Artist, whose hand, with horror wing’d, hath torn
From the rank life of towns this leaf: and flung
The prodigy of full-blown crime among
Valleys and men to middle fortune born,
Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn:
Say, what shall calm us, when such guests intrude,
Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
Shall breathless glades, cheer’d by shy Dian’s horn.
Cold-bubbling springs, or caves? Not so! The Soul
Breasts her own griefs: and, urg’d too fiercely, says:
‘Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man
May be by man effac’d: man can control
To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
Know thou the worst. So much, not more, he can.

I Cut a staff in a churchyard copse,
I clad myself in ragged things,
I set a feather in my cap
That fell out of an angel's wings.

I filled my wallet with white stones,
I took three foxgloves in my hand,
I slung my shoes across my back,
And so I went to fairyland.

But Lo, within that ancient place
Science had reared her iron crown,
And the great cloud of steam went up
That telleth where she takes a town.

But cowled with smoke and starred with lamps
That strange land's light was still its own;
The word that witched the woods and hills
Spoke in the iron and the stone.

Not Nature's hand had ever curved
That mute unearthly porter's spine.
Like sleeping dragon's sudden eyes
The signals leered along the line.

The chim...

When I attain to utter forth in verse
Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly
Along my pulses, yearning to be free
And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse
To the individual, true, and the universe,
In consummation of right harmony:
But, like a wind-exposed distorted tree,
We are blown against for ever by the curse
Which breathes through Nature. Oh, the world is weak!
The effluence of each is false to all,
And what we best conceive we fail to speak.
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration without let or thrall.

Go thou forth, my book, though late,
Yet be timely fortunate.
It may chance good luck may send
Thee a kinsman or a friend,
That may harbour thee, when I
With my fates neglected lie.
If thou know'st not where to dwell,
See, the fire's by.--Farewell!

I
i(Ancestral Houses)
Surely among a rich man s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
...

Wild clouds roll up, slag-dark and slaty gray,
And in the oaks the sere wind sobs and sighs,
Weird as a word a man before he dies
Mutters beneath his breath yet fears to say:
The rain drives down; and by each forest way
Each dead leaf drips, and murmurings arise
As of fantastic footsteps, one who flies,
Whispering, the dim eidolon of the day.

Now is the wood a place where phantoms house:
Around each tree wan ghosts of flowers crowd,
And spectres of sweet weeds that once were fair,
Rustling; and through the bleakness of bare boughs
A voice is heard, now low, now stormy loud,
As if the ghosts of all the leaves were there.

I walked within the silent city of the dead,
Which then with Autumn leaves was carpeted,
And where the faded flower and withered wreath
Bespoke the love for those who slept beneath,
And, weeping, stood beside a new-made grave
Which held the sacred dust that friendship gave.
That heart with milk of human kindness overflowed--
That sympathetic hand its generous aid bestowed
To lighten others' burdens on life's weary road!
And there no polished shaft need lift its head
In lettered eulogy above the sainted dead--
His deeds are monuments above the dust whereon we tread!
When from its fragile tenement of clay
To fairer realms his spirit winged its way,
With poignant grief we stood around the bier
Which held the lifeless form of one held dear,
And broken hearts that ...

In a dream, Love bade me go
To the galleys there to row;
In the vision I ask'd why?
Love as briefly did reply,
'Twas better there to toil, than prove
The turmoils they endure that love.
I awoke, and then I knew
What Love said was too-too true;
Henceforth therefore I will be,
As from love, from trouble free.
None pities him that's in the snare,
And, warned before, would not beware.

    Cease, ye prudes, your envious railings,
        Lovely Burns has charms, confess:
    True it is, she had one failing,
        Had a woman ever less?

(See Note 54)

May Seventeenth in Eidsvold's church united,
To hallow after fifty years the day
When they who there our charter free indited,
Together for our land were met to pray, -
We both were there with thanks to those great men,
With thanks to God, who to our people then
In days of danger courage gave unbounded.

And when so mighty through the church now sounded
"Praise ye the Lord!" lifting our pallid prayer
To fellowship with all her sons, our brothers,
I saw you, child-like, weep in secret there
Upon the breast we love, our common mother's.

Then I remembered that from boyhood's hour
With all your strength to serve her you have striven,
Your youthful fire, your counsel cool have given,
And till it waned, your manhood's wealth of power.<...

I wandered out one rainy day
And heard a bird with merry joys
Cry "wet my foot" for half the way;
I stood and wondered at the noise,

When from my foot a bird did flee--
The rain flew bouncing from her breast
I wondered what the bird could be,
And almost trampled on her nest.

The nest was full of eggs and round--
I met a shepherd in the vales,
And stood to tell him what I found.
He knew and said it was a quail's,

For he himself the nest had found,
Among the wheat and on the green,
When going on his daily round,
With eggs as many as fifteen.

Among the stranger birds they feed,
Their summer flight is short and low;
There's very few know where they breed,
And scarcely any where they go.

In youth from rock to rock I went
From hill to hill in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,
Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,
Thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature's love partake,
Of Thee, sweet Daisy!

Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly decks his few gray hairs;
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,
That she may sun thee;
Whole Summer-fields are thine by right;
And Autumn, melancholy Wight!
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane;
Pleased at his greeting thee again;
Yet nothing daunted,
Nor grieved if thou be set at nought:
And oft alone in nooks remote
We meet the...

To his book's end this last line he'd have placed:
Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.

I

One by one they go
Into the unknown dark--
Star-lit brows of the brave,
Voices that drew men's souls.
Rich is the land, O Death!
Can give you dead like our dead!--
Such as he from whose hand
The magic web of romance
Slipt, and the art was lost!
Such as he who erewhile--
The last of the Titan brood--
With his thunder the Senate shook;
Or he who, beside the Charles,
Untoucht of envy or hate,
Tranced the world with his song;
Or that other, that gray-eyed seer
Who in pastoral Concord ways
With Plato and Hafiz walked.


II

Not of these was the man
Whose wraith, through the mists of night,
Through the shuddering wintry stars,
Has passed to eternal morn.
Fit were the moan of the sea
And the clashing...

    In the winter children go
    Walking in the fields of snow
    Where there is no grass at all,
    And the top of every wall,
    Every fence, and every tree
    Is as white as white can be.

    Pointing out the way they came,
    (Every one of them the same)
    All across the fields there be
    Prints in silver filigree;
    And their mothers find them so
    By the footprints in the snow.

I rose up as my custom is
    On the eve of All-Souls' day,
And left my grave for an hour or so
To call on those I used to know
    Before I passed away.

I visited my former Love
    As she lay by her husband's side;
I asked her if life pleased her, now
She was rid of a poet wrung in brow,
    And crazed with the ills he eyed;

Who used to drag her here and there
    Wherever his fancies led,
And point out pale phantasmal things,
And talk of vain vague purposings
    That she discredited.

She was quite civil, and replied,
    "Old comrade, is that you?
Well, on the whole, I like my life. -
I know I swore I'd be no wife,
    But what was I to do?

"You see, of all men for my sex
    A poet is the worst;
Women ...

When we came out of the wood
Was a great light!
The night uprisen stood
In white.

I wondered, I looked around
It was so fair. The bright
Stubble upon the ground
Shone white

Like any field of snow;
Yet warm the chase
Of faint night-breaths did go
Across my face!

White-bodied and warm the night was,
Sweet-scented to hold in my throat.
White and alight the night was.
A pale stroke smote

The pulse through the whole bland being
Which was This and me;
A pulse that still went fleeing,
Yet did not flee.

After the terrible rage, the death,
This wonder stood glistening?
All shapes of wonder, with suspended breath,
Arrested listening

In ecstatic reverie.
The whole, white Night! -
With w...

Time beckons on the hours: the expiring year
    Already feels old Winter's icy breath;
As with cold hands, he scatters on her bier
    The faded glories of her Autumn wreath.
As fleetly as the Summer's sunshine past,
    The Winter's snow must melt; and the young Spring,
Strewing the earth with flowers, will come at last,
    And in her train the hour of parting bring.
But, though I leave the harbour, where my heart
    Sometime had found a peaceful resting-place,
Where it lay calmly moored; though I depart,
    Yet, let not time my memory quite efface.
'Tis true, I leave no void, the happy home
    To which you welcomed me, will be as gay,
As bright, as cheerful, when I've turned to roam,
    Once more, upon life's weary onward way.
But oh! if ever by the wa...