Our eyeless bark sails free
Though with boom and spar
Andes, Alp or Himmalee,
Strikes never moon or star.

It may be for the world of weeds and tares
And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose
That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows
One from the train of Love's true courtiers
Straightway on him who gazes, unawares,
Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows,
Reft by that sight of purpose and repose,
Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.
Then on the soul from some ancestral place
Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth,
When, in the light of that serener sphere,
It saw ideal beauty face to face
That through the forms of this our meaner Earth
Shines with a beam less steadfast and less clear.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! - yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. - A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. - One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! - For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

NOTES:
_15 may 1816; can Lo...

Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,
And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,
I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes
Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse
Unbroken by the petty incidents
Of noisy life:    Oh hear me once again!

Winds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft,
Above the murmur of the uneasy world,
My thoughts in exultation held their way:
Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade
Were once to me unearthly tones of love,
Joy without object, wordless music, stealing
Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast
With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire--
Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep
Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores,
Of silent labour, and eternal change;
First teacher of the ...

Flower, I never fancied, jewel, I profess you!
Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a flower.
Save but glow inside and jewel, I should guess you,
Dim to sight and rough to touch: the glory is the dower.

You, forsooth, a flower? Nay, my love, a jewel,
Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your prime!
Time may fray the flower-face: kind be time or cruel,
Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at time!

They told him gently he was made
    Of nicely tempered mud,
That man no lengthened part had played
    Anterior to the Flood.
'Twas all in vain; he heeded not,
    Referring plant and worm,
Fish, reptile, ape, and Hottentot,
    To one primordial germ.

They asked him whether he could bear
    To think his kind allied
To all those brutal forms which were
    In structure Pithecoid;
Whether he thought the apes and us
    Homologous in form;
He said, "Homo and Pithecus
    Came from one common germ."

They called him "atheistical,"
    "Sceptic," and "infidel."
They swore his doctrines without fail
    Would plunge him into hell.
But he with proofs in no way lame,
    Made this deduction firm,
That all organic beings came...

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, e're he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around,
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,
Comes a still voice, Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In a...

Ask what prevailing, pleasing power
    Allures the sportive, wandering bee
To roam untired, from flower to flower,
    He'll tell you, 'tis variety.

Look Nature round; her features trace,
    Her seasons, all her changes see;
And own, upon Creation's face,
    The greatest charm's variety.

For me, ye gracious powers above!
    Still let me roam, unfixt and free;
In all things,--but the nymph I love
    I'll change, and taste variety.

But, Patty, not a world of charms
    Could e'er estrange my heart from thee;--
No, let me ever seek those arms.
    There still I'll find variety.

Above where I am sitting, o'er these stones,
The ocean waves once heaved their mighty forms;
And vengeful tempests and appalling storms
Wrung from the stricken sea portentous moans,
That rent stupendous icebergs, whose huge heights
Crashed down in fragments through the startled nights.
Change, change, eternal change in all but God!
Mysterious nature! thrice mysterious state
Of body, soul, and spirit! Man is awed,
But triumphs in his littleness. A mote,
He specks the eye of the age and turns to dust,
And is the sport of centuries. We note
More surely nature's ever-changing fate;
Her fossil records tell how she performs her trust.

I am not prone to moralize
In scientific doubt
On certain facts that Nature tries
To puzzle us about, -
For I am no philosopher
Of wise elucidation,
But speak of things as they occur,
From simple observation.

I notice little things - to wit: -
I never missed a train
Because I didn't run for it;
I never knew it rain
That my umbrella wasn't lent, -
Or, when in my possession,
The sun but wore, to all intent,
A jocular expression.


I never knew a creditor
To dun me for a debt
But I was "cramped" or "busted;" or
I never knew one yet,
When I had plenty in my purse,
To make the least invasion, -
As I, accordingly perverse,
Have courted no occasion.

Nor do I claim to comprehend
What Natu...

Last night it snowed; and Nature fell asleep.
    Forest and field lie tranced in gracious dreams
    Of growth, for ghosts of leaves long dead, me-seems,
Hover about the boughs; and wild winds sweep
O'er whitened fields full many a hoary heap
    From the storm-harvest mown by ice-bound streams!
    With beauty of crushed clouds the cold earth teems,
And winter a tranquil-seeming truce would keep.

But such ethereal slumber may not bide
    The ascending sun's bright scorn - not long, I fear;
And all its visions on the golden tide
    Of mid-noon gliding off, must disappear.
Fair dreams, farewell! So in life's stir and pride
    You fade, and leave the treasure of a tear!

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path be there or none,
While a fair region round the traveler lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought and Love desert us, from that day
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate’er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind’s internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

Beside me, in the car, she sat,
She spake not, no, nor looked to me
From her to me, from me to her,
What passed so subtly, stealthily?
As rose to rose that by it blows
Its interchanged aroma flings;
Or wake to sound of one sweet note
The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this! but this,
That influent as within me dwelt
Her life, mine too within her breast,
Her brain, her every limb she felt
We sat; while o’er and in us, more
And more, a power unknown prevailed,
Inhaling, and inhaled, and still
’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed;
I passed; and know not to this day
If gold or jet her girlish hair,
If black, or brown, or lucid-grey
Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance
...

Perchè tuo gran bellezze.


That thy great beauty on our earth may be
        Shrined in a lady softer and more kind,
        I call on nature to collect and bind
        All those delights the slow years steal from thee,
And save them to restore the radiancy
        Of thy bright face in some fair form designed
        By heaven; and may Love ever bear in mind
        To mould her heart of grace and courtesy.
I call on nature too to keep my sighs,
        My scattered tears to take and recombine,
        And give to him who loves that fair again:
More happy he perchance shall move those eyes
        To mercy by the griefs wherewith I pine,
        Nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en!

Even as I watched the daylight how it sped
From noon till eve, and saw the light wind pass
In long pale waves across the flashing grass,
And heard through all my dreams, wherever led,
The thin cicada singing overhead,
I felt what joyance all this nature has,
And saw myself made clear as in a glass,
How that my soul was for the most part dead.

Oh, light, I cried, and, heaven, with all your blue,
Oh, earth, with all your sunny fruitfulness,
And ye, tall lilies, of the wind-vexed field,
What power and beauty life indeed might yield,
Could we but cast away its conscious stress,
Simple of heart, becoming even as you.

The grasses green of sweet content
That spring, no matter high or low,
Where’er a living thing can grow,
On chilly hills and rocky rent,
And by the lowly streamlet’s side
Oh! why did e’er I turn from these?
The lordly, tall, umbrageous trees,
That stand in high aspiring pride,
With massive bulk on high sustain
A world of boughs with leaf and fruits,
And drive their wide-extending roots
Deep down into the subject plain.
Oh, what with these had I to do?
That germs of things above their kind
May live, pent up and close confined
In humbler forms, it may be true;
Yet great is that which gives our lot;
High laws and powers our will transcend,
And not for this, till time do end,
Shall any be what he is not.
Each in its place, as each was sent,

TO .......


Oh, fair as heaven and chaste as light!
Did nature mould thee all so bright.
That thou shouldst e'er be brought to weep
O'er languid virtue's fatal sleep,
O'er shame extinguished, honor fled,
Peace lost, heart withered, feeling dead?

No, no! a star was born with thee,
Which sheds eternal purity.
Thou hast, within those sainted eyes,
So fair a transcript of the skies,
In lines of light such heavenly lore
That men should read them and adore.
Yet have I known a gentle maid
Whose mind and form were both arrayed
In nature's purest light, like thine;--
Who wore that clear, celestial sign
Which seems to mark the brow that's fair
For destiny's peculiar care;
Whose bosom, too, like Dian's own,
Was guarded by a sacred zon...

Sol perchè tue bellezze.


If only that thy beauties here may be
        Deathless through Time that rends the wreaths he twined,
        I trust that Nature will collect and bind
        All those delights the slow years steal from thee,
And keep them for a birth more happily
        Born under better auspices, refined
        Into a heavenly form of nobler mind,
        And dowered with all thine angel purity.
Ah me! and may heaven also keep my sighs,
        My scattered tears preserve and reunite,
        And give to him who loves that fair again!
More happy he perchance shall move those eyes
        To mercy by the griefs my manhood blight,
        Nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en!