Sadness

Driven in by Autumn's sharpening air
From half-stripped woods and pastures bare,
Brisk Robin seeks a kindlier home:
Not like a beggar is he come,
But enters as a looked-for guest,
Confiding in his ruddy breast,
As if it were a natural shield
Charged with a blazon on the field,
Due to that good and pious deed
Of which we in the Ballad read.
But pensive fancies putting by,
And wild-wood sorrows, speedily
He plays the expert ventriloquist;
And, caught by glimpses now, now missed,
Puzzles the listener with a doubt
If the soft voice he throws about
Comes from within doors or without!
Was ever such a sweet confusion,
Sustained by delicate illusion?
He's at your elbow, to your feeling
The notes are from the floor or ceiling;
And there's a rid...

The innocent, sweet Day is dead.
Dark Night hath slain her in her bed.
O, Moors are as fierce to kill as to wed!
- Put out the light, said he.

A sweeter light than ever rayed
From star of heaven or eye of maid
Has vanished in the unknown Shade.
- She's dead, she's dead, said he.

Now, in a wild, sad after-mood
The tawny Night sits still to brood
Upon the dawn-time when he wooed.
- I would she lived, said he.

Star-memories of happier times,
Of loving deeds and lovers' rhymes,
Throng forth in silvery pantomimes.
- Come back, O Day! said he.


Montgomery, Alabama, 1866.

He made him a love o' dreams--
He raised for his heart's delight--
(As the heart of June a crescent moon)
A frail, fair spirit of light.

He gave her the gift of joy--
The gift of the dancing feet--
He made her a thing of very Spring--
Virginal--wild and sweet.

But when he would draw her near
To his eager heart's content,
As a sunbeam slips from the finger-tips
She slipped from his hold and went.

Virginal--wild--and sweet--
So she eludes him still--
The love that he made of dawn and shade
Of dominant want and will.

For ever the dream of man
Is more than the dreamer is;
Though he form it whole of his inmost soul,
Yet never 'tis wholly his.

Only is given to him
The right to follow and yearn
The lovelines...

STR. 1

I laid my laurel-leaf
At the white feet of grief,
Seeing how with covered face and plumeless wings,
With unreverted head
Veiled, as who mourns his dead,
Lay Freedom couched between the thrones of kings,
A wearied lion without lair,
And bleeding from base wounds, and vexed with alien air.



STR. 2

Who was it, who, put poison to thy mouth,
Who lulled with craft or chant thy vigilant eyes,
O light of all men, lamp to north and south,
Eastward and westward, under all men’s skies?
For if thou sleep, we perish, and thy name
Dies with the dying of our ephemeral breath;
And if the dust of death o’ergrows thy flame,
Heaven also is darkened with the dust of death.
If thou be mortal, if thou change or cease,
If thine hand...

The greater and the lesser ills:
    He waved his grey hand wearily
    Back to the anger of the sea,
Then forward to the blue of hills.

Out from the shattered barquenteen
    The black frieze-coated sailors bore
    Their dying despot to the shore
And wove a crazy palanquin.

They found a valley where the rain
    Had worn the fern-wood to a paste
    And tiny streams came down in haste
To eastward of the mountain chain.

And here was handiwork of Cretes,
    And olives grew beside a stone,
    And one slim phallos stood alone
Blasphemed at by the paroquets.

Hard by a wall of basalt bars
    The night came like a settling bird,
    And here he wept and slept and stirred
Faintly beneath the turning stars.

...

You bear a flower in your hand,
You softly take it through the air,
Lest it should be too roughly fanned,
And break and fall, for all your care.

Love is like that, the lightest breath
Shakes all its blossoms o'er the land,
And its mysterious cousin, Death,
Waits but to snatch it from your hand.

O some day, should your hand forget,
Your guardian eyes stray otherwhere,
Your cheeks shall all in vain be wet,
Vain all your penance and your prayer.

God gave you once this creature fair,
You two mysteriously met;
By Time's strange stream
There stood this Dream,
This lovely Immortality
Given your mortal eyes to see,
That might have been your darling yet;
But in the place
Of her strange face
Sorrow will stand forever more,

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch's sagging floor,
leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

'Twas in the middle of the night,
To sleep young William tried,
When Mary's ghost came stealing in,
And stood at his bedside.

O William dear! O William dear!
My rest eternal ceases;
Alas! my everlasting peace
Is broken into pieces.

I thought the last of all my cares
Would end with my last minute;
But though I went to my long home,
I didn't stay long in it.

The body-snatchers they have come,
And made a snatch at me;
It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be!

You thought that I was buried deep,
Quite decent-like and chary,
But from her grave in Mary-bone,
They've come and boned your Mary.

The arm that used to take your arm
Is took to Dr. Vyse;
And both my legs are gone to walk
The hospita...

Alone by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
    And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
    And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh.

Oh Nature, though blessed and bright are thy rays,
    O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,
Yet faint are they all to the lustre that plays
    In a smile from the heart that is fondly our own.

Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain
Unblest by the smile he had languished to meet;
Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again,
    Till the threshold of home had been pressed by his feet.

But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear,
And they loved what they knew of so humble a name;
And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear,

Thy hill leave not, O Spring,
Nor longer leap down to the new-green'd Plain.
Thy western cliff-caves keep
O Wind, nor branch-borne Echo after thee complain
With grumbling wild and deep.
Let Blossom cling
Sudden and frozen round the eyes of trees,
Nor fall, nor fall.
Be still each Wing,
Hushed each call.

So was it ordered, so
Hung all things silent, still;
Only Time earless moved on, stepping slow
Up the scarped hill,
And even Time in a long twilight stayed
And, for a whim, that whispered whim obeyed.

There was no breath, no sigh,
No wind lost in the sky
Roamed the horizon round.
The harsh dead leaf slept noiseless on the ground,
By unseen mouse nor insect stirred
Nor beak of hungry bird.

Then were voices heard

Ah, Posthumus!    our years hence fly
And leave no sound:    nor piety,
Or prayers, or vow
Can keep the wrinkle from the brow;
But we must on,
As fate does lead or draw us; none,
None, Posthumus, could e'er decline
The doom of cruel Proserpine.

The pleasing wife, the house, the ground
Must all be left, no one plant found
To follow thee,
Save only the curst cypress-tree!
--A merry mind
Looks forward, scorns what's left behind;
Let's live, my Wickes, then, while we may,
And here enjoy our holiday.

We've seen the past best times, and these
Will ne'er return; we see the seas,
And moons to wane,
But they fill up their ebbs again;
But vanish'd man,
Like to a lily lost, ne'er can,
Ne'er can repullulate, or bring
His days...

I love to rise on a summer morn,
When birds are singing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
Oh what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,
Oh it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

Oh father and mother, if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender pl...

We are as mendicants who wait
Along the roadside in the sun.
Tatters of yesterday and shreds
Of morrow clothe us every one.

And some are dotards, who believe
And glory in the days of old;
While some are dreamers, harping still
Upon an unknown age of gold.

Hopeless or witless! Not one heeds,
As lavish Time comes down the way
And tosses in the suppliant hat
One great new-minted gold To-day.

Ungrateful heart and grudging thanks,
His beggar's wisdom only sees
Housing and bread and beer enough;
He knows no other things than these.

O foolish ones, put by your care!
Where wants are many, joys are few;
And at the wilding springs of peace,
God keeps an open house for you.


But that some Fortunatus' gift
Is lyi...

Oh, I could let the world go by,
Its loud new wonders and its wars,
But how will I give up the sky
When winter dusk is set with stars?

And I could let the cities go,
Their changing customs and their creeds,
But oh, the summer rains that blow
In silver on the jewel-weeds!

I wish I was by that dim Lake,[1]
Where sinful souls their farewell take
Of this vain world, and half-way lie
In death's cold shadow, ere they die.
There, there, far from thee,
Deceitful world, my home should be;
Where, come what might of gloom and pain,
False hope should ne'er deceive again.

The lifeless sky, the mournful sound
Of unseen waters falling round;
The dry leaves, quivering o'er my head,
Like man, unquiet even when dead!
These, ay, these shall wean
My soul from life's deluding scene,
And turn each thought, o'ercharged with gloom,
Like willows, downward towards the tomb.

As they, who to their couch at night
Would win repose, first quench the light,
So must the hopes, that keep this breast
Awake, be quenched, ere...

List 'twas the Cuckoo. O with what delight
Heard I that voice! and catch it now, though faint,
Far off and faint, and melting into air,
Yet not to be mistaken. Hark again!
Those louder cries give notice that the Bird,
Although invisible as Echo's self,
Is wheeling hitherward. Thanks, happy Creature,
For this unthought-of greeting!
        
While allured
From vale to hill, from hill to vale led on,
We have pursued, through various lands, a long
And pleasant course; flower after flower has blown,
Embellishing the ground that gave them birth
With aspects novel to my sight; but still
Most fair, most welcome, when they drank the dew
In a sweet fellowship with kinds beloved,
For old remembrance sake. And oft where Spring
Displayed her richest blossoms amon...