Poets love Nature, and themselves are love.
Though scorn of fools, and mock of idle pride.
The vile in nature worthless deeds approve,
They court the vile and spurn all good beside.
Poets love Nature; like the calm of Heaven,
Like Heaven's own love, her gifts spread far and wide:
In all her works there are no signs of leaven
* * * *

Her flowers * * * *
They are her very Scriptures upon earth,
And teach us simple mirth where'er we go.
Even in prison they can solace me,
For where they bloom God is, and I am free.

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.

The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

Dear Mother-Earth
Of Titan birth,
Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I
Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry
To drink my mother's-milk so near the sky.

O ye hill-stains,
Red, for all rains!
The blood that made you has all bled for us,
The hearts that paid you are all dead for us,
The trees that shade you groan with lead, for us!

And O, hill-sides,
Like giants' brides
Ye sleep in ravine-rumpled draperies,
And weep your springs in tearful memories
Of days that stained your robes with stains like these!

Sleep on, ye hills!
Weep on, ye rills!
The stainers have decreed the stains shall stay.
They chain the hands might wash the stains away.
They wait with cold hearts till we "rue the day".

O Mother-Earth...

A Gaelic Air.



I.

    Turn again, thou fair Eliza,
        Ae kind blink before we part,
    Rue on thy despairing lover!
        Canst thou break his faithfu' heart?
    Turn again, thou fair Eliza;
        If to love thy heart denies,
    For pity hide the cruel sentence
        Under friendship's kind disguise!

II.

    Thee, dear maid, hae I offended?
        The offence is loving thee:
    Canst thou wreck his peace for ever,
        Wha for time wad gladly die?
    While the life beats in my bosom,
        Thou shalt mix in ilka throe;
    Turn again, thou lovely maiden.
        Ae sweet smile on me bestow.

III.

    Not the bee upon the blossom,
        In the pride o' sunny no...

Or look'd I back unto the times hence flown
To praise those Muses and dislike our own--
Or did I walk those Pæan-gardens through,
To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too--
I might, and justly, be reputed here
One nicely mad or peevishly severe.
But by Apollo! as I worship wit,
Where I have cause to burn perfumes to it;
So, I confess, 'tis somewhat to do well
In our high art, although we can't excel
Like thee, or dare the buskins to unloose
Of thy brave, bold, and sweet Maronian muse.
But since I'm call'd, rare Denham, to be gone,
Take from thy Herrick this conclusion:
'Tis dignity in others, if they be
Crown'd poets, yet live princes under thee;
The while their wreaths and purple robes do shine
Less by their own gems than those beams of thine.

From the French of Charles D'Orleans, Fifteenth Century.

Gentle Spring! - in sunshine clad,
    Well dost thou thy power display!
For Winter maketh the light heart sad,
    And thou - thou makest the sad heart gay.
He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train,
The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain;
And they shrink away, and they flee in fear,
    When thy merry step draws near.

Winter giveth the fields and the trees, so old,
    Their beards of icicles and snow;
And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold,
    We must cower over the embers low;
And, snugly housed from the wind and weather,
Mope like birds that are changing feather.
But the storm retires, and the sky grows clear,
    When thy merry step draws near.

Winter maket...

From the cool and dark-lipped furrows
    breathes a dim delight
Aureoles of joy encircle
    every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
    and enraptured pass:
And the restless ploughman pauses,
    turns, and wondering
Deep beneath his rustic habit
    finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
    with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning
    bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation
    every moment flies,
And unto the Mighty Mother
    gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness,
    dreams of things to be.
One of all they generations,
    Mother, hails to thee!
Hail! and hail! and hail for ever:
    though I turn again
For they joy unto the human
    vesture...

Franck would go scour her teeth; and setting to 't
Twice two fell out, all rotten at the root.

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.

Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady's Chair,
Immense Orion's glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Lif...

It was an April morning: fresh and clear
The Rivulet, delighting in its strength,
Ran with a young man's speed; and yet the voice
Of waters which the winter had supplied
Was softened down into a vernal tone.
The spirit of enjoyment and desire,
And hopes and wishes, from all living things
Went circling, like a multitude of sounds.
The budding groves seemed eager to urge on
The steps of June; as if their various hues
Were only hindrances that stood between
Them and their object: but, meanwhile, prevailed
Such an entire contentment in the air
That every naked ash, and tardy tree
Yet leafless, showed as if the countenance
With which it looked on this delightful day
Were native to the summer.—Up the brook
I roamed in the confusion of my heart,
Alive to al...

I.

In Bodenstown Churchyard there is a green grave,
And wildly along it the winter winds rave;
Small shelter, I ween, are the ruined walls there,
When the storm sweeps down on the plains of Kildare.


II.

Once I lay on that sod--it lies over Wolfe Tone--
And thought how he perished in prison alone,
His friends unavenged, and his country unfreed--
"Oh, bitter," I said, "is the patriot's meed;


III.

"For in him the heart of a woman combined
With a heroic life and a governing mind--
A martyr for Ireland--his grave has no stone--
His name seldom named, and his virtues unknown."


IV.

I was woke from my dream by the voices and tread
Of a band, who came into the home of the dead;
They carried no corpse...

Not mine to let the hair grow long, and talk
In raptured accents of the Higher Things,
Of all the purple Polyanthus bears,
And beating wings.
(Oh no! Nothing of that sort!)

Ne'er have I languished on the lower slopes
Of sweet Parnassus in the thrice-dead years,
Chanting in fathoms of the fathomless
To kindred ears.
(Certainly not! No time for it!)

Nor mine the gift-O, gilded gift and grand!
To linger near the murmur of the Nine,
To mouth in music of the meaningless,
Nay! Never mine!
(That's so! Quite!)

But here to han'le the auld crambo-clink
On hame-owre themes weel-kent by Galen's tribe,
Regairdless o' what ither fowk may think
Or ca' the scribe!
(Ay! That's aboot it noo!)

One day, when I was young, I read
About a poet, long since dead,
Who fell asleep, as poets do
In writing--and make others too.
But herein lies the story's gist,
How a gay queen came up and kist
The sleeper.
'Capital!' thought I.
'A like good fortune let me try.'
Many the things we poets feign.
I feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain.
I tost and turn'd from side to side,
With open mouth and nostrils wide.
At last there came a pretty maid,
And gazed; then to myself I said,
'Now for it!' She, instead of kiss,
Cried, 'What a lazy lout is this!'

By especial request I take up my pen,
To write a few lines to my dear Mrs. N.;
And though nothing of depth she has right to expect;
Yet the will for the deed she will not reject
The task, on reflection, is a heavy one quite,
As here in the country we've no news to write;
For what is to us very new, rich, and rare,
To you in the city is stale and thread bare.
Should I write of Hungary, Kossuth, or the Swede,
They are all out of date, antiquated indeed.
I might ask you with me the New Forest to roam,
But it's stript of its foliage, quite leafless become;
N.P. Willis and rival have each had their day,
And of rappings and knockings there's nought new to say.
Yet do not mistake me, or think I would choose,
A home in the city, the country to l...

Now while so many turn with love and longing
To wan lands lying in the grey North Sea,
To thee we turn, hearts, mem’ries, all belonging,
Dear land of ours, to thee.

West, ever west, with the strong sunshine marching
Beyond the mountains, far from this soft coast,
Until we almost see the great plains arching,
In endless mirage lost.

A land of camps where seldom is sojourning,
Where men like the dim fathers of our race
Halt for a time, and next day, unreturning,
Fare ever on apace.

Last night how many a leaping blaze affrighted
The wailing birds of passage in their file:
And dawn sees ashes dead and embers whited
Where men had dwelt awhile.

The sun may burn, the mirage shift and vanish
And fade and glare by turns along the sky;
...

Se 'l pensier che mi strugge.

HE SEEKS IN VAIN TO MITIGATE HIS WOE.


    Oh! that my cheeks were taught
By the fond, wasting thought
To wear such hues as could its influence speak;
Then the dear, scornful fair
Might all my ardour share;
And where Love slumbers now he might awake!
Less oft the hill and mead
My wearied feet should tread;
Less oft, perhaps, these eyes with tears should stream;
If she, who cold as snow,
With equal fire would glow--
She who dissolves me, and converts to flame.

Since Love exerts his sway,
And bears my sense away,
I chant uncouth and inharmonious songs:
Nor leaves, nor blossoms show,
Nor rind, upon the bough,
What is the nature that thereto belongs.
Love, and those beauteous eyes,

We two kept house, the Past and I,
    The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
    Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
    Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
    As ever has been known.

As daily I went up the stair
    And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there -
    The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
    I wished might ever be,
There was in that companionship
    Something of ecstasy.

It dwelt with me just as it was,
    Just as it was
When first its prospects gave me pause
    In wayward wanderings,
Before the years had torn old troths
    As they tear all sweet things,
Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths
    And dulled old r...

Though mighty in Love's favor still,
Though cruel yet, my boy,
When the unwelcome dawn shall chill
Your pride and youthful joy,
The hair which round your shoulder grows
Is rudely cut away,
Your color, redder than the rose,
Is changed by youth's decay,--

Then, Ligurinus, in the glass
Another you will spy.
And as the shaggy face, alas!
You see, your grief will cry:
"Why in my youth could I not learn
The wisdom men enjoy?
Or why to men cannot return
The smooth cheeks of the boy?"