Sadness

Thinking of these, of beautiful brief things,
Of things that are of sense and spirit made,
Of meadow flowers, dense hedges and dark bushes
With roses trailing over nests of thrushes;

Of dews so pure and bright and flush'd and cool,
And like the flowers as brief as beautiful;
Thinking of the tall grass and daisies tall
And whispered music of the waving bents;

Of these that like a simple child I love
Since they are life and life is flowers and grass;
Thinking of trees, and water at their feet
Answering the trees with murmur childlike sweet;

Thinking of those high thoughts that passed like the wind
Yet left their brightness lying on the mind,
As the white blossoms the raw airs shake down
That lie awhile yet lovely on the chill grass;

Think...

Sometimes, to solace my sad heart, I say,
Though late it be, though lily-time be past,
Though all the summer skies be overcast,
Haply I will go down to her, some day,
And cast my rests of life before her feet,
That she may have her will of me, being so sweet
And none gainsay!

So might she look on me with pitying eyes,
And lay calm hands of healing on my head:
"Because of thy long pains be comforted;
For I, even I, am Love: sad soul, arise!"
So, for her graciousness, I might at last
Gaze on the very face of Love, and hold Him fast
In no disguise.

Haply, I said, she will take pity on me,
Though late I come, long after lily-time,
With burden of waste days and drifted rhyme:
Her kind, calm eyes, down drooping maidenly,
Shall change, gr...

If the bird knew how through the wintry weather
An empty nest would swing by day and night,
It would not weave the strands so close together
Or sing for such delight.

And if the rosebud dreamed e'er its awaking
How soon its perfumed leaves would drift apart,
Perchance 'twould fold them close to still the aching
Within its golden heart.

If the brown brook that hurries through the grasses
Knew of drowned sailors - and of storms to be -
Methinks 'twould wait a little e'er it passes
To meet the old grey sea.

If youth could understand the tears and sorrow,
The sombre days that age and knowledge bring,
It would not be so eager for the morrow
Or spendthrift of the spring.

If love but learned how soon life treads its measure,
How short and...

There is a voice that calls to me; a voice that cries deep down;
That calls within my heart of hearts when Summer doffs her crown:
When Summer doffs her crown, my dear, and by the hills and streams
The spirit of September walks through gold and purple gleams:
It calls my heart beyond the mart, beyond the street and town,
To take again, in sun or rain, the oldtime trail of dreams.

Oh, it is long ago, my dear, a weary time since we
Trod back the way we used to know by wildwood rock and tree:
By mossy rock and tree, dear Heart, and sat below the hill,
And watched the wheel, the old mill-wheel, turn round on Babbit's mill:
Or in the brook, with line and hook, to dronings of the bee,
Waded or swam, above the dam, and drank of joy our fill

The ironweed is purple now; the bl...

    Between the folding sea-downs,
    In the gloom
    Of a wailful wintry nightfall,
    When the boom
Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,

    Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley
    From the shore
    To the chamber where I darkled,
    Sunk and sore
With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before

    To salute me in the dwelling
    That of late
    I had hired to waste a while in -
    Vague of date,
Quaint, and remote wherein I now expectant sate;

    On the solitude, unsignalled,
    Broke a man
    Who, in air as if at home there,
    Seemed to scan
Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.

    A stranger's and no lover's
    Eyes were these,
    Eyes of a man wh...

"She can't be unhappy," you said,
"The smiles are like stars in her eyes,
And her laugh is thistledown
Around her low replies."
"Is she unhappy?" you said,
But who has ever known
Another's heartbreak,
All he can know is his own;
And she seems hushed to me,
As hushed as though
Her heart were a hunter's fire
Smothered in snow.

As when the strong stream of a wintering sea
Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,
And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith
Wild things and woeful of the White South Land
Alone with God and silence in the cold
As when this cometh, men from dripping doors
Look forth, and shudder for the mariners
Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked
In days of drought, and when the flying floods
Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains
Beyond the farthest spur of western hills.

For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,
Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,
Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,
All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,
That thirty rainless months had left the pools
And grass as dry as ashes: then it was

LOVED AND LOST, - OR - THE SKY-LARK AND THE VIOLET.


VIOLET'S SONG

I.

        Come down from thy dazzling sphere,
            Bird of the gushing song!
Come down where the young leaves whisper low,
While the breeze steals in with a murmurous flow,
And the tender branches wave to and fro
            In the soft air all day long!

        I have watched thy daring wing
            Cleaving the sun-bright air,
Where the snowy cloud is asleep in light,
Or dreamily floating in robes of white,
While thy soul gushed forth in its song's free might,
            Till my spirit is dim with care.

        For oh, I have loved thee well,
            Thou of the soaring wing! -
And I fear lest the angels that sit on high,
In the ca...

        "Sleep, weary ones, while ye may --
            Sleep, oh, sleep!"
                    Eugene Field.


        Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
        The soft wind sang to the dead below:
        "Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
        And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
        The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
        And the task that was joyous be weary at last."

        To the winter sky when the nights were long
        The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
        "Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
        And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
        The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
        And the path grow rough when the night came down."...

I look down the lengthening distance
    Far back to youth's valley of hope.
How strange seemed the ways of existence,
    How infinite life and its scope!

What dreams, what ambitions came thronging
    To people a world of my own!
How the heart in my bosom was longing,
    For pleasures and places unknown.

But the hill-tops of pleasure and beauty
    Were covered with mist at the dawn;
And only the rugged road Duty
    Shone clear, as my feet wandered on.

I loved not the path and its leading,
    I hated the rocks and the dust;
But a Voice from the Silence was pleading,
    It spoke but one syllable - "Trust."

I saw, as the morning grew older,
    The fair flowered hills of delight;
And the feet of my comrades grew bolder,

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past -
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost,
Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.

My thoughts, my grief! are without strength
My spirit is journeying towards death
My eyes are as a frozen sea
My tears my daily food;
There is nothing in life but only misery.
My poor heart is torn
And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
Mourning the miserable state of Ireland.

Misfortune has come upon us all together
The poor, the rich, the weak and the strong
The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained
The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.

Our feasts are without any voice of priests
And none at them but women lamenting
Tearing their hair with troubled minds
Keening miserably after the Fenians.

The pipes of our organs are broken
Our harps have lost ...

Three happy children in a darkened room!
What do they gaze on with wide-open eyes?
A dense, dense forest, where no sunbeam pries,
And in its centre a cleared spot.--There bloom
Gigantic flowers on creepers that embrace
Tall trees; there, in a quiet lucid lake
The white swans glide; there, "whirring from the brake,"
The peacock springs; there, herds of wild deer race;
There, patches gleam with yellow waving grain;
There, blue smoke from strange altars rises light,
There, dwells in peace, the poet-anchorite.
But who is this fair lady? Not in vain
She weeps,--for lo! at every tear she sheds
Tears from three pairs of young eyes fall amain,
And bowed in sorrow are the three young heads.
It is an old, old story, and the lay
Which has evoked sad Sîta from the past

    Agatha, tell me, does thy heart not ache,
        Plunged in this squalid city's filthy sea,
    For another ocean where the splendours break
        Blue, clear, and deep as is virginity.
    Agatha, tell me, does thy heart not ache?

    The sea, the sea unending, comforts us!
        What demon gave the hoarse old sea who sings
    To her mumbling hurricanes' organ thunderous
        The god-like power to cradle sorrowful things?
    The sea, the sea unending, comforts us.

    Carry me, wagon, bear me, barque, away!
        Far! Far! For here the mud is made of tears!
    Does Agatha's sad heart not sometimes say:
        "O far from shudderings and crimes and fears,
    Carry me, wagon; bear me barque, away?"

    How far thou art, O scented...

        The thought of old, dear things is in thine eyes,
        O, month of memories!
        Musing on days thine heart hath sorrow of,
        Old joy, dead hope, dear love,

        I see thee stand where all thy sisters meet
        To cast down at thy feet
        The garnered largess of the fruitful year,
        And on thy cheek a tear.

        Thy glory flames in every blade and leaf
        To blind the eyes of grief;
        Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruit
        That sorrow may be mute;

        A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,
        Ere the gray dusk may creep
        Sober and sad along thy dusty ways,
        Like a lone nun, who prays;

        High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;<...

The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.

I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,

And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.

Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made...

Robert Rawlin! Frosts were falling
When the ranger's horn was calling
Through the woods to Canada.

Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,
Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,
Gone the summer's harvest mowing,
And again the fields are gray.
Yet away, he's away!
Faint and fainter hope is growing
In the hearts that mourn his stay.

Where the lion, crouching high on
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,
Glares o'er wood and wave away,
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,
Or as thunder spent and dying,
Come the challenge and replying,
Come the sounds of flight and fray.
Well-a-day! Hope and pray!
Some are living, some are lying
In their red graves far away.

Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,
Homeward faring, weary strang...

1.
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

2.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

3.
As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.

4.
Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

5...