Little Lady Icicle is dreaming in the north-land
And gleaming in the north-land, her pillow all a-glow;
    For the frost has come and found her
    With an ermine robe around her
Where little Lady Icicle lies dreaming in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is waking in the north-land,
And shaking in the north-land her pillow to and fro;
    And the hurricane a-skirling
    Sends the feathers all a-whirling
Where little Lady Icicle is waking in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is laughing in the north-land,
And quaffing in the north-land her wines that overflow;
    All the lakes and rivers crusting
    That her finger-tips are dusting,
Where little Lady Icicle is laughing in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is singing in the north-land,
And bringing from t...

"Emam tua carmina sanus?"--MARTIAL.

F.    OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;--
You just sit down, and draw upon your brains.

Come, now, be amiable.

R.    To hear you talk,
You'd make it easier to fly than walk.
You seem to think that rhyming is a thing
You can produce if you but touch a spring;

That fancy, fervour, passion--and what not,

Are just a case of "penny in the slot."
You should reflect that no evasive bird
Is half so shy as is your fittest word;
And even similes, however wrought,
Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;--

Impromptus, too, require elaboration,
And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation;
Then,--as to epigrams,..

F. of H.    Nay, nay, I've done.
I did but make pe...

Shun, shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink
Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't;
Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink
Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in 't.
There may be silver in the "blue-black", all
I know of is the iron and the gall.

Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure, is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore, "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,
Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

Never young Civilian's...

I bring a message from the stream
To fan the burning cheeks of town,
From morning's tower
Of pearl and rose
I bring this cup of crystal down,
With brimming dews agleam,
And from my lady's garden close
I bring this flower.

O walk with me, ye jaded brows,
And I will sing the song I found
Making a lonely rippling sound
Under the boughs.
The tinkle of the brook is there,
And cow-bells wandering through the fern,
And silver calls
From waterfalls,
And echoes floating through the air
From happiness I know not where,
And hum and drone where'er I turn
Of little lives that buzz and die;
And sudden lucent melodies,
Like hidden strings among the trees
Roofing the summer sky.

The soft breath of the briar I bring,
And waft...

FEBRUARY 6, 1881


Come not again! I dwell with you
Above the realm of frost and dew,
Of pain and fire, and growth to death.
I dwell with you where never breath
Is drawn, but fragrance vital flows
From life to life, even as a rose
Unseen pours sweetness through each vein
And from the air distills again.
You are my rose unseen; we live
Where each to other joy may give
In ways untold, by means unknown
And secret as the magnet-stone.

For which of us, indeed, is dead?
No more I lean to kiss your head -
The gold-red hair so thick upon it;
Joy feels no more the touch that won it
When o'er my brow your pearl-cool palm
In tenderness so childish, calm,
Crept softly, once. Yet, see, my arm
Is strong, and still my blood runs warm.

Dark flower of Cheshire garden,
Red evening duly dyes
Thy sombre head with rosy hues
To fix far-gazing eyes.
Well the Planter knew how strongly
Works thy form on human thought;
I muse what secret purpose had he
To draw all fancies to this spot.

I have been across the bridges of the years.
    Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
    Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
    My lost youth.

As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all -
    Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
    My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
    By the track.

As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
    My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
    Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
    Down a mountain.

On the border of that valley I found you,
    Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
    Hand in hand.
And my pulses...

Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
Must perish; how can they this blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change bemoan
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orresthead
Given to the pausing traveler's rapturous glance:
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,
Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong
And constant voice, protest against the wrong.

It seems that dawn will never climb
The eastern hills;
And, clad in mist and flame and rime,
Make flashing highways of the rills.

The night is as an ancient way
Through some dead land,
Whereon the ghosts of Memory
And Sorrow wander hand in hand.

By which man's works ignoble seem,
Unbeautiful;
And grandeur, but the ruined dream
Of some proud queen, crowned with a skull.

A way past-peopled, dark and old,
That stretches far
Its only real thing, the cold
Vague light of sleep's one fitful star.

A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!

The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?

The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile --
Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
In such a little while!

And yet how still the landscape stands,
How nonchalant the wood,
As if the resurrection
Were nothing very odd!

A murmur in the trees to note,
Not loud enough for wind;
A star not far enough to seek,
Nor near enough to find;

A long, long yellow on the lawn,
A hubbub as of feet;
Not audible, as ours to us,
But dapperer, more sweet;

A hurrying home of little men
To houses unperceived, --
All this, and more, if I should tell,
Would never be believed.

Of robins in the trundle bed
How many I espy
Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
Although I heard them try!

But then I promised ne'er to tell;
How could I break my word?
So go your way and I'll go mine, --
No fear you'll miss the road.

Those that of late had fleeted far and fast
To touch all shores, now leaving to the skill
Of others their old craft seaworthy still,
Have charter’d this; where, mindful of the past,
Our true co-mates regather round the mast;
Of diverse tongue, but with a common will
Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil
And crocus, to put forth and brave the blast;
For some, descending from the sacred peak
Of hoar high-templed Faith, have leagued again
Their lot with ours to rove the world about;
And some are wilder comrades, sworn to seek
If any golden harbour be for men
In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt.

All alone in the field
Stands John S. Crow;
And a curious sight is he,
With his head of tow,
And a hat pulled low
On a face that you never see.

His clothes are ragged
And horrid and old,
The worst that ever were worn;
They're covered with mold,
And in each fold
A terrible rent is torn.

They once were new
And spick and span,
As nice as clothes could be;
For though John hardly can
Be called a man,
They were made for men you see.

That old blue coat,
With a double breast
And a brass button here and there,
Was grandfather's best,
And matches the vest--
The one Uncle Phil used to wear.

The trousers are short;
They belonged to Bob
Before he had got his growth;
But John's no snob,
And,...

Morns like these we parted;
Noons like these she rose,
Fluttering first, then firmer,
To her fair repose.

Never did she lisp it,
And 't was not for me;
She was mute from transport,
I, from agony!

Till the evening, nearing,
One the shutters drew --
Quick! a sharper rustling!
And this linnet flew!

The sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist
That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding back.
Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea
Some street-ends thrust forward their stack.

On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey
Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall
As if moving in air towards us, tall angels
Of darkness advancing steadily over us all.

Ye Bards in all your thousand dens,
Great souls with fewer pence than pens,
Sublime adorers of Apollo,
With folios full, and purses hollow;
Whose very souls with rapture glisten,
When you can find a fool to listen;
Who, if a debt were paid by pun,
Would never be completely done.
Ye bright inhabitants of garrets,
Whose dreams are rich in ports and clarets,
Who, in your lofty paradise,
See aldermanic banquets rise--
And though the duns around you troop,
Still float in seas of turtle soup.
I here forsake the tuneful trade,
Where none but lordlings now are paid,
Or where some northern rogue sits puling,
(The curse of universal schooling)--
A ploughman to his country lost,
An author to his printer's cost--
A slave to every man who'll buy ...

Thou who singest through the earth,
    All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
    Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
    Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
    Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.

Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
    Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store

I

Past the hills that peep
Where the leaze is smiling,
On and on beguiling
Crisply-cropping sheep;
Under boughs of brushwood
Linking tree and tree
In a shade of lushwood,
There caressed we!

II

Hemmed by city walls
That outshut the sunlight,
In a foggy dun light,
Where the footstep falls
With a pit-pat wearisome
In its cadency
On the flagstones drearisome
There pressed we!

III

Where in wild-winged crowds
Blown birds show their whiteness
Up against the lightness
Of the clammy clouds;
By the random river
Pushing to the sea,
Under bents that quiver
There rest we.