Spirituality

Four fiery steeds impatient of the rein
Whirled us o'er sunless ground beneath a sky
As void of sunshine, when, from that wide plain,
Clear tops of far-off mountains we descry,
Like a Sierra of cerulean Spain,
All light and lustre. Did no heart reply;
Yes, there was One; for One, asunder fly
The thousand links of that ethereal chain;
And green vales open out, with grove and field,
And the fair front of many a happy Home;
Such tempting spots as into vision come
While Soldiers, weary of the arms they wield
And sick at heart of strifeful Christendom,
Gaze on the moon by parting clouds revealed.

In the fair morning of his life,
    When his pure heart lay in his breast,
    Panting, with all that wild unrest
To plunge into the great world's strife

That fills young hearts with mad desire,
    He saw a sunset.    Red and gold
    The burning billows surged and rolled,
And upward tossed their caps of fire.

He looked.    And as he looked, the sight
    Sent from his soul through breast and brain
    Such intense joy, it hurt like pain.
His heart seemed bursting with delight.

So near the Unknown seemed, so close
    He might have grasped it with his hands
    He felt his inmost soul expand,
As sunlight will expand a rose

One day he heard a singing strain -
    A human voice, in bird-like trills.
    He paused, and little r...

Gaunt in gloom,
The pale stars their torches,
Enshrouded, wave.
Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume,
Arches on soaring arches,
Night's sindark nave.

Seraphim,
The lost hosts awaken
To service till
In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim,
Raised when she has and shaken
Her thurible.

And long and loud,
To night's nave upsoaring,
A starknell tolls
As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,
Voidward from the adoring
Waste of souls.

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol...

Yes, my friends! that happier times have been
Than the present, none can contravene;
That a race once lived of nobler worth;
And if ancient chronicles were dumb,
Countless stones in witness forth would come
From the deepest entrails of the earth.
But this highly-favored race has gone,
Gone forever to the realms of night.
We, we live! The moments are our own,
And the living judge the right.

Brighter zones, my friends, no doubt excel
This, the land wherein we're doomed to dwell,
As the hardy travellers proclaim;
But if Nature has denied us much,
Art is yet responsive to our touch,
And our hearts can kindle at her flame.
If the laurel will not flourish here
If the myrtle is cold winter's prey,
Yet the vine, to crown us, year by year,
Still pu...

Smile of the Moon! for I so name
That silent greeting from above;
A gentle flash of light that came
From her whom drooping captives love;
Or art thou of still higher birth?
Thou that didst part the clouds of earth,
My torpor to reprove!

Bright boon of pitying Heaven! alas,
I may not trust thy placid cheer!
Pondering that Time tonight will pass
The threshold of another year;
For years to me are sad and dull;
My very moments are too full
Of hopelessness and fear.

And yet, the soul-awakening gleam,
That struck perchance the farthest cone
Of Scotland's rocky wilds, did seem
To visit me, and me alone;
Me, unapproached by any friend,
Save those who to my sorrow lend
Tears due unto their own.

To night the church-tower bells ...

Crazy Jane And The Bishop


Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
i(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that's dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
i(The solid man and the coxcomb.)
Nor was he Bishop when his ban
Banished Jack the Journeyman,
i(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor so much as parish priest,
Yet he, an old book in his fist,
Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
i(The solid man and the coxcomb.)
The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
i(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron's hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
i(The solid man and the coxcomb.)
Jack had my...

Tradition, be thou mute! Oblivion, throw
Thy veil in mercy o'er the records, hung
Round strath and mountain, stamped by the ancient tongue
On rock and ruin darkening as we go,
Spots where a word, ghostlike, survives to show
What crimes from hate, or desperate love, have sprung;
From honour misconceived, or fancied wrong,
What feuds, not quenched but fed by mutual woe.
Yet, though a wild vindictive Race, untamed
By civil arts and labours of the pen,
Could gentleness be scorned by those fierce Men,
Who, to spread wide the reverence they claimed
For patriarchal occupations, named
Yon towering Peaks, "Shepherds of Etive Glen?"

Manhattan's streets I saunter'd, pondering,
On time, space, reality - on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.

After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence;
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.

The Soul is of itself;
All verges to it - all has reference to what ensues;
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence;
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct life-time, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect life-time.

The indirect is just as much as the direct,
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.

Not one word or deed - not v...

Dear friends, left darkling in the long eclipse
That veils the noonday, - you whose finger-tips
A meaning in these ridgy leaves can find
Where ours go stumbling, senseless, helpless, blind.
This wreath of verse how dare I offer you
To whom the garden's choicest gifts are due?
The hues of all its glowing beds are ours,
Shall you not claim its sweetest-smelling flowers?

Nay, those I have I bring you, - at their birth
Life's cheerful sunshine warmed the grateful earth;
If my rash boyhood dropped some idle seeds,
And here and there you light on saucy weeds
Among the fairer growths, remember still
Song comes of grace, and not of human will:
We get a jarring note when most we try,
Then strike the chord we know not how or why;
Our stately verse with too aspirin...

I have been thinking of the victims bound
In Naples, dying for the lack of air
And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain,
Where hope is not, and innocence in vain
Appeals against the torture and the chain!
Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share
Our common love of freedom, and to dare,
In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned,
And her base pander, the most hateful thing
Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground
Makes vile the old heroic name of king.
O God most merciful! Father just and kind!
Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.
Or, if thy purposes of good behind
Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find
Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt
Thy providential care, nor yet without
The hope which all thy attributes inspire,

I.

O Dark-Eyed goddess of the marble brow,
Whose look is silence and whose touch is night,
Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou,
Who sittest lonely with Life's blown-out light;
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Criest like some lost child;
Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek,
Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,
Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,
Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day?
O Sorrow say, O say!

II.

Now Spring is here and all the world is white,
I will go forth, and where the forest robes
Itself in green, and every hill and height
Crowns its fair head with blossoms, spirit globes
Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with d...

From the upland hidden,
Where the hill is sunny
Tawny like pure honey
In the August heat,
Memories float unbidden
Where the thicket serries
Fragrant with ripe berries
And the milk-weed sweet.

Like a prayer-mat holy
Are the patterned mosses
Which the twin-flower crosses
With her flowerless vine;
In fragile melancholy
The pallid ghost flowers hover
As if to guard and cover
The shadow of a shrine.

Where the pine-linnet lingered
The pale water searches,
The roots of gleaming birches
Draw silver from the lake;
The ripples, liquid-fingered,
Plucking the root-layers,
Fairy like lute players
Lulling music make.

O to lie here brooding
Where the pine-tree column
Rises dark and solemn
To the airy la...

CALLICLES (front below)


Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-cloth’d frame.

Not here, O Apollo
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea,

Where the moon-silver’d inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!

On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks;
On the cliff-side the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.

In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lull’d by the rills,
Lie wrapt in their blankets,
Asleep on the hills.

What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom:’
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flower’d broom?
...

The wild oxalis
Among the valleys
Lifts up its chalice
Of pink and pearl;
And, balsam-breathing,
From out their sheathing,
The myriad wreathing
Green leaves uncurl.

The whole world brightens
With spring, that lightens
The foot that frightens
The building thrush;
Where water tosses
On ferns and mosses
The squirrel crosses
The beechen hush.

And vision on vision,
Like ships elysian
On some white mission,
Sails cloud on cloud;
With scents of clover
The winds brim over,
And in the cover
The stream is loud.

'Twixt bloom that blanches
The orchard branches
Old farms and ranches
Gleam in the gloam;
'Mid blossoms blowing,
Through fields for sowing,
The cows come lowing,
The cows...

    DAWN

As though a gipsy maiden with dim look,
    Sat crooning by the roadside of the year,
    So, Autumn, in thy strangeness, thou art here
To read dark fortunes for us from the book
Of fate; thou flingest in the crinkled brook
    The trembling maple's gold, and frosty-clear
    Thy mocking laughter thrills the atmosphere,
And drifting on its current calls the rook
To other lands.    As one who wades, alone,
    Deep in the dusk, and hears the minor talk
Of distant melody, and finds the tone,
    In some wierd way compelling him to stalk
The paths of childhood over, - so I moan,
    And like a troubled sleeper, groping, walk.

    DUSK

The frightened herds of clouds across the sky
    Trample the sunshine down, and chase the day

RESIGNATION

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
    But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
    But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
    And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
    Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient!    These severe afflictions
    Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
    Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
    Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
    May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death!    What seems so is transition;
    This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysi...

        The day is past and the toilers cease;
        The land grows dim 'mid the shadows grey,
        And hearts are glad, for the dark brings peace
            At the close of day.

        Each weary toiler, with lingering pace,
        As he homeward turns, with the long day done,
        Looks out to the west, with the light on his face
            Of the setting sun.

        Yet some see not (with their sin-dimmed eyes)
        The promise of rest in the fading light;
        But the clouds loom dark in the angry skies
            At the fall of night.

        And some see only a golden sky
        Where the elms their welcoming arms stretch wide
        To the calling rooks, as they homeward fly
            At the eventide.

    ...