Spirituality

If the whole weight of what we think and feel,
Save only far as thought and feeling blend
With action, were as nothing, patriot Friend!
From thy remonstrance would be no appeal;
But to promote and fortify the weal
Of our own Being is her paramount end;
A truth which they alone shall comprehend
Who shun the mischief which they cannot heal.
Peace in these feverish times is sovereign bliss:
Here, with no thirst but what the stream can slake,
And startled only by the rustling brake,
Cool air I breathe; while the unincumbered Mind
By some weak aims at services assigned
To gentle Natures, thanks not Heaven amiss.

I give to you these verses, that if in
Some future time my name lands happily
To bring brief pleasure to humanity,
The craft supported by a great north wind,

Your memory, like tales from ancient times,
Will bore the reader like a dulcimer,
And by a strange fraternal chain live here
As if suspended in my lofty rhymes.

From deepest pit into the highest sky
Damned being, only I can bear you now.
0 shadow, barely present to the eye,

You lightly step, with a serene regard
On mortal fools who've judged you mean and hard
Angel with eyes of jet, great burnished brow!

    Thou tranquil night, and thou, O gentle ray
    Of the declining moon; and thou, that o'er
    The rock appearest, 'mid the silent grove,
    The messenger of day; how dear ye were,
    And how delightful to these eyes, while yet
    Unknown the furies, and grim Fate! But now,
    No gentle sight can soothe this wounded soul.
    Then, only, can forgotten joy revive,
    When through the air, and o'er the trembling fields
    The raging south wind whirls its clouds of dust;
    And when the car, the pondrous car of Jove,
    Omnipotent, high-thundering o'er our heads,
    A pathway cleaves athwart the dusky sky.
    Then would I love with storm-charged clouds to fly
    Along the cliffs, along the valleys deep,
    The headlong flight of frightened flocks to wa...

I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
For love is but a skein unwound
Between the dark and dawn.

A lonely ghost the ghost is
That to God shall come;
I - love's skein upon the ground,
My body in the tomb -
Shall leap into the light lost
In my mother's womb.

But were I left to lie alone
In an empty bed,
The skein so bound us ghost to ghost
When he turned his head
passing on the road that night,
Mine must walk when dead.

I turn these leaves with thronging thoughts, and say,
Alas! how many friends of youth are dead;
How many visions of fair hope have fled,
Since first, my Muse, we met. So speeds away
Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing,
Stretched in the noontide bower, as if the day
Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay
Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing
That fans us; while aloft the gay clouds shine!
Oh, ere the coming of the long cold night,
Religion, may we bless thy purer light,
That still shall warm us, when the tints decline
O'er earth's dim hemisphere; and sad we gaze
On the vain visions of our passing days!

You see that porcelain ranged there in the window,
Platters and soup-plates done with pale pink rosebuds,
And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy?
See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges!
They’re works of art, minutely seen and felt,
Each petal done devoutly. Is it failure
To spend your blood like this?

Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal,
My brain unfolding! There you’ll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window,
Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . .

Sometimes my wife comes there to speak to me . . .
Sometimes the grey cat waves his tail around me . . .
Goldfish swim in a bowl, glisten in sunlight,
Dilate to...

When by the wall the tiger-flower swings
A head of sultry slumber and aroma;
And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings
Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a
White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast -
Between the pansy fire of the west,
And poppy mist of moonrise in the east,
This heartache will have ceased.

The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep -
Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit,
And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reap
The ripened grain and full blown blossom near it;
Let me behold how gladness gives the whole
The transformed countenance of my own soul -
Between the sunset and the risen moon
Let sorrow vanish soon.

And these things then shall keep me company:
The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laught...

Let us be silent for a little while;
Let us be still and listen.    We may hear
Echoes from other worlds not far a way.

City on city rising, steeple out-topping steeple,
Gaining and hoarding and spending, and armies on battle bent,
People and people and people, and ever more human people -
This is not all of creation, this is not all that was meant!
Earth on its orbit spinning,
This is not end or beginning;
That is but one of a trillion spheres out into the ether hurled:
We move in a zone of wonder,
And over our planet and under
Are infinite orders of beings and marvels of world on world.

There may be moving among us curious people and races,
Folk of the fourth dimension, folk of the vast star spaces.
They may be trying to reach us,
They may be lon...

Joy, thou goddess, fair, immortal,
Offspring of Elysium,
Mad with rapture, to the portal
Of thy holy fame we come!
Fashion's laws, indeed, may sever,
But thy magic joins again;
All mankind are brethren ever
'Neath thy mild and gentle reign.

    CHORUS.
Welcome, all ye myriad creatures!
Brethren, take the kiss of love!
Yes, the starry realms above
Hide a Father's smiling features!

He, that noble prize possessing
He that boasts a friend that's true,
He whom woman's love is blessing,
Let him join the chorus too!
Aye, and he who but one spirit
On this earth can call his own!
He who no such bliss can merit,
Let him mourn his fate alone!

    CHORUS.
All who Nature's tribes are swelling
Homage pay to sympathy;

The beaver cut his timber
With patient teeth that day,
The minks were fish-wards, and the crows
Surveyors of highway,

When Keezar sat on the hillside
Upon his cobbler’s form,
With a pan of coals on either hand
To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather,
He stitched and hammered and sung;
In the brook he moistened his leather,
In the pewter mug his tongue.

Well knew the tough old Teuton
Who brewed the stoutest ale,
And he paid the goodwife’s reckoning
In the coin of song and tale.

The songs they still are singing
Who dress the hills of vine,
The tales that haunt the Brocken
And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
The swift stream wound away,
Through birches and scar...

What shall we talk of? Li Po? Hokusai?
You narrow your long dark eyes to fascinate me;
You smile a little. . . .Outside, the night goes by.
I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees . . .
Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees.

‘These lines, converging, they suggest such distance!
The soul is drawn away, beyond horizons.
Lured out to what? One dares not think.
Sometimes, I glimpse these infinite perspectives
In intimate talk (with such as you) and shrink . . .

‘One feels so petty! One feels such, emptiness!’
You mimic horror, let fall your lifted hand,
And smile at me; with brooding tenderness . . .
Alone on darkened waters I fall and rise;
Slow waves above me break, faint waves of cries.

‘And then these colors . . . but who would dare ...

Dear Carrie, were we truly wise,
And could discern with finer eyes,
And half-inspired sense,
The ways of Providence:

Could we but know the hidden things
That brood beneath the Future's wings,
Hermetically sealed,
But soon to be revealed:

Would we, more blest than we are now,
In due submission learn to bow, -
Receiving on our knees
The Omnipotent decrees?

That which is just, we have.    And we
Who lead this round of mystery,
This dance of strange unrest,
What are we at the best? -

Unless we learn to mount and climb;
Writing upon the page of time,
In words of joy or pain,
That we've not lived in vain.

We all are Ministers of Good;
And where our mission's understood,
How many hearts we must
Raise, t...

    Now that the sun the faded charms
    Of heaven again restores,
    And gentle zephyr the sick air revives,
    And the dark shadows of the clouds
    Are put to flight,
    And birds their naked breasts confide
    Unto the wind, and the soft light,
    With new desire of love, and with new hope,
    The conscious beasts, in the deep woods,
    Amid the melting frosts, inspires;
    May not to you, poor human souls,
    Weary, and overborne with grief,
    The happy age return, which misery,
    And truth's dark torch, before its time, consumed?
    Have not the golden rays
    Of Phoebus vanished from your gaze
    Forever? Say, O gentle Spring,
    Canst thou this icy heart inspire, and melt,
    That in the bloom of youth, the frost of age ha...

Children of earth are we,
Lovers of land and sea,
Of hill, of brook, of tree,
    Of all things fair;
Of all things dark or bright,
Born of the day and night,
Red rose and lily white
    And dusky hair.

Yet not alone from earth
Do we derive our birth.
What were our singing worth
    Were this the whole?
Somewhere from heaven afar
Hath dropped a fiery star,
Which makes us what we are,
    Which is our soul.

The fields which with covetous spirit we sold,
Those beautiful fields, the delight of the day,
Would have brought us more good than a burthen of gold,
Could we but have been as contented as they.

When the troublesome Tempter beset us, said I,
"Let him come, with his purse proudly grasped in his hand;
But, Allan, be true to me, Allan, we'll die
Before he shall go with an inch of the land!"

There dwelt we, as happy as birds in their bowers;
Unfettered as bees that in gardens abide;
We could do what we liked with the land, it was ours;
And for us the brook murmured that ran by its side.

But now we are strangers, go early or late;
And often, like one overburthened with sin,
With my hand on the latch of the half-opened gate,
I look at the fields, but I...

I love my hour of wind and light,
I love men’s faces and their eyes,
I love my spirit’s veering flight
Like swallows under evening skies.

(Fergus.) This whole day have I followed in the rocks,
And you have changed and flowed from shape to
shape,
First as a raven on whose ancient wings
Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed
A weasel moving on from stone to stone,
And now at last you wear a human shape,
A thin grey man half lost in gathering night.

(Druid.) What would you, king of the proud Red Branch
kings?

(Fergus.) This would I Say, most wise of living souls:
Young subtle Conchubar sat close by me
When I gave judgment, and his words were wise,
And what to me was burden without end,
To him seemed easy, So I laid the crown
Upon his head to cast away my sorrow.

(Druid.) What would you, king of the proud Red Branch
kings?

(Fergus.) A king and proud! and that ...

FROM THE BANKS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.


Not many months have now been dreamed away
Since yonder sun, beneath whose evening ray
Our boat glides swiftly past these wooded shores,
Saw me where Trent his mazy current pours,
And Donington's old oaks, to every breeze,
Whisper the tale of by-gone centuries;--
Those oaks, to me as sacred as the groves,
Beneath whose shade the pious Persian roves,
And hears the spirit-voice of sire, or chief,
Or loved mistress, sigh in every leaf.
There, oft, dear Lady, while thy lip hath sung
My own unpolished lays, how proud I've hung
On every tuneful accent! proud to feel.
That notes like mine should have the fate to steal,
As o'er thy hallowing lip they sighed along.
Such breath of passion and such soul of song.
Yes,--...