War

From cocoon forth a butterfly
As lady from her door
Emerged -- a summer afternoon --
Repairing everywhere,

Without design, that I could trace,
Except to stray abroad
On miscellaneous enterprise
The clovers understood.

Her pretty parasol was seen
Contracting in a field
Where men made hay, then struggling hard
With an opposing cloud,

Where parties, phantom as herself,
To Nowhere seemed to go
In purposeless circumference,
As 't were a tropic show.

And notwithstanding bee that worked,
And flower that zealous blew,
This audience of idleness
Disdained them, from the sky,

Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
And men that made the hay,
And afternoon, and butterfly,
Extinguished in its sea.

A rain once fell upon the earth
    For many a day and night,
And hid the flowers, the grass, the trees,
    The birds and beasts, from sight.

The deep waves covered all the land,
    And mountain-tops so high;
And nothing could be seen around,
    But water, and the sky.

But yet there was one moving thing,--
    A still and lonely ark,--
That, many a weary day and night,
    Sailed o'er that ocean dark.

At last, a little dove was forth
    From that lone vessel sent;
But, wearied, to the ark again,
    When evening came, she bent.

Again she went, but soon returned,
    And in her beak was seen
A little twig--an olive-branch--
    With leaves of shining green.

The waters sank, and then the dove
    Flew fr...

AT the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!

Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love.)

We may sigh o'er the heavy burdens
    Of the black, the brown and white;
But if we all clasped hands together
    The burdens would be more light.
How to solve life's saddest problems,
    Its weariness, want and woe,
Was answered by One who suffered
    In Palestine long ago.

He gave from his heart this precept,
    To ease the burdens of men,
"As ye would that others do to you
    Do ye even so to them."
Life's heavy, wearisome burdens
    Will change to a gracious trust
When men shall learn in the light of God
    To be merciful and just.

Where war has sharpened his weapons,
    And slavery masterful had,
Let white and black and brown unite
    To build the kingdom of God.
And never attempt in madness
    To build a kin...

"By the North Pole, I do challenge thee!"
    Love's Labour's Lost.



I.

Parry, my man! has thy brave leg
Yet struck its foot against the peg
On which the world is spun?
Or hast thou found No Thoroughfare
Writ by the hand of Nature there
Where man has never run!


II.

Hast thou yet traced the Great Unknown
Of channels in the Frozen Zone,
Or held at Icy Bay,
Hast thou still miss'd the proper track
For homeward Indian men that lack
A bracing by the way?


III.

Still hast thou wasted toil and trouble
On nothing but the North-Sea Bubble
Of geographic scholar?
Or found new ways for ships to shape,
Instead of winding round the Cape,
A short cut thro' the collar?

From a Picture


The sun has gone down, spreading wide on
The sky-line one ray of red fire;
Prepare the soft cushions of Sidon,
Make ready the rich loom of Tyre.
The day, with its toil and its sorrow,
Its shade, and its sunshine, at length
Has ended; dost fear for the morrow,
Strong man, in the pride of thy strength?

Like fire-flies, heavenward clinging,
They multiply, star upon star;
And the breeze a low murmur is bringing
From the tents of my people afar.
Nay, frown not, I am but a Pagan,
Yet little for these things I care;
’Tis the hymn to our deity Dagon
That comes with the pleasant night air.

It shall not disturb thee, nor can it;
See, closed are the curtains, the lights
Gleam down on the cloven pomegranate,

This is the tomboy month of all the year,
March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills,
Waking the world with laughter, as she wills,
Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear.
She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere
And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills
The hyla's song, and hoods of daffodils
Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear.
Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves,
Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes
Singing and calling to the naked trees;
And straight the oilets of the little leaves
Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows,
And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze.

This is the tomboy month of all the year,
March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills,
Waking the world with laughter, as she wills,
Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear.
She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere
And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills
The hyla's song, and hoods of daffodils
Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear.
Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves,
Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes
Singing and calling to the naked trees;
And straight the oilets of the little leaves
Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows,
And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze.

I have done all I could
For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her,
Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her,
Home from the heath or the wood.

At the mirth-time of May,
When my shadow first lured her, I'd donned my new bravery
Of greenth: 'twas my all. Now I shiver in slavery,
Icicles grieving me gray.

Plumed to every twig's end
I could tempt her chair under me. Much did I treasure her
During those days she had nothing to pleasure her;
Mutely she used me as friend.

I'm a skeleton now,
And she's gone, craving warmth. The rime sticks like a skin to me;
Through me Arcturus peers; Nor'lights shoot into me;
Gone is she, scorning my bough!

Oh bud and leaf and blossom,
    How beautiful they are!
Than last year's vernal season
    'Tis lovelier by far;
This earth was never so enchanting
    Nor half so bright before -
But so I've rhapsodized, in springtime,
    For forty years or more.

What luxury of color
    On shrub and plant and vine,
From pansies' richest purple
    To pink of eglantine;
From buttercups to "johnny-jump-ups,"
    With deep cerulean eyes,
Responding to their modest surname
    In violet surprise.

Sometimes I think the sunlight
    That gilds the emerald hills,
And makes Aladdin dwellings
    Of dingy domiciles,
Is surplus beauty overflowing
    That Heaven cannot hold -
The topaz glitter, or the jacinth,
    The glare of streets o...

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it,
I hurled my youth into the grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it -
Came out with a fortune last fall, -
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it,
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe: but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason),
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse th...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap...

When rainbow hues of closing day
O'er evening's portals faintly play,
The Alpine horn calls far away,
"Praised be the Lord."

And every hill and rock around,
As though they loved the grateful sound,
Send back, 'mid solitudes profound,
"Praised be the Lord."

O God! has man so thankless grown,
He brings no anthems to thy throne,
When voiceless things have found a tone
To praise the Lord?

Ah no! for, see, the shepherds come,
Though hardly heard the welcome home;
From toil of day they quickly come
To worship God.

The look that taught their hearts to bow,
And childhood's laugh and sunny brow,
All, all by them forgotten now
In praise to God.

Kneeling the starry vault beneath,
With spirits free as air they breathe...

The prim daisy's golden eye
On the fallow land doth lie,
Though the Spring is just begun:
Pewits watch it all the day,
And the skylark's nest of hay
Is there by its dried leaves in the sun.

There the pilewort, all in gold,
'Neath the ridge of finest mould,
Blooms to cheer the ploughman's eye:
There the mouse his hole hath made,
And 'neath the golden shade
Hides secure when the hawk is prowling by.

Here's the speedwell's sapphire blue:
Was there anything more true
To the vernal season still?
Here it decks the bank alone,
Where the milkmaid throws a stone
At noon, to cross the rapid, flooded rill.

Here the cowslip, chill with cold,
On the rushy bed behold,
It looks for sunshine all the day.
Here the honey bee will come,...

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being ...

O Ary Scheffer! when beneath thine eye,
Touched with the light that cometh from above,
Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love,
No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would tear
Therefrom the token of His equal care,
And make thy symbol of His truth a lie!
The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall away
In His compassionate gaze, grubbed smoothly out,
To mar no more the exercise devout
Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray
Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath day!
Let whoso can before such praying-books
Kneel on his velvet cushion; I, for one,
Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun,
Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks,
Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor.
No falser idol man has bowed before,
In Indian groves or islands of the sea,

O weep not, love! each tear that springs
In those dear eyes of thine,
To me a keener suffering brings
Than if they flowed from mine.

And do not droop! however drear
The fate awaiting thee.
For my sake, combat pain and care,
And cherish life for me!

I do not fear thy love will fail,
Thy faith is true I know;
But O! my love! thy strength is frail
For such a life of woe.

Were't not for this, I well could trace
(Though banished long from thee)
Life's rugged path, and boldly face
The storms that threaten me.

Fear not for me, I've steeled my mind
Sorrow and strife to greet,
Joy with my love I leave behind,
Care with my friends I meet.

A mother's sad reproachful eye,
A father's scowling brow,
But he may frow...

Onward to her destination,
    O'er the stream the Hannah sped,
When a cry of consternation
    Smote and chilled our hearts with dread.

Wildly leaping, madly sweeping,
    All relentless in their sway,
Like a band of cruel demons
    Flames were closing 'round our way

Oh! the horror of those moments;
    Flames above and waves below -
Oh! the agony of ages
    Crowded in one hour of woe.

Fainter grew our hearts with anguish
    In that hour with peril rife,
When we saw the pilot flying,
    Terror-stricken, for his life.

Then a man uprose before us -
    We had once despised his race -
But we saw a lofty purpose
    Lighting up his darkened face.


While the flames were madly roaring,
    With a coura...