing depressed.
Wan Indolence, resigned, her deadening hand
Laid on her heart, and Fancy her cold wand
Dropped at the frown of fortune; yet once more
I call her, and once more her converse sweet,
'Mid the still limits of this wild retreat,
I woo; if yet delightful as of yore
My heart she may revisit, nor deny
The soothin...

    Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,
    Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,
    With bands of reeds like thronged green swords
        Guarding the mirrored sky;
    And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills
    To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,
    And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,
        Trout flit or lie.

    I know those rivers that peacefully glide
    Past old towers and shaven gardens,
    Where mottled walls rise from the water
        And mills all streaked with flour;
    And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,
    That flow with a stately tidal motion
    Towards their destined estuaries
        Full of the pride of power;

    Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,
    Tweed with his g...