Sadness

How darkly o'er yon far-off mountain frowns
    The gather'd tempest! from that lurid cloud
    The deep-voiced thunders roll, aweful and loud
Tho' distant; while upon the misty downs
Fast falls in shadowy streaks the pelting rain.
    I never saw so terrible a storm!
Perhaps some way-worn traveller in vain
    Wraps his torn raiment round his shivering form
Cold even as Hope within him! I the while
Pause me in sadness tho' the sunbeams smile
    Cheerily round me. Ah that thus my lot
Might be with Peace and Solitude assign'd,
    Where I might from some little quiet cot,
Sigh for the crimes and miseries of mankind!

How thick the shades of evening close!
How pale the sky with weight of snows!
Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire,
And bid the joyless day retire.
Alas, in vain I try within
To brighten the dejected scene,
While rouz'd by grief these fiery pains
Tear the frail texture of my veins;
While winter's voice, that storms around,
And yon deep death-bell's groaning sound
Renew my mind's oppressive gloom,
Till starting horror shakes the room.

Is there in nature no kind power
To sooth affliction's lonely hour?
To blunt the edge of dire disease,
And teach these wintry shades to please?
Come, Cheerfulness, triumphant fair,
Shine through the hovering cloud of care:
O sweet of language, mild of mien,
O virtue's friend and pleasure's queen,
Asswag...

Smile a little, smile a little,
    As you go along,
Not alone when life is pleasant,
    But when things go wrong.
Care delights to see you frowning,
    Loves to hear you sigh;
Turn a smiling face upon her,
    Quick the dame will fly.

Smile a little, smile a little,
    All along the road;
Every life must have its burden,
    Every heart its load.
Why sit down in gloom and darkness,
    With your grief to sup?
As you drink Fate's bitter tonic,
    Smile across the cup.

Smile upon the troubled pilgrims
    Whom you pass and meet;
Frowns are thorns, and smiles are blossoms
    Oft for weary feet.

Do not make the way seem harder
    By a sullen face,
Smile a little, smile a little,
    Brighten up the place....

I.

"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
White-buckled with the hunter's moon.

"These follow me," the season says:
"Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs
Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways,
With gipsy gold that weighs their backs."


II.

A daybreak horn the Autumn blows,
As with a sun-tanned band he parts
Wet boughs whereon the berry glows;
And at his feet the red-fox starts.

The leafy leash that holds his hounds
Is loosed; and all the noonday hush
Is startled; and the hillside sounds
Behind the fox's bounding brush.

When red dusk makes the western sky
A fire-lit window through the firs,
He stoops to see the red-fox d...

Waves are the sea’s white daughters,
And raindrops the children of rain,
But why for my shimmering body
Have I a mother like Pain?

Night is the mother of stars,
And wind the mother of foam,
The world is brimming with beauty,
But I must stay at home.

    Ah, well can I the day recall, when first
    The conflict fierce of love I felt, and said:
    If this be love, how hard it is to bear!

    With eyes still fixed intent upon the ground,
    I saw but her, whose artless innocence,
    Triumphant took possession of this heart.

    Ah, Love, how badly hast thou governed me!
    Why should affection so sincere and pure,
    Bring with it such desire, such suffering?

    Why not serene, and full, and free from guile
    But sorrow-laden, and lamenting sore,
    Should joy so great into my heart descend?

    O tell me, tender heart, that sufferest so,
    Why with that thought such anguish should be blent,
    Compared with which, all other thoughts were naught?

    That t...

I.

Now will we plunge into the frigid dark,
The living light of summer gone too soon!
A1ready I can hear a dismal sound,
The thump of logs on courtyard paving stones.

All winter comes into my being: wrath,
Hate, chills and horror, forced and plodding work,
And like the sun in polar underground
My heart will be a red and frozen block.

I Shudder as I hear each log that drops;
A gallows being built makes no worse sound.
My mind is like the tower that succumbs,
Under a heavy engine battered down.

It seems to me, dull with this constant thud,
That someone nails a coffin, but for whom?
Yesterday summer, now the fall! something
With all this eerie pounding will be gone.


II.

I love the greenish light in your long eye...

Part IV

Late Autumn

They who die young are blest. -
    Should we not envy such?
They are Earth's happiest,
    God-loved and favored much! -
They who die young are blest.


1

Sick and sad, propped among pillows, she sits at her window.

'Though the dog-tooth violet come
With April showers,
And the wild-bees' music hum
About the flowers,
We shall never wend as when
Love laughed leading us from men
Over violet vale and glen,
Where the bob-white piped for hours,
And we heard the rain-crow's drum.

Now November heavens are gray;
Autumn kills
Every joy - like leaves of May
In the rills. -
Still I sit and lean and listen
To a voice that has arisen
In my heart - with eyes tha...

Yellow leaves, how fast they flutter - woodland hollows thickly strewing,
    Where the wan October sunbeams scantly in the mid-day win,
While the dim gray clouds are drifting, and in saddened hues imbuing
        All without and all within!

All within! but winds of autumn, little Henry, round their dwelling
    Did not load your father's spirit with those deep and burdened sighs; -
Only echoed thoughts of sadness, in your mother's bosom swelling,
        Fast as tears that dim her eyes.

Life is fraught with many changes, checked with sorrow and mutation,
    But no grief it ever lightened such a truth before to know: -
I behold them - father, mother - as they seem to contemplation,
    Only three short weeks ago!

Saddened for the morrow's parting - up the stair...

1.
O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more - Oh, never more!

2.
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more - Oh, never more!

The calm outgoing of a long, rich day,
    Checkered with storm and sunshine, gloom and light,
Now passing in pure, cloudless skies away,
    Withdrawing into silence of blank night.
    Thick shadows settle on the landscape bright,
Like the weird cloud of death that falls apace
On the still features of the passive face.


Soothing and gentle as a mother's kiss,
    The touch that stopped the beating of the heart.
A look so blissfully serene as this,
    Not all the joy of living could impart.
With dauntless faith and courage therewithal,
The Master found her ready at his call.


On such a golden evening forth there floats,
    Between the grave earth and the glowing sky
In the clear air, unvexed with hazy motes,
    The mystic-winged and f...

Shepherd That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year
I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God’s Providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to stone.

Shepherd. I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my trouble
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its place
The sheep had gone from theirs.

Goatherd. I know right well
What turned so good a ...

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work; and Lucy took
The lantern in her han...

Out of the bosom of the Air,
    Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
    Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
    Silent, and soft, and slow
    Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
    Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
    In the white countenance confession,
    The troubled sky reveals
    The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
    Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
    Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
    Now whispered and revealed
    To wood and field.

        Marvels of sleep, grown cold!
        Who hath not longed to fold
With pitying ruth, forgetful of their bliss,
        Those cherub forms that lie,
        With none to watch them nigh,
Or touch the silent lips with one warm human kiss?

        What! they are left alone
        All night with graven stone,
Pillars and arches that above them meet;
        While through those windows high
        The journeying stars can spy,
And dim blue moonbeams drop on their uncovered feet?

        O cold! yet look again,
        There is a wandering vein
Traced in the hand where those white snowdrops lie.
        Let her rapt dreamy smile
        The wondering heart beguile,
That almost thinks to hear a calm contented sigh.

        What s...

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.

The gray grass is scarce dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago,
It seems forever,
Since first I saw thee glance,
With all thy dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a linp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate h...

Matron! the children of whose love,
Each to his grave, in youth hath passed,
And now the mould is heaped above
The dearest and the last!
Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil
Before the wedding flowers are pale!
Ye deem the human heart endures
No deeper, bitterer grief than yours.

Yet there are pangs of keener wo,
Of which the sufferers never speak,
Nor to the world's cold pity show
The tears that scald the cheek,
Wrung from their eyelids by the shame
And guilt of those they shrink to name,
Whom once they loved with cheerful will,
And love, though fallen and branded, still.

Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead,
Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve;
And reverenced are the tears ye shed,
And honoured ye who grieve.
The praise of th...

“ Ceste insigne fable et tragicque comedie.”
- RABELAIS.

I.

The sun was down, and twilight grey
Filled half the air; but in the room,
Whose curtain had been drawn all day,
The twilight was a dusky gloom:
Which seemed at first as still as death,
And void; but was indeed all rife
With subtle thrills, the pulse and breath
Of multitudinous lower life.



II.

In their abrupt and headlong way
Bewildered flies for light had dashed
Against the curtain all the day,
And now slept wintrily abashed;
And nimble mice slept, wearied out
With such a double night’s uproar;
But solid beetles crawled about
The chilly hearth and naked floor.



III.

And so throughout the twilight hour
That ...