Sadness

Every valley drinks,
    Every dell and hollow:
Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
    Green of Spring will follow.

Yet a lapse of weeks
    Buds will burst their edges,
Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
    In the woods and hedges;

Weave a bower of love
    For birds to meet each other,
Weave a canopy above
    Nest and egg and mother.

But for fattening rain
    We should have no flowers,
Never a bud or leaf again
    But for soaking showers;

Never a mated bird
    In the rocking tree-tops,
Never indeed a flock or herd
    To graze upon the lea-crops.

Lambs so woolly white,
    Sheep the sun-bright leas on,
They could have no grass to bite
    But for rain in season.

We s...

Having certain cares to drown,
To the sea I took them down:

And I threw them in the wave,
That engulfed them like a grave.

Swiftly then I plied the oar
With a light heart to the shore.

But behind me came my foes:
Like a nine-days’ corpse each rose,

And (a ghastly sight to see!)
Clutched the boat and grined at me!

With a heavy heart, alack,
To the land I bore them back.

Not in Water or in Wine
Can I drown these cares of mine.

But some day, for good and sure,
I shall bury them secure,

Where the soil is rich and brown,
With a stone to keep them down,

And to let their end be known,
Have my name carved on the stone;

So that passers-by may say,
“Here lie cares that had their day,”

Down the long hall she glistens like a star,
The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone,
Yet none the less immortal, breathing on.
Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar.
When first the enthralled enchantress from afar
Dazzled mine eyes, I saw not her alone,
Serenely poised on her world-worshipped throne,
As when she guided once her dove-drawn car, -
But at her feet a pale, death-stricken Jew,
Her life adorer, sobbed farewell to love.
Here Heine wept!    Here still we weeps anew,
Nor ever shall his shadow lift or move,
While mourns one ardent heart, one poet-brain,
For vanished Hellas and Hebraic pain.

O Lord, I cannot but believe
The birds do sing thy praises then, when they sing to one another,
And they are lying seed-sown land when the winter makes them grieve,
Their little bosoms breeding songs for the summer to unsmother!

If thou hadst finished me, O Lord,
Nor left out of me part of that great gift that goes to singing,
I sure had known the meaning high of the songster's praising word,
Had known upon what thoughts of thee his pearly talk he was stringing!

I should have read the wisdom hid
In the storm-inspired melody of thy thrush's bosom solemn:
I should not then have understood what thy free spirit did
To make the lark-soprano mount like to a geyser-column!

I think I almost understand
Thy owl, his muffled swiftness, moon-round eyes, and intoned hoo...

    Nature has a thousand choirs
        Singing in the sylvan shadows,
    And the music of her lyres
        Echoes in the merry meadows;
    Always glad with golden glee
    Sounds her happy melody,
    Swelling wild in fairy measure
    With the songs of purest pleasure.

    Where the dancing fountains play
        Winding warbles shake and shiver,
    And soft carols rise alway
        From the ripples of the river;
    Sweetest voices fondly call
    From the fleecy waterfall,
    And the joyful chimes are creeping
    Where the lovely lake is sleeping.

    Raptures echo in the wood,
        Where the pimpernel reposes;
    Gladness fills the solitude
        Where the blushes kiss the roses;
    Sunny beam and somber gloo...

Lying alone I dreamed a dream last night:
Methought that Joy had come to comfort me
For all the past, its suffering and slight,
Yet in my heart I felt this could not be.
All that he said unreal seemed and strange,
Too beautiful to last beyond to-morrow;
Then suddenly his features seemed to change,
The mask of joy dropped from the face of Sorrow.

It stands alone on a haunted shore,
With curious words of deathless lore
On its massive gate impearled;
And its carefully guarded mystic key
Locks in its silent mystery
From the seeking eyes of the world.

Oft do its stately walls repeat
Echoes of music wildly sweet
Swelling to gladness high -
With mournful ballads of ancient time,
And funeral hymns - and a nursery rhyme
Dying away in a sigh.

Pictures out of each haunted room,
Up through the ghostly shadows loom,
And gleam with a spectral light;
Pictures lit with a radiant glow,
And some that image such desolate woe
That, weeping, you turn from the sight.

Shining like stars in the twilight gloom
Brows as white as a lily's bloom
Gleam from its lattice and door;
And voic...

Ye Muses, pour the pitying tear
For Pollio snatch'd away;
O! had he liv'd another year!
'He had not died to-day'.

O! were he born to bless mankind,
In virtuous times of yore,
Heroes themselves had fallen behind!
'Whene'er he went before'.

How sad the groves and plains appear,
And sympathetic sheep;
Even pitying hills would drop a tear!
'If hills could learn to weep'.

His bounty in exalted strain
Each bard might well display;
Since none implor'd relief in vain!
'That went reliev'd away'.

And hark! I hear the tuneful throng
His obsequies forbid,
He still shall live, shall live as long!
'As ever dead man did'.

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago,
    And etched on vacant places
    Are half-forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know -
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.

Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,
We see, with strange emotion, that is not free from fear,
    That continent Elysian
    Long vanished from our vision,
Youth's lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.

When gloomy, gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
    And draws from youth's recesses
    Some memory it possesses,
...

    I. MORNING

    The village fades away
    Where I last night came,
    Where they housed me and fed me
    And never asked my name.

    The sun shines bright, my step is light,
    I, who have no abode,
    Jeer at the stuck, monotonous
    Black posts along the road.


    II. MIDDAY

    The wood is still,
    As here I sit
    My heart drinks in
    The peace of it.

    A something stirs
    I know not where,
    Some quiet spirit
    In the air.

    O tall straight stems!
    O cool deep green!
    O hand unfelt!
    O face unseen!


    III. EVENING

    The evening closes in,
    As down this last long lane
    I plod; there patter round
    First ...

I marked when the weather changed,
And the panes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
That night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand,
And saying at last you knew!

La guancia che fu già piangendo stanca.

TO HIS FRIEND AGAPITO, WITH A PRESENT.


    Thy weary cheek that channell'd sorrow shows,
My much loved lord, upon the one repose;
More careful of thyself against Love be,
Tyrant who smiles his votaries wan to see;
And with the other close the left-hand path
Too easy entrance where his message hath;
In sun and storm thyself the same display,
Because time faileth for the lengthen'd way.
And, with the third, drink of the precious herb
Which purges every thought that would disturb,
Sweet in the end though sour at first in taste:
But me enshrine where your best joys are placed,
So that I fear not the grim bark of Styx,
If with such prayer of mine pride do not mix.

MACGREGOR.

How shall the living be comforted for the dead
When they are gone, and nothing's left behind
But a vague music of the words they said
And a fast-fading image in the mind?

Let no forgetting sully that dim grace;
Our heart's infirmity is too easily won
To set a new love in the old love's place
And seek fresh vanity under the sun.

Time brings to us at last, as night the stars,
The starry silence of eternity:
For there is no discharge in our long wars,
Nor balm for wounds, nor love's security.

Be patient to the end, and you shall sleep
Pillowed on heartsease and forget to weep.

Down in the South, by the waste without sail on it,
Far from the zone of the blossom and tree,
Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it,
Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.
Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it;
Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey;
Phantom of life is the light on the face of it
Never is night on it, never is day!
Here is the shore without flower or bird on it;
Here is no litany sweet of the springs
Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it,
Only the storm, with the roar in its wings!

Shadow of moon is the moon in the sky of it
Wan as the face of a wizard, and far!
Never there shines from the firmament high of it
Grace of the planet or glory of star.
All the year round, in the place of white days on it
All ...

I have done all I could
For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her,
Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her,
Home from the heath or the wood.

At the mirth-time of May,
When my shadow first lured her, I'd donned my new bravery
Of greenth: 'twas my all. Now I shiver in slavery,
Icicles grieving me gray.

Plumed to every twig's end
I could tempt her chair under me. Much did I treasure her
During those days she had nothing to pleasure her;
Mutely she used me as friend.

I'm a skeleton now,
And she's gone, craving warmth. The rime sticks like a skin to me;
Through me Arcturus peers; Nor'lights shoot into me;
Gone is she, scorning my bough!

    I cannot echo the old wish to die at morn, as darkness strays!
    We have been glad together greeting some new-born radiant days,
    The earth would hold me, every day familiar things
            Would weigh me fast,
    The stir, the touch of morn, the bird that on swift wings
            Goes flitting past.
    Some flower would lift to me its tender tear-wet face, and send its breath
    To whisper of the earth, its beauty and its grace,
            And combat death.
    It would be light, and I would see in thy dear eyes
            The sorrow grow.
    Love, could I lift my own, undimmed, to paradise
            And leave thee so!
    A thousand cords would hold me down to this low sphere,
            When thou didst grieve;
    Ah! should death come upo...

Yet read at last the story of my woe,
The dreary abstracts of my endless cares,
With my life's sorrow interlinèd so,
Smoked with my sighs, and blotted with my tears,
    The sad memorials of my miseries,
Penned in the grief of mine afflicted ghost,
My life's complaint in doleful elegies,
With so pure love as time could never boast.
    Receive the incense which I offer here,
By my strong faith ascending to thy fame,
My zeal, my hope, my vows, my praise, my prayer,
My soul's oblations to thy sacred name;
    Which name my Muse to highest heavens shall raise,
By chaste desire, true love, and virtuous praise.

A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.

A brightness which outshines the morning,
A splendor brooking no delay,
Beckons and tempts my feet away.

I leave the trodden village highway
For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
A jewelled elm-tree avenue;

Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
Hold up their chandeliers of frost.

I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
I dream the Saga’s dream of caves
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!

I walk the land of Eldorado,
I touch its mimic garden bowers,
Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!

The flora of the mystic mine-world
Around me lifts on crystal stems
Th...