Sadness

Wild-eyed woodlands, here I rest me, underneath the gaunt and ghastly trees;
Underneath fantastic-fronted caverns crammed with many a muffled breeze.
Far away from dusky towns and cities twinkling with the feet of men;
Listening to a sound of mellow music fleeting down the gusty glen;
Sitting by a rapid torrent, with the broken sunset in my face;
By a rapid, roaring torrent, tumbling through a dark and lonely place!
And I hear the bells beyond the forest, and the voice of distant streams;
And a flood of swelling singing, wafting round a world of ruined dreams.

Like to one who watches daylight dying from a lofty mountain spire,
When the autumn splendour scatters like a gust of faintly-gleaming fire;
So the silent spirit looketh through a mist of faded smiles and tears,
While acro...

Dark as the silent stream beneath the night,
    Thy funeral glides to Life's eternal home,
    Child of its narrow house! - how late the bloom,
    The facile smile, the soft eye's crystal light,
Each grace of Youth's gay morn, that charms our sight,
    Play'd o'er that Form! - now sunk in Death's cold gloom,
    Insensate! ghastly! - for the yawning tomb,
    Alas! fit Inmate. - Thus we mourn the blight
Of Virgin-Beauty, and endowments rare
    In their glad hours of promise. - O! when Age
    Drops, like the o'er-blown, faded rose, tho' dear
Its long known worth, no stormy sorrows rage;
    But swell when we behold, unsoil'd by time,
    Youth's broken Lily perished in its prime.

I think no father under any sky
More fondly loved a daughter than did I,
And scarcely ever has a child been born
Whose loss her parents could more justly mourn.
Unspoiled and neat, obedient at all times,
She seemed already versed in songs and rhymes,
And with a highborn courtesy and art,
Though but a babe, she played a maiden's part.
Discreet and modest, sociable and free
From jealous habits, docile, mannerly,
She never thought to taste her morning fare
Until she should have said her morning prayer;
She never went to sleep at night until
She had prayed God to save us all from ill.
She used to run to meet her father when
He came from any journey home again;
She loved to work and to anticipate
The servants of the house ere they could wait
Upon her pare...

News o' grief had overteaken
Dark-eyed Fanny, now vorseaken;
There she zot, wi' breast a-heaven,
While vrom zide to zide, wi' grieven,
Vell her head, wi' tears a-creepen
Down her cheaks, in bitter weepen.
There wer still the ribbon-bow
She tied avore her hour ov woe,
An' there wer still the hans that tied it
Hangen white,
Or wringen tight,
In ceare that drowned all ceare bezide it.

When a man, wi' heartless slighten,
Mid become a maiden's blighten,
He mid cearelessly vorseake her,
But must answer to her Meaker;
He mid slight, wi' selfish blindness,
All her deeds o' loven-kindness,
God wull waigh 'em wi' the slighten
That mid be her love's requiten;
He do look on each deceiver,
He do know
What weight o' woe
Do break the ...

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, ‘O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.’

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish’d brass
I chose. The ranged ramparts bright
From level meadow-bases of deep grass
Suddenly scaled the light.

Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf
The rock rose clear, or winding stair.
My soul would live alone unto herself
In her high palace there.

And ‘while the world runs round and round,’ I said,
‘Reign thou apart, a quiet king,
Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade
Sleeps on his luminous ring.’

To which my soul made answer readily:
‘Trust me, in bliss I shall abide
In this great mansion, that is built for me,
So royal...

Amid the desolation of a city,
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people, - so that Pity

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of Oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave

For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers

Of solitary wealth, - the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air, -
Are by its presence dimmed - they stand aloof,

And are withdrawn - so that the world is bare;
As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
Am...

    'Oh my heart is sad and weary
    Everywhere I roam,
    Longing for the old plantation
    And for the old folks at home.'

A voice of grave, deep emphasis
Is in the woods to-night;
No sound of radiant day is this,
No cadence of the light.
Here in the fall and flights of leaves
Against grey widths of sea,
The spirit of the forests grieves
For lost Persephone.

The fair divinity that roves
Where many waters sing
Doth miss her daughter of the groves
The golden-headed Spring.
She cannot find the shining hand
That once the rose caressed;
There is no blossom on the land,
No bird in last year’s nest.

Here, where this strange Demeter weeps
This large, sad life unseen
Where July’s strong, wild torrent leaps
The wet hill-heads between,
I sit and listen to the grief,
The high, supreme distress,
Which sobs above the fallen leaf
Like human tenderne...

        There was a fair green garden sloping
    From the south-east side of the mountain-ledge;
        And the earliest tint of the dawn came groping
    Down through its paths, from the day's dim edge.
        The bluest skies and the reddest roses
    Arched and varied its velvet sod;
        And the glad birds sang, as the soul supposes
    The angels sing on the hills of God.

        I wandered there when my veins seemed bursting
    With life's rare rapture and keen delight,
        And yet in my heart was a constant thirsting
    For something over the mountain-height.
        I wanted to stand in the blaze of glory
    That turned to crimson the peaks of snow,
        And the winds from the west all breathed a story
    Of realms and regions I longe...

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...

The quiet August noon has come,
A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
In glassy sleep the waters lie.

And mark yon soft white clouds that rest
Above our vale, a moveless throng;
The cattle on the mountain's breast
Enjoy the grateful shadow long.

Oh, how unlike those merry hours
In early June when Earth laughs out,
When the fresh winds make love to flowers,
And woodlands sing and waters shout.

When in the grass sweet voices talk,
And strains of tiny music swell
From every moss-cup of the rock,
From every nameless blossom's bell.

But now a joy too deep for sound,
A peace no other season knows,
Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground,
The blessing of supreme repose.

Away! I ...

The dawn of the day was dreary,
And the lowering clouds o'erhead
Wept in a silent sorrow
Where the sweet sunshine lay dead;
And a wind came out of the eastward
Like an endless sigh of pain,
And the leaves fell down in the pathway
And writhed in the falling rain.

I had tried in a brave endeavor
To chord my harp with the sun,
But the strings would slacken ever,
And the task was a weary one:
And so, like a child impatient
And sick of a discontent,
I bowed in a shower of teardrops
And mourned with the instrument.

And lo! as I bowed, the splendor
Of the sun bent over me,
With a touch as warm and tender
As a father's hand might be:
And even as I felt its presence,
My clouded soul grew bright,
And the tears, like the rain of ...

Pale, at its ghastly noon,
Pauses above the death-still wood the moon;
The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs;
The clouds descend in rain;
Mourning, the wan stars wane,
Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!
Haggard as spectres vision-like and dumb,
Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow,
Towards that sad lair the pale procession come
Where the grave closes on the night below.

With dim, deep-sunken eye,
Crutched on his staff, who trembles tottering by?
As wrung from out the shattered heart, one groan
Breaks the deep hush alone!
Crushed by the iron fate, he seems to gather
All life's last strength to stagger to the bier,
And hearken Do these cold lips murmur "Father?"
The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of fear,
...

This is the path he used to take,
That ended at a rose-porched door:
He takes it now for oldtime's sake;
And love of yore.

The blue mertensia, by the stone,
Lifts questioning eyes, that seem to say,
'Why is it now you walk alone
On this dim way?"

And then a wild bird, from a bough,
Out of his heart the answer takes:
"He walks alone with memory now
And heart that breaks.

"And Loss and Longing, witches, who
Usurp the wood and change to woe
The dream of happiness he knew
Long, long ago.

"The faery princess, from whose gaze
The blue mertensia learned that look,
Retaining still beside these ways
The joy it took."

He listens, conscious of no part
In wildwood question and reply
The wood, from out its mighty ...

I.

Long vollies of wind and of rain
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the eve falls chill and murk;
But on yesterday's eve I know
How a horned moon's thorn-like bow
Stabbed rosy thro' gold and thro' glow,
Like a rich barbaric dirk.


II.

Now thick throats of the snapdragons, -
Who hold in their hues cool dawns,
Which a healthy yellow paints, -
Are filled with a sweet rain fine
Of a jaunty, jubilant shine,
A faery vat of rare wine,
Which the honey thinly taints.


III.

Now dabble the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
While the candytuft's damp crown
Droops dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;
And long spikes o' the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the dripping o' de...

O thicker, deeper, darker growing,
The solemn vista to the tomb
Must know henceforth another shadow,
And give another cypress room.

In love surpassing that of brothers,
We walked, O friend, from childhood’s day;
And, looking back o’er fifty summers,
Our footprints track a common way.

One in our faith, and one our longing
To make the world within our reach
Somewhat the better for our living,
And gladder for our human speech.

Thou heard’st with me the far-off voices,
The old beguiling song of fame,
But life to thee was warm and present,
And love was better than a name.

To homely joys and loves and friendships
Thy genial nature fondly clung;
And so the shadow on the dial
Ran back and left thee always young.

And wh...

‘From that sky livid, bizarre
as your tortured destiny,
what thoughts fill your empty heart,
Freethinker, answer me.’

Insatiable and avid
for vague and obscure skies,
I’ll not groan like Ovid,
banned from Rome and paradise.

Skies, shores split and seamed,
my pride’s mirrored in you:
your clouds in mourning, too,

are the hearses of my dreams,
Hell’s reflected in your light,
where my heart takes delight.

And has the Spring's all glorious eye
No lesson to the mind?
The birds that cleave the golden sky--
Things to the earth resigned--
Wild flowers that dance to every wind--
Do they no memory leave behind?

Aye, flowers! The very name of flowers,
That bloom in wood and glen,
Brings Spring to me in Winter's hours,
And childhood's dreams again.
The primrose on the woodland lea
Was more than gold and lands to me.

The violets by the woodland side
Are thick as they could thrive;
I've talked to them with childish pride
As things that were alive:
I find them now in my distress--
They seem as sweet, yet valueless.

The cowslips on the meadow lea,
How have I run for them!
I looked with wild and childish glee
Upon each golden gem: