Sadness

For your letter, dear - [Hattie], accept my best thanks,
Rendered long and amusing by virtue of franks,
Though concise they would please, yet the longer the better,
The more news that's crammed in, more amusing the letter,
All excuses of etiquette nonsense I hate,
Which only are fit for the tardy and late,
As when converse grows flat, of the weather they talk,
How fair the sun shines - a fine day for a walk,
Then to politics turn, of Burdett's reformation,
One declares it would hurt, t'other better the nation,
Will ministers keep? sure they've acted quite wrong,
The burden this is of each morning-call song.
So - is going to - you say,
I hope that success her great efforts will pay [ - ]
That [the Colonel] will see her, be dazzled outright,
And declare he can't bear...

I am growing old and weary
Ere yet my locks are gray;
Before me lies eternity,
Behind me but a day.
How fast the years are vanishing!
They melt like April snow:
It seems to me but yesterday
Twenty years ago.

There's the school-house on the hill-side,
And the romping scholars all;
Where we used to con our daily tasks,
And play our games of ball.
They rise to me in visions
In sunny dreams and ho'
I sport among the boys and girls
Twenty years ago.

We played at ball in summer time
We boys with hearty will;
With merry shouts in winter time
We coasted on the hill.
We would choose our chiefs, divide in bands,
And build our forts of snow,
And storm those forts right gallantly
Twenty years ago.

Last year in June...

The moon to-night is like the sun
Through blossomed branches seen;
Come out with me, dear silent one,
And trip it on the green.

"Nay, Lad, go you within its light,
Nor stay to urge me so--
'Twas on another moonlit night
My heart broke long ago."

Oh loud and high the pipers play
To speed the dancers on;
Come out and be as glad as they,
Oh, little Silent one.

"Nay, Lad, where all your mates are met
Go you the selfsame way,
Another dance I would forget
Wherein I too was gay."

But here you sit long day by day
With those whose joys are done;
What mates these townfolk old and grey
For you dear Silent one.

"Nay, Lad, they're done with joys and fears.
Rare comrades should we prove,
For they are very old with ...

The snow had fallen many nights and days;
The sky was come upon the earth at last,
Sifting thinly down as endlessly
As though within the system of blind planets
Something had been forgot or overdriven.
The dawn now seemed neglected in the grey
Where mountains were unbuilt and shadowless trees
Rootlessly paused or hung upon the air.
There was no wind, but now and then a sigh
Crossed that dry falling dust and rifted it
Through crevices of slate and door and casement.
Perhaps the new moon's time was even past.
Outside, the first white twilights were too void
Until a sheep called once, as to a lamb,
And tenderness crept everywhere from it;
But now the flock must have strayed far away.
The lights across the valley must be veiled,
The smoke lost in the greyness...

O dolci sguardi, o parolette accorte.

HE SIGHS FOR THOSE GLANCES FROM WHICH, TO HIS GRIEF, FORTUNE EVER DELIGHTS TO WITHDRAW HIM.


    O angel looks! O accents of the skies!
Shall I or see or hear you once again?
O golden tresses, which my heart enchain,
And lead it forth, Love's willing sacrifice!
O face of beauty given in anger's guise,
Which still I not enjoy, and still complain!
O dear delusion! O bewitching pain!
Transports, at once my punishment and prize!
If haply those soft eyes some kindly beam
(Eyes, where my soul and all my thoughts reside)
Vouchsafe, in tender pity to bestow;
Sudden, of all my joys the murtheress tried,
Fortune with steed or ship dispels the gleam;
Fortune, with stern behest still prompt to work my woe.

Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is Jesus wept, whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
Looked upon Peter. Oh, to render plain
By help of having loved a little and mourned,
That look of sovran love and sovran pain
Which He, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
On him who could reject but not sustain!

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland’s sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
Had crept, perchance a hunter’s tale,
Of its wild mirth of waters lost
On the dark woods through which it tossed.

Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere
Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;
But who had raised its veil, or seen
The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

They sought it where the mountain brook
Its swift way to the valley took;
Along the rugged slope they clomb,
Their guide a thread of sound and foam.

Height after height they slowly won;
The fiery javelins of the sun
Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade
With rock and vine their steps delay...

    Life ne'er exulted in so rich a prize
    As Burnet, lovely from her native skies;
    Nor envious death so triumph'd in a blow,
    As that which laid th' accomplish'd Burnet low.

    Thy form and mind, sweet maid, can I forget?
    In richest ore the brightest jewel set!
    In thee, high Heaven above was truest shown,
    As by his noblest work, the Godhead best is known.

    In vain ye flaunt in summer's pride, ye groves;
        Thou crystal streamlet with thy flowery shore,
    Ye woodland choir that chant your idle loves,
        Ye cease to charm, Eliza is no more!

    Ye heathy wastes, immix'd with reedy fens;
        Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd;
    Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens,
        To you I fly, ...

One broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay
On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I
The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away;
The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there.

Morning: a woman looking on the sea;
Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns;
Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee!
Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns.

And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands,
And torches flaring in the weedy caves,
Where'er the waters lay with icy hands
The shapes uplifted from their coral graves.

Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er;
The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks,
And lean, wild children gather from the shore
To the black hovels bedded in the rocks.

But Love still prayed, with agoni...

    There is a far unfading city
    Where bright immortal people are;
    Remote from hollow shame and pity,
    Their portals frame no guiding star
    But blightless pleasure's moteless rays
    That follow their footsteps as they dance
    Long lutanied measures through a maze
    Of flower-like song and dalliance.

    There always glows the vernal sun,
    There happy birds for ever sing,
    There faint perfumed breezes run
    Through branches of eternal spring;
    There faces browned and fruit and milk
    And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses
    In galleys gowned with gold and silk
    Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.

    Coyness is not, nor bear they thought,
    Save of a shining gracious flow;
    All natural joys ...

Chi vuol veder quantunque può Natura.

WHOEVER BEHOLDS HER MUST ADMIT THAT HIS PRAISES CANNOT REACH HER PERFECTION.


    Who wishes to behold the utmost might
Of Heaven and Nature, on her let him gaze,
Sole sun, not only in my partial lays,
But to the dark world, blind to virtue's light!
And let him haste to view; for death in spite
The guilty leaves, and on the virtuous preys;
For this loved angel heaven impatient stays;
And mortal charms are transient as they're bright!
Here shall he see, if timely he arrive,
Virtue and beauty, royalty of mind,
In one bless'd union join'd. Then shall he say
That vainly my weak rhymes to praise her strive,
Whose dazzling beams have struck my genius blind:--
He must for ever weep if he delay!

CHARL...

A dusty clearing in the scrubs
Of barren, western lands,
Where, out of sight, or sign of hope
The wretched school-house stands;
A roof that glares at glaring days,
A bare, unshaded wall,
A fence that guards no blade of green,
A dust-storm over all.
The books and slates are packed away,
The maps are rolled and tied,
And for an hour I breathe, and lay
My ghastly mask aside;
I linger here to save my head
From voices shrill and thin,
That rasp for ever in the shed,
The ‘home’ I’m boarding in.

The heat and dirt and wretchedness
With which their lives began,
Bush mother nagging day and night,
And sullen, brooding man;
The minds that harp on single strings,
And never bright by chance,
The rasping voice of paltry things,
The ho...

When Age comes on! -
"The deepening dusk is where the dawn
    Once glittered splendid, and the dew
In honey-drips, from red rose-lips
    Was kissed away by me and you. -
And now across the frosty lawn
Black foot-prints trail, and Age comes on -
        And Age comes on!
    And biting wild-winds whistle through
Our tattered hopes - and Age comes on!

When Age comes on! -
O tide of raptures, long withdrawn,
    Flow back in summer-floods, and fling
Here at our feet our childhood sweet,
    And all the songs we used to sing! . . .
Old loves, old friends - all dead and gone -
Our old faith lost - and Age comes on -
        And Age comes on!
    Poor hearts! have we not anything
But longings left when Age comes on?

It is not sweet content, be sure,
That moves the nobler Muse to song,
Yet when could truth come whole and pure
From hearts that inly writhe with wrong?

'T is not the calm and peaceful breast
That sees or reads the problem true;
They only know, on whom 't has prest
Too hard to hope to solve it too.

Our ills are worse than at their ease
These blameless happy souls suspect,
They only study the disease,
Alas, who live not to detect.

Surely I must have ailed
On that dark night,
Or my childish courage failed
Because there was no light;
Or terror must have come
With his chill wing,
And made my angel dumb,
Or found him slumbering.
Because I could not sleep
Terror began to wake,
Close at my side to creep
And sting me like a snake.
And I was afraid of death,
But when I thought of pain--
O, language no word hath
To recall that thought again!
Into my heart fear crawled
And wreathed close around,
Mortal, convulsive, cold,
And I lay bound.
Fear set before my eyes
Unimaginable pain;
Approaching agonies
Sprang nimbly into my brain.
Just as a thrilling wind
Plucks every mournful wire,
So terror on my wild mind
Fingered, with ice and fire.
O, ...

Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,
And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;
Or, on each season, spell the epitaph
Of its dead months repeated in their flowers;
Or list the music of the strolling showers,
Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff,
Or read the day's delivered monograph
Through all the chapters of its dædal hours.
Still with the same child-faith and child regard
He looks on Nature, hearing at her heart,
The Beautiful beat out the time and place,
Through which no lesson of this life is hard,
No struggle vain of science or of art,
That dies with failure written on its face.

I.

The leaves are shivering on the thorn,
Drearily;
And sighing wakes the lean-eyed morn,
Wearily.

I press my thin face to the pane,
Drearily;
But never will he come again.
(Wearily.)

The rain hath sicklied day with haze,
Drearily;
My tears run downward as I gaze,
Wearily.

The mist and morn spake unto me,
Drearily:
"What is this thing God gives to thee?"
(Wearily.)

I said unto the morn and mist,
Drearily:
"The babe unborn whom sin hath kissed."
(Wearily.)

The morn and mist spake unto me,
Drearily:
"What is this thing which thou dost see?"
(Wearily.)

I said unto the mist and morn,
Drearily:
"The shame of man and woman's scorn."
(Wearily.)

"He loved t...

Farewell, thou little Nook of mountain-ground,
Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair
Of that magnificent temple which doth bound
One side of our whole vale with grandeur rare;
Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair,
The loveliest spot that man hath ever found,
Farewell! we leave thee to Heaven's peaceful care,
Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround.

Our boat is safely anchored by the shore,
And there will safely ride when we are gone;
The flowering shrubs that deck our humble door
Will prosper, though untended and alone:
Fields, goods, and far-off chattels we have none:
These narrow bounds contain our private store
Of things earth makes, and sun doth shine upon;
Here are they in our sight we have no more.

Sunshine and shower be with you, bud ...