Sadness

The shadows lay along Broadway,
’T was near the twilight-tide,
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walked she; but, viewlessly,
Walked spirits at her side.

Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,
And Honor charmed the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair,
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true,
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo,
But honored well are charms to sell
If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair,
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail:
’Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn...

As some dusk mother shields from all alarms
    The tired child she gathers to her breast,
The brunette Night doth fold me in her arms,
    And hushes me to perfect peace and rest.
Her eyes of stars shine on me, and I hear
Her voice of winds low crooning on my ear.
O Night, O Night, how beautiful thou art!
Come, fold me closer to thy pulsing heart.

The day is full of gladness, and the light
    So beautifies the common outer things,
I only see with my external sight,
    And only hear the great world's voice which rings
But silently from daylight and from din
The sweet Night draws me - whispers, "Look within!"
And looking, as one wakened from a dream,
I see what is - no longer what doth seem.

The Night says, "Listen!" and upon my ear
  ...

Who will gather with me the fallen year,
This drift of forgotten forsaken leaves,
Ah! who give ear
To the sigh October heaves
At summer's passing by!
Who will come walk with me
On this Persian carpet of purple and gold
The weary autumn weaves,
And be as sad as I?
Gather the wealth of the fallen rose,
And watch how the memoried south wind blows
Old dreams and old faces upon the air,
And all things fair.

Last night, when at parting
    Awhile we did stand,
Suddenly starting,
    There fell on my hand

Something that burned it,
    Something that shone
In the moon as I turned it,
    And then it was gone.

One bright stray jewel--
    What made it stray?
Was I cold or cruel,
    At the close of day?

Oh, do not cry, lass!
    What is crying worth?
There is no lass like my lass
    In the whole wide earth.

There are some things I call riddles,
No one can explain or tell:
What's the sound that comes from fiddles,
Or the noise made by a bell?

What is silence? what is thunder?
And why do we laugh and weep?
But the strangest thing I wonder
Where we go when we go to-sleep?

What are words? What makes our voices?
What's the reason we're not dumb?
What is music? What are noises?
I have thought about them some.

I have often asked my father;
He just laughed and said, "You're deep!"
But what's given me most bother
'S where we go when we go to-sleep.

There's the wind; no one can see it;
Yet it's stronger than a man:
Where's the boy that would n't be it?
Making all the noise it can.

What is it that makes it hover?
And wh...

Tis sweet in boyhood's visionary mood,
When glowing Fancy, innocently gay,
Flings forth, like motes, her bright aërial brood,
To dance and shine in Hope's prolific ray;
'Tis sweet, unweeting how the flight of years
May darkling roll in trials and in tears,
To dress the future in what garb we list,
And shape the thousand joys that never may exist.
But he, sad wight! of all that feverish train,
Fool'd by those phantoms of the wizard brain,
Most wildly dotes, whom young ambition stings
To trust his weight upon poetic wings;
He, downward looking in his airy ride,
Beholds Elysium bloom on every side;
Unearthly bliss each thrilling nerve attunes,
And thus the dreamer with himself communes.
Yes! Earth shall witness, 'ere my star be set,
That partial nature mark'...

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument, all bare, is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside!
O! blame me not, if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

For ages on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom,
And willowy studs of downy silver,
Have prophesied of Spring to come.

For ages have the unbound waters
Smiled on them from their pebbly hem,
And the clear carol of the robin
And song of bluebird welcomed them.

But never yet from smiling river,
Or song of early bird, have they
Been greeted with a gladder welcome
Than whispers from my heart to-day.

They break the spell of cold and darkness,
The weary watch of sleepless pain;
And from my heart, as from the river,
The ice of winter melts again.

Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token
Of Freya’s footsteps drawing near;
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
The growing of the grass I hear.

It is as if the ...

I.
And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne?
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
And Willy’s wife has written: she never was over-wise,
Never the wife for Willy: he wouldn’t take my advice.

II.
For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save,
Hadn’t a head to manage, and drank himself into his grave.
Pretty enough, very pretty! but I was against it for one.
Eh!—but he wouldn’t hear me—and Willy, you say, is gone.

III.
Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock;
Never a man could fling him: for Willy stood like a rock.
‘Here’s a leg for a babe of a week!’ says doctor; and he would be bound,
There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.

IV.
Strong of his hands, and st...

'Twas a balmy day in Autumn,
In the drowsy, dreamy Autumn,
When from out the quiet woodland
Sounds of rustling leaves came only -
Leaves that floated softly earthward -
And the streamlets had a murmur
Such as wanders through our visions
In the hushed and starry midnight -
Low, soft murmur, full of music.

With the small hand of her darling
Clasped in her's, there came a mother
To an Artist - fondly asking
For the picture of her pet-lamb -
Winsome pet-lamb full of child-life,
Full of merry, ringing laughter -
Laughter that went up unceasing
Like the happy chime of streamlets
Singing thro' some mountain valley, -
Like the bird-song in the forest
In the time of early roses, -
Like the tinkle of sweet waters
Dripping o'er a marble fou...

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: “The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

“Look where we will o’er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

“Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

“This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older.”

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

Why are ye silent, Birds?
Where do ye fly?
Winter's not violent,
With such a Spring sky.
The wheatlands are green, snow and frost are away,
Birds, why are ye silent on such a sweet day?

By the slated pig-stye
The redbreast scarce whispers:
Where last Autumn's leaves lie
The hedge sparrow just lispers.
And why are the chaffinch and bullfinch so still,
While the sulphur primroses bedeck the wood hill?

The bright yellow-hammers
Are strutting about,
All still, and none stammers
A single note out.
From the hedge starts the blackbird, at brook side to drink:
I thought he'd have whistled, but he only said "prink."

The tree-creeper hustles
Up fir's rusty bark;
All silent he bustles;
We needn't say hark.
There's no song i...

Dry leaves upon the wall,
Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape,
A single frosted cluster on the grape
Still hangs--and that is all.

It hangs forgotten quite,--
Forgotten in the purple vintage-day,
Left for the sharp and cruel frosts to slay,
The daggers of the night.

It knew the thrill of spring;
It had its blossom-time, its perfumed noons;
Its pale-green spheres were rounded to soft runes
Of summer's whispering.

Through balmy morns of May;
Through fragrances of June and bright July,
And August, hot and still, it hung on high
And purpled day by day.

Of fair and mantling shapes,
No braver, fairer cluster on the tree;
And what then is this thing has come to thee
Among the other grapes,

Thou lonely tenan...

All alone with my heart to-night
    I sit, and wonder, and sigh.
What is she like, is she dark, or light,
This other woman who has the right
    To love him better than I?

We never have spoken her name, we two;
    There was no need somehow,
But she lives, and loves, and her heart is true;
From the very first this much I knew,
    So why should it hurt me now.

I fancy her tall, and I think her fair,
    Oh! fairer than I by half.
With sweet, calm eyes, and a wealth of hair,
And a heart as perfectly free from care
    As is her silvery laugh.

She loves rich jewels that flash in the light,
    And revels in costly lace,
And first in the morning, and last at night
She kisses one ring on her finger white;
    (How came those tears...

I know the garden-close of sin,
    The cloying fruits, the noxious flowers,
    I long have roamed the walks and bowers,
Desiring what no man shall win:

A secret place to shelter in,
    When soon or late the angry powers
    Come down to seek the wretch who cowers,
Expecting judgment to begin.

The pleasure long has passed away
    From flowers and fruit, each hour I dread
            My doom will find me where I lie.
I dare not go, I dare not stay.
    Without the walks, my hope is dead,
            Within them, I myself must die.

I

Looking forward to the spring
One puts up with anything.
On this February day,
Though the winds leap down the street,
Wintry scourgings seem but play,
And these later shafts of sleet
Sharper pointed than the first -
And these later snows the worst -
Are as a half-transparent blind
Riddled by rays from sun behind.

II

Shadows of the October pine
Reach into this room of mine:
On the pine there stands a bird;
He is shadowed with the tree.
Mutely perched he bills no word;
Blank as I am even is he.
For those happy suns are past,
Fore-discerned in winter last.
When went by their pleasure, then?
I, alas, perceived not when.

I saw fond lovers in that glow
    That oft-times fades away too soon:
I saw and said, 'Their joy I know -
    I, too, have had my honeymoon.'

A young expectant mother's gaze
    Held earth and heaven within its scope:
My thoughts went back to holy days -
    I said, 'I, too, have known that hope.'

I saw a stricken mother swayed
    By sorrow's storm, like wind-blown grass:
I said, 'I, too, dismayed
    Have seen the little white hearse pass.'

I saw a matron rich with years
    Walk radiantly beside her mate:
I blessed them, and said through my tears,
    'I, too, have known that high estate.'

I saw a woman swathed in black
    So blind with grief she could not see:
I said, 'Not far need I look back -
    I, too, have kno...

Let me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass, to toil, to strife, to rest;
To halls in which the feast is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.

And some to happy homes repair,
Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.

And some, who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its ligh...