Sadness

Call me no more,
As heretofore,
The music of a feast;
Since now, alas!
The mirth that was
In me is dead or ceas'd.

Before I went,
To banishment,
Into the loathed west,
I could rehearse
A lyric verse,
And speak it with the best.

But time, ay me!
Has laid, I see,
My organ fast asleep,
And turn'd my voice
Into the noise
Of those that sit and weep.

Betimes, I seem to see in dreams
What when awake I may not see;
Can night be God's more than the day?
Do stars, not suns, best light his way?
Who knoweth? Blended lights and shades
Arch aisles down which He walks to me.

I hear him coming in the night
Afar, and yet I know not how;
His steps make music low and sweet;
Sometimes the nails are in his feet;
Does darkness give God better light
Than day, to find a weary brow?

Does darkness give man brighter rays
To find the God, in sunshine lost?
Must shadows wrap the trysting-place
Where God meets hearts with gentlest grace?
Who knoweth it? God hath His ways
For every soul here sorrow-tossed.

The hours of day are like the waves
That fret against the shores of sin:
They touch the ...

When breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.

Yet pure its waters, its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light,
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams...

'The oppression of the tumult, wrath and scorn
The tribulation and the gleaming blades'
Such is the impetuous spirit that pervades
The song of Taliesin; Ours shall mourn
The 'unarmed' Host who by their prayers would turn
The sword from Bangor's walls, and guard the store
Of Aboriginal and Roman lore,
And Christian monuments, that now must burn
To senseless ashes. Mark! how all things swerve
From their known course, or vanish like a dream;
Another language spreads from coast to coast;
Only perchance some melancholy Stream
And some indignant Hills old names preserve,
When laws, and creeds, and people all are lost!

I.

With plumes to which the dewdrops cling,
Wide waves the morn her golden wing;
With countless variegated beams
The empurpled orient glows and gleams;
A gorgeous mass of crimson clouds
The mountain's soaring summit shrouds;
Along the wave the blue mist creeps,
    The towering forest trees are stirred
By the low wind that o'er them sweeps,
    And with the matin song of bird,
    The hum of early bee is heard,
Hailing with his shrill, tiny horn,
The coming of the bright-eyed morn;
And, with the day-beam's earliest dawn,
    Her couch the fair Mazelli quits,
And gaily, fleetly as a fawn,
    Along the wildwood paths she flits,
Hieing from leafy bower to bower,
Culling from each its bud and flower,
Of brightest hue and sweetest breath,...

Elemental drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!

As I ebb'd with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum...

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,<...

(WALTER AND FREDDIE.)


From morn to eve, from evening unto morning,
    I mourn and cannot rest;
So mourns the mother bird when home returning
    She finds an empty nest.

I mourn the little children of my dwelling,
    That are forever gone,
Sorrows that mothers feel my heart is swelling,
    And so I make my moan.

One little blossom on my bosom faded,
    And passed from me away,
But near my door the drooping willows shaded
    My little boys at play

My boys that came with flying feet to meet me,
    And questions wondrous wise,
And bits of news which they had brought to greet me,
    And see my glad surprise

Bitter for sweet no human hand can alter
    Nor bid one sorrow pass,
With sudden stroke our darling ...

That summer sun, whose genial glow
Now cheers my drooping spirit so
Must cold and distant be,
And only light our northern clime
With feeble ray, before the time
I long so much to see.

And this soft whispering breeze that now
So gently cools my fevered brow,
This too, alas, must turn
To a wild blast whose icy dart
Pierces and chills me to the heart,
Before I cease to mourn.

And these bright flowers I love so well,
Verbena, rose and sweet bluebell,
Must droop and die away.
Those thick green leaves with all their shade
And rustling music, they must fade
And every one decay.

But if the sunny summer time
And woods and meadows in their prime
Are sweet to them that roam
Far sweeter is the winter bare
With long dark nigh...

Mourn that which will not come again,
    The joy, the strength of early years.
    Bow down thy head, and let thy tears
Water the grave where hope lies slain.

For tears are like a summer rain,
    To murmur in a mourner's ears,
    To soften all the field of fears,
To moisten valleys parched with pain.

And though thy tears will not awake
    What lies beneath of young or fair
            And sleeps so sound it draws no breath,
Yet, watered thus, the sod may break
    In flowers which sweeten all the air,
            And fill with life the place of death.

Once again my songs I sing thee,
    Now the spell is broken;
Brothers, yet again I bring thee
    Songs of love the token.
Of my joy and of my sorrow
    Gladly, sadly bringing;--
Summer not a song would borrow--
    Winter sets me singing.

O when life turns sad and lonely,
    When our joys are dead;
When are heard the ravens only
    In the trees o'erhead;
When the stormwind on the bowers
    Wreaks its wicked will,
When the frost paints lying flowers,
    How should I be still?

When the clouds are low descending,
    And the sun is drowned;
When the winter knows no ending,
    And the cold is crowned;
When with evil gloom oppressed
    Lie the ruins bare;
When a sigh escapes the breast,
    Takes us unaware;

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way -- the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire. a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy --
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood s...

    Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
        And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
        And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
    Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
    The summer through, and each departing wing,
        And all the nests that the bared branches show,
        And all winds that in any weather blow,
    And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

    You go no more on your exultant feet
        Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
    Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
        Of a bird's wings too high in air to view,--
    But you were something more than young and sweet
        And fair,--and the long year remembers you.

I.

Sweetly to sleep beneath the fresh green turf
    They laid the loved and lost away;
A chair is vacant by the household hearth,
    And shadow-vested Sorrow's there to-day.


II.

The tender hands that guided us in youth
    Are folded now upon the gentle breast,
And those dear eyes whose depths were love and truth
    Are closed to open in eternal rest.


III.

Through simple faith and duty well performed,
    A crown of light forever shall be hers;
And though with bitter grief and anguish mourned,
    A consolation gleams through blinding tears!

WILLIAM.
When I meet Peggy in my morning walk,
She first salutes the morn, then stays to talk:
The biggest secret she will not refuse,
But freely tells me all the village-news;
And pleas'd am I, can I but haply force
Some new-made tale to lengthen the discourse,
For--O so pleasing is her company,
That hours, like minutes, in her presence fly!
I'm happy then, nor can her absence e'er
Raise in my heart the least distrust or fear.

ROBIN.
When Mary meets me I find nought to say,
She hangs her head, I turn another way;
Sometimes (but never till the maid's gone by)
"Good morning!" faulters, weaken'd by a sigh;
Confounded I remain, but yet delight
To look back on her till she's out of sight.
Then, then's the time that absence does torment:
I jeer...

O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen!
When shall I see such rest again?

I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injures ...

What tho' no sculptur'd monument proclaim
    Thy fate-yet Albert in my breast I bear
Inshrin'd the sad remembrance; yet thy name
    Will fill my throbbing bosom. When DESPAIR
The child of murdered HOPE, fed on thy heart,
    Loved honored friend, I saw thee sink forlorn
Pierced to the soul by cold Neglect's keen dart,
    And Penury's hard ills, and pitying Scorn,
And the dark spectre of departed JOY
    Inhuman MEMORY. Often on thy grave
Love I the solitary hour to employ
Thinking on other days; and heave the sigh
    Responsive, when I mark the high grass wave
Sad sounding as the cold breeze rustles by.

October - and the skies are cool and gray
O'er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf,
Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf.
The dignity of woods in rich decay
Accords full well with this majestic grief
That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day,
Whose afternoon is hush'd, and wintry brief
Only a robin sings from any spray.

And night sends up her pale cold moon, and spills
White mist around the hollows of the hills,
Phantoms of firth or lake; the peasant sees
His cot and stockyard, with the homestead trees,
Islanded; but no foolish terror thrills
His perfect harvesting; he sleeps at ease.