Sadness

When the rough storm roars round the peasant's cot,
And bursting thunders roll their awful din;
While shrieks the frighted night bird o'er the spot,
Oh! what serenity remains within!
For there Contentment, Health, and Peace abide,
And pillow'd age, with calm eye fix'd above;
Labor's bold son, his blithe and blooming bride,
And lisping innocence, and filial love.
To such a scene let proud Ambition turn,
Whose aching breast conceals it's secret woe;
Then shall his fireful spirit melt, and mourn
The mild enjoyments it can never know;
Then shall he feel the littleness of state,
And sigh that Fortune e'er had made him great.

    Do not be distant with me, do not be
        Angry because I drank deep of your wine,
    But treat that laughing matter laughingly
        Because I am a poet, and incline
    By nature and by art to jollity.

    Always I loved to see, I will aver,
        The good red tide lip at the flagon's brim,
    Sitting half fool and half philosopher,
        Chatting with every kind of her and him,
    And shrugged at sneer of money-gatherer.

    Often enough I trudge by hedge and wall,
        Too often there's no money in my purse,
    Nor malice in my mind ever at all,
        And for my songs no person is the worse
    But I who give all of my store to all.

    If busybody spoke to you of it,
        Say, kindly man, if kindly man do live:

THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN

I

At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea,
    Within the sandy bar,
At sunset of a summer's day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
    The good ship Valdemar.

The sunbeams danced upon the waves,
    And played along her side;
And through the cabin windows streamed
In ripples of golden light, that seemed
    The ripple of the tide.

There sat the captain with his friends,
    Old skippers brown and hale,
Who smoked and grumbled o'er their grog,
And talked of iceberg and of fog,
    Of calm and storm and gale.

And one was spinning a sailor's yarn
    About Klaboterman,
The Kobold of the sea; a spright
Invisible to mortal sight,
    Who o'er the rigging ran.

Sometimes he hammered in the ...

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd! O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.

It is so long, indeed, since I have written,
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,
That these first words I write seem cold and strange.
Are you the man I knew, or have you altered?
Altered, of course, just as I too have altered,
And whether towards each other, or more apart,
We cannot say . . . I’ve just re-read your letter,
Not through forgetfulness, but more for pleasure.

Pondering much on all you say in it
Of mystic consciousness, divine conversion,
The sense of oneness with the infinite,
Faith in the world, its beauty, and its purpose ...

Come [Harriet]! sweet is the hour,
Soft Zephyrs breathe gently around,
The anemone's night-boding flower,
Has sunk its pale head on the ground.

'Tis thus the world's keenness hath torn,
Some mild heart that expands to its blast,
'Tis thus that the wretched forlorn,
Sinks poor and neglected at last. -

The world with its keenness and woe,
Has no charms or attraction for me,
Its unkindness with grief has laid low,
The heart which is faithful to thee.
The high trees that wave past the moon,
As I walk in their umbrage with you,
All declare I must part with you soon,
All bid you a tender adieu! -

Then [Harriet]! dearest farewell,
You and I love, may ne'er meet again;
These woods and these meadows can tell
How soft and how sweet was t...

A treasured link of shining pearls,
    A by-gone melody,
A shower of tears with smiles between--
    And this is memory.
A thing so light a breath of air
    May waft its life away;
A thing so dark that moments of pain
    Seem like some endless day.

A careless word may wound the heart,
    And quickly it may die;
Yet in the seas of memory
    Forever it will lie.
And sometimes when the tide rolls back
    Its waves of joy and pain,
That careless word, though long forgot,
    Will wound the heart again.

The restless seas of memory
    Are vast and deep and wide;
And every deed that we can know
    Sleeps in that tireless tide.
Upon the thoughtless lives of men
    Its waves in mockery roll;
And sweep a might of bitter...

I
Days dawn on us that make amends for many
Sometimes,
When heaven and earth seem sweeter even than any
Man's rhymes.
Light had not all been quenched in France, or quelled
In Greece,
Had Homer sung not, or had Hugo held
His peace.
Had Sappho's self not left her word thus long
For token,
The sea round Lesbos yet in waves of song
Had spoken.

II
And yet these days of subtler air and finer
Delight,
When lovelier looks the darkness, and diviner
The light -
The gift they give of all these golden hours,
Whose urn
Pours forth reverberate rays or shadowing showers
In turn -
Clouds, beams, and winds that make the live day's track
Seem living -
What were they did no spirit give them back
Thanksgiving?

III

Ah! might I range each hallow'd bower and glade
    Musæus cultur'd, many a raptur'd sigh
    Wou'd that dear, local consciousness supply
    Beneath his willow, in the grotto's shade,
Whose roof his hand with ores and shells inlaid.
    How sweet to watch, with reverential eye,
    Thro' the sparr'd arch, the streams he oft survey'd,
    Thine, blue Thamésis, gently wandering by!
This is the POET's triumph, and it towers
    O'er Life's pale ills, his consciousness of powers
    That lift his memory from Oblivion's gloom,
Secure a train of these heart-thrilling hours
    By his idea deck'd in rapture's bloom,
    For Spirits rightly touch'd, thro' ages yet to come.

Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And Love - a lad with broken wing;
And Pity, too:
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.

Aye, music hath small sense.
And a time's soon told,
And Earth is old,
And my poor wits are dense;
Yet I have secrets, - dark, my dear,
To breathe you all: Come near.
And lest some hideous listener tells,
I'll ring the bells.

They're all at war!
Yes, yes, their bodies go
'Neath burning sun and icy star
To chaunted songs of woe,
Dragging cold cannon through a mire
Of rain and blood and spouting fire,
The new moon glinting hard on eyes
Wide with insanities!

Hush!... I use words
I hardly know the meaning of;
And the mute birds
Are glancing ...

See, whilst Thou weep'st, fair Cloe, see
The World in Sympathy with Thee.
The chearful Birds no longer sing,
Each drops his Head, and hangs his Wing.
The Clouds have bent their Bosom lower,
And shed their Sorrows in a Show'r.
The Brooks beyond their Limits flow;
And louder Murmurs speak their Woe.
The Nymphs and Swains adopt Thy Cares:
They heave Thy Sighs, and weep Thy Tears.
Fantastic Nymph! that Grief should move
Thy Heart, obdurate against Love.
Strange Tears! whose Pow'r can soften All,
But That dear Breast on which they fall.

You say 'tis plain that poets feign,
    And from the truth depart;
They write with ease what fibs they please,
    With artifice, not art;
Dearer to you the simply true--
    The fact without the fancy--
Than this false play of colours gay,
    So very vague and chancy.
No doubt 'tis well the truth to tell
    In scientific coteries;
But I'll be bold to say she's cold,
    Excepting to her votaries.
The false disguise of tawdry lies
    May hide sweet Nature's face;
But in her form the blood runs warm,
    As in the human race;
And in the rose the dew-drop glows,
    And, o'er the seas serene,
The sunshine white still breaks in light
    Of yellow, blue, and green.
In thousand rays the fancy plays;
    The feelings rise and bubble;

A yellow leaf from the darkness
Hops like a frog before me.
Why should I start and stand still?

I was watching the woman that bore me
Stretched in the brindled darkness
Of the sick-room, rigid with will
To die: and the quick leaf tore me
Back to this rainy swill
Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.

Push back the brambles, berry-blue:
The hollowed spring is full in view:
Deep-tangled with luxuriant fern
Its rock-embedded, crystal urn.
Not for the loneliness that keeps
The coigne wherein its silence sleeps;
Not for wild butterflies that sway
Their pansy pinions all the day
Above its mirror; nor the bee,
Nor dragon-fly, that passing see
Themselves reflected in its spar;
Not for the one white liquid star,
That twinkles in its firmament;
Nor moon-shot clouds, so slowly sent
Athwart it when the kindly night
Beads all its grasses with the light
Small jewels of the dimpled dew;
Not for the day's inverted blue
Nor the quaint, dimly coloured stones
That dance within it where it moans:
Not for all these I love to sit
In silence and to gaze ...

As he said vanity, so vain say I,
Oh! vanity, O vain all under Sky;
Where is the man can say, lo, I have found
On brittle Earth a Consolation sound?
What is't in honour to be set on high?
No, they like Beasts and Sons of men shall dye,
And whil'st they live, how oft doth turn their fate;
He's now a captive that was King of late.
What is't in wealth, great Treasures to obtain?
No that's but labour, anxious care and pain.
He heaps up riches, and he heaps up sorrow,
It's his to day, but who's his heir to morrow?
What then? Content in pleasures canst thou find,
More vain then all, that's but to grasp the wind.
The sensual senses for a time they please.
Mean while the conscience rage, who shall appease?
What is't in beauty? No that's but a snare,
They're foul ...

As when a beauteous nymph decays,
We say she's past her dancing days;
So poets lose their feet by time,
And can no longer dance in rhyme.
Your annual bard had rather chose
To celebrate your birth in prose:
Yet merry folks, who want by chance
A pair to make a country dance,
Call the old housekeeper, and get her
To fill a place for want of better:
While Sheridan is off the hooks,
And friend Delany at his books,
That Stella may avoid disgrace,
Once more the Dean supplies their place.
    Beauty and wit, too sad a truth!
Have always been confined to youth;
The god of wit and beauty's queen,
He twenty-one and she fifteen,
No poet ever sweetly sung,
Unless he were, like Phoebus, young;
Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme,
Unless, like Venus, in...

All your wonderful inventions,
    All your houses vast and tall,
All your great gun-fronted vessels,
    Every fort and every wall,
With the passing of the ages,
    They shall pass and they shall fall.

As you sit among the idols
    That your avarice gave birth,
As you count the hoarded treasures
    That you think of priceless worth,
Time is digging tombs to hide them
    In the bosom of the earth.

There shall come a great convulsion
    Or a rushing tidal wave,
Or a sound of mighty thunders
    From a subterranean cave,
And a boasting world's possessions
    Shall be buried in one grave.

From the Centuries of Silence
    We are bringing back again
Buried vase and bust and column
    And the gods they worshipped th...

In this chill morning of a wintry Spring
    I look into the gloom'd and rainy vale;
    The sullen clouds, the stormy winds assail,
    Lour on the fields, and with impetuous wing
Disturb the lake: - but Love and Memory cling
    To their known scene, in this cold influence pale;
    Yet priz'd, as when it bloom'd in Summer's gale,
    Ting'd by his setting sun. - When Sorrows fling,
Or slow Disease, thus, o'er some beauteous Form
    Their shadowy languors, Form, devoutly dear
    As thine to me, HONORA, with more warm
And anxious gaze the eyes of Love sincere
    Bend on the charms, dim in their tintless snow,
    Than when with health's vermilion hues they glow.