War

Blessed be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once.
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.
Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the hear...

An outcry in the bush below,
A crash, and boughs that sway,
And shouts of laughter let me know
Where my two ruffians play.

Barelegged, bareheaded, brown and free,
They lurk and prowl and spring;
Like tiger-cubs they disagree,
Like honeysuckers sing.

For in their hearts are echoes yet
From ages when they knew
The caves of green they now forget,
Though there they climbed or flew.

No cage set limits to their pace;
They held the hunt at bay;
And in their careless mien I trace
The savage mood to-day.

They’ll take no tidal drift, nor lie
And rot like souls of mud,
For sullen lip and flashing eye
Betray the rebel blood.

Go, flout the law your hearts disdain
Your foes are well arrayed
And take for guerdon lov...

Redoubted King, of courage leonine,
I mark thee, Richard! urgent to equip
Thy warlike person with the staff and scrip;
I watch thee sailing o'er the midland brine;
In conquered Cyprus see thy Bride decline
Her blushing cheek, love-vows upon her lip,
And see love-emblems streaming from thy ship,
As thence she holds her way to Palestine.
My Song, a fearless homager, would attend
Thy thundering battle-axe as it cleaves the press
Of war, but duty summons her away
To tell how, finding in the rash distress
Of those Enthusiasts a subservient friend,
To giddier heights hath clomb the Papal sway.

When you and I were young, the days
Were filled with scent of pink and rose,
And full of joy from dawn till close,
From morning's mist till evening's haze.
And when the robin sung his song
The verdant woodland ways along,
We whistled louder than he sung.
And school was joy, and work was sport
For which the hours were all too short,
When you and I were young, my boy,
When you and I were young.

When you and I were young, the woods
Brimmed bravely o'er with every joy
To charm the happy-hearted boy.
The quail turned out her timid broods;
The prickly copse, a hostess fine,
Held high black cups of harmless wine;
And low the laden grape-vine swung
With beads of night-kissed amethyst
Where buzzing lovers held their tryst,
When you and I were ...

Midnight June 30 1879

I.

Midnight–in no midsummer tune
The breakers lash the shores:
The cuckoo of a joyless June
Is calling out of doors:

And thou hast vanish’d from thine own
To that which looks like rest,
True brother, only to be known
By those who love thee best.


II.

Midnight–and joyless June gone by,
And from the deluged park
The cuckoo of a worse July
Is calling thro’ the dark:

But thou art silent underground,
And o’er thee streams the rain,
True poet, surely to be found
When Truth is found again.


III.

And now, in these unsummer’d skies
The summer bird is still,
Far off a phantom cuckoo cries
From out a phantom hill;

And thro’ this midnight breaks th...

FATE OF GENEVA IN THE YEAR 1782.

A FRAGMENT.


Yes--if there yet live some of those,
Who, when this small Republic rose,
Quick as a startled hive of bees,
Against her leaguering enemies--[1]
When, as the Royal Satrap shook
    His well-known fetters at her gates,
Even wives and mothers armed and took
    Their stations by their sons and mates;
And on these walls there stood--yet, no,
    Shame to the traitors--would have stood
As firm a band as e'er let flow
    At Freedom's base their sacred blood;
If those yet live, who on that night
When all were watching, girt for fight,
Stole like the creeping of a pest
From rank to rank, from breast to breast,
Filling the weak, the old with fears,
Turning the heroine's zea...

"Old man, upon the green hillside,
With yellow flowers besprinkled o'er,
How long in silence wilt thou bide
At this low stone door?

"I stoop: within 'tis dark and still;
But shadowy paths methinks there be,
And lead they far into the hill?"
"Traveller, come and see."

"'Tis dark, 'tis cold, and hung with gloom;
I care not now within to stay;
For thee and me is scarcely room,
I will hence away."

"Not so, not so, thou youthful guest,
Thy foot shall issue forth no more:
Behold the chamber of thy rest,
And the closing door!"

"O, have I 'scaped the whistling ball,
And striven on smoky fields of fight,
And scaled the 'leaguered city's wall
In the dangerous night;

"And borne my life unharméd still
Through foaming ...

As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine,
Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line;
So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire,
Accost and decoy to our masters' desire.

Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure,
Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure;
Since half of our trade is that same pretty sort
As mettlesome wenches do practise in port.

For this is our office to spy and make room,
As hiding yet guiding the foe to their doom;
Surrounding, confounding, we bait and betray
And tempt them to battle the seas' width away.

The pot-bellied merchant foreboding no wrong
With headlight and sidelight he lieth along,
Till, lightless and lightfoot and lurking, leap we
To force him discover his business by sea.

And when we hav...

A View from Oxford Cloisters.
(January, 1863.)


With Tewksbury and Barnet heath
In days to come the field shall blend,
The story dim and date obscure;
In legend all shall end.
Even now, involved in forest shade
A Druid-dream the strife appears,
The fray of yesterday assumes
The haziness of years.
In North and South still beats the vein
Of Yorkist and Lancastrian.

Our rival Roses warred for Sway -
For Sway, but named the name of Right;
And Passion, scorning pain and death,
Lent sacred fervor to the fight.
Each lifted up a broidered cross,
While crossing blades profaned the sign;
Monks blessed the fraticidal lance,
And sisters scarfs could twine.
Do North and South the sin retain
Of Yorkist and Lancastrian?

Bu...

All your wonderful inventions,
    All your houses vast and tall,
All your great gun-fronted vessels,
    Every fort and every wall,
With the passing of the ages,
    They shall pass and they shall fall.

As you sit among the idols
    That your avarice gave birth,
As you count the hoarded treasures
    That you think of priceless worth,
Time is digging tombs to hide them
    In the bosom of the earth.

There shall come a great convulsion
    Or a rushing tidal wave,
Or a sound of mighty thunders
    From a subterranean cave,
And a boasting world's possessions
    Shall be buried in one grave.

From the Centuries of Silence
    We are bringing back again
Buried vase and bust and column
    And the gods they worshipped th...

Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World's chivalry and might
Into the clamorous crimson waves of war!

Or didst thou rule the fire-laden moon?
In amorous Sidon was thy temple built
Over the light and laughter of the sea
Where, behind lattice scarlet-wrought and gilt,
Some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry,
All through the waste and wearied hours of noon;
Till her wan cheek with flame of passion burned,
And she rose up th...

    The room is full of you!--As I came in
    And closed the door behind me, all at once
    A something in the air, intangible,
    Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!--

    Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
    Each other room's dear personality.
    The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,--
    The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death--
    Has strangled that habitual breath of home
    Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
    And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change.
    Save here.    Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gate
    Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped
    Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange,
    Sweet garden of a thousand years ago
    And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!"

    You are not...

Dawn

On skies still and starlit
White lustres take hold,
And grey flushes scarlet,
And red flashes gold.
And sun-glories cover
The rose shed above her,
Like lover and lover
They flame and unfold.

-    -    -    -    -

Still bloom in the garden
Green grass-plot, fresh lawn,
Though pasture lands harden
And drought fissures yawn.
While leaves not a few fall,
Let rose leaves for you fall,
Leaves pearl-strung with dew-fall,
And gold shot with dawn.

Does the grass-plot remember
The fall of your feet
In autumn’s red ember,
When drought leagues with heat,
When the last of the roses
Despairingly closes
In the lull that reposes
Ere storm winds wax fleet?

Love’s melodies languish
...

The point is turned; the twilight shadow fills
The wheeling stream, the soft receding shore,
And on our ears from deep among the hills
Breaks now the rapid's sudden quickening roar.
Ah yet the same, or have they changed their face,
The fair green fields, and can it still be seen,
The white log cottage near the mountain's base,
So bright and quiet, so home-like and serene?
Ah, well I question, for as five years go,
How many blessings fall, and how much woe.

Aye there they are, nor have they changed their cheer,
The fields, the hut, the leafy mountain brows;
Across the lonely dusk again I hear
The loitering bells, the lowing of the cows,
The bleat of many sheep, the stilly rush
Of the low whispering river, and through all,
Soft human tongues that break the...

I

Where love is life
The roses blow,
Though winds be rude
And cold the snow,
The roses climb
Serenely slow,
They nod in rhyme
We know - we know
Where love is life
The roses blow.

Where life is love
The roses blow,
Though care be quick
And sorrows grow,
Their roots are twined
With rose-roots so
That rosebuds find
A way to show
Where life is love
The roses blow.


II

Nothing came here but sunlight,
Nothing fell here but rain,
Nothing blew but the mellow wind,
Here are the flowers again!

No one came here but you, dear,
You with your magic train
Of brightness and laughter and lightness,
Here is my joy again!


III

I have songs of dancing ple...

He fell in victory's fierce pursuit,
    Holed through and through with shot,
A sabre sweep had hacked him deep
    Twixt neck and shoulderknot....

The potman cannot well recall,
    The ostler never knew,
Whether his day was Malplaquet,
    The Boyne or Waterloo.

But there he hangs for tavern sign,
    With foolish bold regard
For cock and hen and loitering men
    And wagons down the yard.

Raised high above the hayseed world
    He smokes his painted pipe,
And now surveys the orchard ways,
    The damsons clustering ripe.

He sees the churchyard slabs beyond,
    Where country neighbours lie,
Their brief renown set lowly down;
    His name assaults the sky.

He grips the tankard of brown ale
    Tha...

Speak not - whisper not;
Here bloweth thyme and bergamot;
Softly on the evening hour,
Secret herbs their spices shower.
Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh,
Lean-stalked, purple lavender;
Hides within her bosom, too,
All her sorrows, bitter rue.

Breathe not - trespass not;
Of this green and darkling spot,
Latticed from the moon's beams,
Perchance a distant dreamer dreams;
Perchance upon its darkening air,
The unseen ghosts of children fare,
Faintly swinging, sway and sweep,
Like lovely sea-flowers in its deep;
While, unmoved, to watch and ward,
Amid its gloomed and daisied sward,
Stands with bowed and dewy head
That one little leaden Lad.

'A poet'! He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff
Which Art hath lodged within his hand must laugh
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.
Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,
And let the groveler sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool
Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph.
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold;
And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree
Comes not by casting in a formal mould,
But from its 'own' divine vitality.