Sadness

    Friend, old friend in the Manse by the fireside sitting,
        Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log;
    You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
    Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog.

    Silent here in the south sit I; and, leaning,
        One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand;
    Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
        Rather I read in the shadows and understand.

    Dear, kind she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
        Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:

Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
        Lit up a face in the leathern dusk of the shelves.

    Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
        Yet there is one gives back to the wint...

From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily"


O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung silvering long windows of your room,
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for I know not what!
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's
Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:
The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:
Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:
And underneath her window b...

I.

Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.

Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken
Years upon years.

II.

Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar
Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears
Heeds not the sound that it heard of love's blithe psalter
Years upon years.

Only the sense of a heart t...

All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold;
And through the snow the muffled waters fell;
The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell,
Like some old hermit whose last bead is told.
At eve the wind woke, and the snow clouds rolled
Aside to leave the fierce sky visible;
Harsh as an iron landscape of wan hell
The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold.
And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one at
My window wailing: now a little child
Crying outside my door; and now the long
Howl of some starved beast down the flue. I sat
And knew 'twas Winter with his madman song
Of miseries on which he stared and smiled.

The shower is past, and the sky
O'erhead is both mild and serene,
Save where a few drops from on high,
Like gems, twinkle over the green:
And glowing fair, in the black north,
The rainbow o'erarches the cloud;
The sun in his glory comes forth,
And larks sweetly warble aloud.

That dismally grim northern sky
Says God in His vengeance once frowned,
And opened His flood-gates on high,
Till obstinate sinners were drowned:
The lively bright south, and that bow,
Say all this dread vengeance is o'er;
These colours that smilingly glow
Say we shall be deluged no more.

Ever blessed be those innocent days,
Ever sweet their remembrance to me;
When often, in silent amaze,
Enraptured, I'd gaze upon thee!
Whilst arching adown the black sky

All green and fair the Summer lies,
Just budded from the bud of Spring,
With tender blue of wistful skies,
And winds which softly sing.

Her clock has struck its morning hours;
Noon nears--the flowery dial is true;
But still the hot sun veils its powers,
In deference to the dew.

Yet there amid the fresh new green,
Amid the young broods overhead,
A single scarlet branch is seen,
Swung like a banner red;

Tinged with the fatal hectic flush
Which, when October frost is in the near,
Flames on each dying tree and bush,
To deck the dying year.

And now the sky seems not so blue,
The yellow sunshine pales its ray,
A sorrowful, prophetic hue
Lies on the radiant day,

As mid the bloom and tenderness
I catch that scarle...

Unmoor the skiff, - unmoor the skiff, -
    The night wind's sigh is on the air,
And o'er the highest Alpine cliff,
    The pale moon rises, broad and clear.
The murmuring waves are tranquil now,
    And on their breast each twinkling star
With which Night gems her dusky brow,
    Flings its mild radiance from afar.

Put off upon the deep blue sea,
    And leave the banquet and the ball;
For solitude, when shared with thee,
    Is dearer than the carnival.
And in my heart are thoughts of love,
    Such thoughts as lips should only breathe,
When the bright stars keep watch above,
    And the calm waters sleep beneath!

The tale I have for thee, perchance,
    May to thine eye anew impart
The long-lost gladness of its glance,
    And soo...

And only where the forest fires have sped,
    Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
    It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief,
    Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
    And life revives, and blossoms once again.

They prize not most the opulence of June
Who from the year's beginning to its close
Dwell, where unfading verdure tireless grows,
And where sweet summer's harp is kept in tune.
We must have listened to the winter's rune,
And felt impatient longings for the rose,
Ere its full radiance on our vision glows,
Or with its fragrant soul, we can commune.

Not they most prize life's blessings, and delights,
Who walk in safe and sunny paths alway.
But those, who, groping in the darkness, borrow
Pale rays from hope, to lead them through the night,
And in the long, long watches wait for day.
He knows not joy who has not first known sorrow.

    Beauty beloved, who hast my heart inspired,
    Seen from afar, or with thy face concealed,
    Save, when in visions of the night revealed,
    Or seen in daydreams bright,
    When all the fields are filled with light,
    And Nature's smile is sweet,
    Say, hast thou blessed
    Some golden age of innocence,
    And floatest, now, a shadow, o'er the earth?
    Or hath Fate's envious doom
    Reserved thee for some happier day to come?

    To see thee e'er alive,
    No hope remains to me;
    Unless perchance, when from this body free,
    My wandering spirit, lone,
    O'er some new path, to some new world hath flown.
    E'en here, at first, I, at the dawn
    Of this, my day, so dreary and forlorn,
    Sought thee, to guide me on my...

High on a mountain of enamell'd head,
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven,
Of rosy head that, towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve, at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light,
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die,
Adorni...

Just as a little olive offshoot grows
Beneath its orchard elders' shady rows,
No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb,
Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim -
Then if the busy gardener, weeding out
Sharp thorns and nettles, cuts the little sprout,
It fades and, losing all its living hue,
Drops by the mother from whose roots it grew:
So was it with my Ursula, my dear;
A little space she grew beside us here,
Then Death came, breathing pestilence, and she
Fell, stricken lifeless, by her parent tree.
Persephone, Persephone, this flow
Of barren tears! How couldst thou will it so?

I know not why my soul is rack'd
Why I ne'er smile as was my wont:
I only know that, as a fact,
I don't.
I used to roam o'er glen and glade
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
And not unfrequently I made
A joke.

A minstrel's fire within me burn'd,
I'd sing, as one whose heart must break,
Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd
To shake.
All day I sang; of love, of fame,
Of fights our fathers fought of yore,
Until the thing almost became
A bore.

I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
'Tis that I can't remember how
They go.
I could not range the hills till high
Above me stood the summer moon:
And as to dancing, I could fly
As soon.

The sports, to which with boyish glee
I sprang erewhil...

The winds have grown articulate in thee,
And voiced again the wail of ancient woe
That smote upon the winds of long ago:
The cries of Trojan women as they flee,
The quivering moan of pale Andromache,
Now lifted loud with pain and now brought low.
It is the soul of sorrow that we know,
As in a shell the soul of all the sea.
So sometimes in the compass of a song,
Unknown to him who sings, thro' lips that live,
The voiceless dead of long-forgotten lands
Proclaim to us their heaviness and wrong
In sweeping sadness of the winds that give
Thy strings no rest from weariless wild hands.

The boom and blare of the big brass band is cheering to my heart
And I like the smell of the trampled grass and elephants and hay.
I take off my hat to the acrobat with his delicate, strong art,
And the motley mirth of the chalk-faced clown drives all my care away.

I wish I could feel as they must feel, these players brave and fair,
Who nonchalantly juggle death before a staring throng.
It must be fine to walk a line of silver in the air
And to cleave a hundred feet of space with a gesture like a song.

Sir Henry Irving never knew a keener, sweeter thrill
Than that which stirs the breast of him who turns his painted face
To the circling crowd who laugh aloud and clap hands with a will
As a tribute to the clown who won the great wheel-barrow race.

Now, one shall w...

    Sensibility how charming,
        Thou, my friend, canst truly tell:
    But distress with horrors arming,
        Thou host also known too well.

    Fairest flower, behold the lily,
        Blooming in the sunny ray:
    Let the blast sweep o'er the valley,
        See it prostrate on the clay.

    Hear the woodlark charm the forest,
        Telling o'er his little joys:
    Hapless bird! a prey the surest,
        To each pirate of the skies.

    Dearly bought, the hidden treasure,
        Finer feeling can bestow;
    Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure,
        Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

    "Life's day is too brief," he said at dawn,
    "I would it were ten times longer,
    For great tasks wait for me further on."
    At noonday the wish was stronger.

    His place was in the thick of the strife,
    And hopes were nearing completeness,
    While one was crowning the joys of life
    With love's own wonderful sweetness.

    "Life's day is too brief for all it contains,
    The triumphs, the fighting, the proving,
    The hopes and desires, the joys and the pains -
    Too brief for the hating and loving."

            *        *        *        *        *

    To-night he sits in the shadows gray,
    While heavily sorrow presses.
    O the long, long day! O the weary day,
    With its failures and successes!

Mildewed and gray the marble stairs
Rise from their balustraded urns
To where a chiseled satyr glares
From a luxuriant bed of ferns;

A pebbled walk that labyrinths
'Twixt parallels of verdant box
To where, broad-based on grotesque plinths,
'Mid cushions of moss-padded rocks,

Rises a ruined pleasure-house,
Of shattered column, broken dome,
Where, reveling in thick carouse,
The buoyant ivy makes its home.

And here from bank, and there from bed,
Down the mad rillet's jubilant lymph,
The lavish violet's odors shed
In breathings of a fountain nymph.

And where, in lichened hoariness,
The broken marble dial-plate
Basks in the Summer's sultriness,
Rich houri roses palpitate.

Voluptuous, languid with perfumes,
As w...