Nature

Out alone in the winter rain,
Intent on giving and taking pain.
But never was I far out of sight
Of a certain upper-window light.
The light was what it was all about:
I would not go in till the light went out;
It would not go out till I came in.
Well, we should wee which one would win,
We should see which one would be first to yield.
The world was black invisible field.
The rain by rights was snow for cold.
The wind was another layer of mold.
But the strangest thing: in the thick old thatch,
Where summer birds had been given hatch,
had fed in chorus, and lived to fledge,
Some still were living in hermitage.
And as I passed along the eaves,
So low I brushed the straw with my sleeves,
I flushed birds out of hole after hole,
Into the darkness. It g...

When the Summer sun is shining,
    And the green things push and grow,
Oft my heart runs over measure,
With its flowing fount of pleasure,
    As I feel the sea winds blow;
    Ah, then life is good, I know.

And I think of sweet birds building,
    And of children fair and free;
And of glowing sun-kissed meadows,
And of tender twilight shadows,
    And of boats upon the sea.
    Oh, then life seems good to me!

Then unbidden and unwanted,
    Come the darker, sadder sights;
City shop and stifling alley,
Where misfortune's children rally;
    And the hot crime-breeding nights,
    And the dearth of God's delights.

And I think of narrow prisons
    Where unhappy songbirds dwell,
And of cruel pens and cages
Where some ca...

"Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes
Angulus Ridet."
--Hor. ii. 6.


It was an elm-tree root of yore,
With lordly trunk, before they lopped it,
And weighty, said those five who bore
Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it
Not once or twice, before it lay.
With two young pear-trees to protect it,
Safe where the Poet hoped some day
The curious pilgrim would inspect it.

He saw him with his Poet's eye,
The stately Maori, turned from etching
The ruin of St. Paul's, to try
Some object better worth the sketching:--
He saw him, and it nerved his strength
What time he hacked and hewed and scraped it,
Until the monster grew at length
The Master-piece to which he shaped it.

To wit--a goodly garden seat,
And fit alike for Shah or Sop...

Your head, your gesture, your air,
are lovely, like a lovely landscape:
laughter’s alive, in your face,
a fresh breeze in a clear atmosphere.

The dour passer-by you brush past there,
is dazzled by health in flight,
flashing like a brilliant light
from your arms and shoulders.

The resounding colours
with which you sprinkle your dress,
inspire the spirits of poets
with thoughts of dancing flowers.

Those wild clothes are the emblem
of your brightly-hued mind:
madcap by whom I’m terrified,
I hate you, and love you, the same!

Sometimes in a lovely garden
where I trailed my listlessness,
I’ve felt the sunlight sear my breast
like some ironic weapon:

and Spring’s green presence
brought such humiliation
I’ve ...

I ask'd thee oft what poets thou hast read,
And lik'st the best?Still thou repli'st, The dead.
I shall, ere long, with green turfs cover'd be;
Then sure thou'lt like, or thou wilt envy, me.

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
    In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
    Melted away in mist.

Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes
    Seemed peopled with the shapes
Of those whom I had known in days departed,
Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams
    On faces seen in dreams.

A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate shore
    Stood lonely as before;
And the wild-roses of the promontory
Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed
    Their petals of pale red.

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things the...

The breathing freshness of the shining Morn,
    Whose beams glance yellow on the distant fields,
    A sweet, unutterable pleasure yields
    To my dejected sense, that turns with scorn
From the light joys of Dissipation born.
    Sacred Remembrance all my bosom shields
    Against each glittering lance she gaily wields,
    Warring with fond Regrets, that silent mourn
The Heart's dear comforts lost. - But, NATURE, thou,
    Thou art resistless still; - and yet I ween
    Thy present balmy gales, and vernal blow,
To MEMORY owe the magic of their scene;
    For with such fragrant breath, such orient rays,
    Shone the soft mornings of my youthful days.

Three miles of trees it is: and I
Came through the woods that waited, dumb,
For the cool summer dusk to come;
And lingered there to watch the sky
Up which the gradual splendor clomb.

A tree-toad quavered in a tree;
And then a sudden whippoorwill
Called overhead, so wildly shrill
The sleeping wood, it seemed to me,
Cried out and then again was still.

Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight
An owl took; and, at drowsy strife,
The cricket tuned its faery fife;
And like a ghost-flower, silent white,
The wood-moth glimmered into life.

And in the dead wood everywhere
The insects ticked, or bored below
The rotted bark; and, glow on glow,
The lambent fireflies here and there
Lit up their jack-o'-lantern show.

I heard a ...

    O you who lose the art of hope,
    Whose temples seem to shrine a lie,
    Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear,
    Who weep that Liberty must die,
    Turn to the little prairie towns,
    Your higher hope shall yet begin.
    On every side awaits you there
    Some gate where glory enters in.

    Yet when I see the flocks of girls,
    Watching the Sunday train go thro'
    (As tho' the whole wide world went by)
    With eyes that long to travel too,
    I sigh, despite my soul made glad
    By cloudy dresses and brown hair,
    Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn
    By thundering commerce, fierce and bare.
    Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be:
    Kings of the grove, their lovers strong.
    Why are they not inspired,...

Autumn, thy rushing blast
    Sweeps in wild eddies by,
Whirling the sear leaves past,
    Beneath my feet, to die.
Nature her requiem sings
    In many a plaintive tone,
As to the wind she flings
    Sad music, all her own.

The murmur of the rill
    Is hoarse and sullen now,
And the voice of joy is still
    In grove and leafy bough.
There's not a single wreath,
    Of all Spring's thousand flowers,
To strew her bier in death,
    Or deck her faded bowers.

I hear a spirit sigh
    Where the meeting pines resound,
Which tells me all must die,
    As the leaf dies on the ground.
The brightest hopes we cherish,
    Which own a mortal trust,
But bloom awhile to perish
    And moulder in the dust.

Sweep on...

    Wandering from the parent bough,
    Little, trembling leaf,
    Whither goest thou?
    "From the beech, where I was born,
    By the north wind was I torn.
    Him I follow in his flight,
    Over mountain, over vale,
    From the forest to the plain,
    Up the hill, and down again.
    With him ever on the way:
    More than that, I cannot say.
    Where I go, must all things go,
    Gentle, simple, high and low:
    Leaves of laurel, leaves of rose;
    Whither, heaven only knows!"

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson that in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties serv’d in one,
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity
Of Toil unsever’d from Tranquillity:
Of Labour, that in still advance outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in Repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man’s senseless uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting:
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil;
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone

Strange little spring, by channels past our telling,
Gentle, resistless, welling, welling, welling;
Through what blind ways, we know not whence
You darkling come to dance and dimple -
Strange little spring!
Nature hath no such innocence,
And no more secret thing -
So mysterious and so simple;
Earth hath no such fairy daughter
Of all her witchcraft shapes of water.
When all the land with summer burns,
And brazen noon rides hot and high,
And tongues are parched and grasses dry,
Still are you green and hushed with ferns,
And cool as some old sanctuary;
Still are you brimming o'er with dew
And stars that dipped their feet in you.

And I believe when none is by,
Only the young moon in the sky -
The Greeks of old were right about you -
A nai...

By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting,
By furrowed glade and dell,
To feverish men thy calm, sweet face uplifting,
Thou stayest them to tell

The delicate thought that cannot find expression,
For ruder speech too fair,
That, like thy petals, trembles in possession,
And scatters on the air.

The miner pauses in his rugged labor,
And, leaning on his spade,
Laughingly calls unto his comrade-neighbor
To see thy charms displayed.

But in his eyes a mist unwonted rises,
And for a moment clear
Some sweet home face his foolish thought surprises,
And passes in a tear,

Some boyish vision of his Eastern village,
Of uneventful toil,
Where golden harvests followed quiet tillage
Above a peaceful soil.

One moment only; f...

Blood-Coloured oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,
And broom-sedge strips of smoky-pink and pearl gray clumps of grass
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain pools gleam like glass.

From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds, the sowers of the Lord, with thunderous footsteps stride;
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.

The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell
Glimmers; while, wrapped in withered dreams, the wet autumnal smell
Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field an...

Oh tell me not of the lands so old
Where the Orient treasures its hills of gold,
And the rivers lie in the sun's bright rays
Forever singing the old world's praise.
Nor proudly boast of the gardens grand
That spring to earth at a king's command;
There are treasures here in the far great West
That rival the hills on the Orient's crest.

Far from the sight of the dusty town
Like a perfect gem in a golden crown,
Lies a beautiful garden vast and fair,
Where the wild birds sing in the evening air,
And the dews fall down in a silent shower
On the fragrant head of each beaming flower;
While far and near o'er the land sun-kissed,
Hangs the roseate veil of the sunset mist.

Under the shade of the western wall
There's a glimmer of roses fair and tall,

    What art thou doing here, O Imagination?    Go away I entreat thee by the gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not.    But thou art come according to thy old fashion.    I am not angry with thee - only go away.
    - Marcus Antoninus

Lilac hazes veil the skies.
    Languid sighs
Breathes the mild, caressing air.
Pink as coral's branching sprays,
    Orchard ways
With the blossomed peach are fair.


Sunshine, cordial as a kiss,
    Poureth bliss
In this craving soul of mine,
And my heart her flower-cup
    Lifteth up,
Thirsting for the draught divine.


Swift the liquid golden flame
    Through my frame
Sets my throbbing veins afire.
Bright, alluring dreams arise,
    Brim mine eyes
With the tears of strong desi...

How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze
To him who flies
From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam,
Till far behind him like a hideous dream
The close dark city lies

Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng
The marble floor
Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din
Of the world's madness let me gather in
My better thoughts once more.

Oh, once again revive, while on my ear
The cry of Gain
And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away,
Ye blessed memories of my early day
Like sere grass wet with rain!

Once more let God's green earth and sunset air
Old feelings waken;
Through weary years of toil and strife and ill,
Oh, let me feel that my good angel still
Hath not his trust forsaken.

And well do time and p...