What is a home? A guarded space,
Wherein a few, unfairly blest,
Shall sit together, face to face,
And bask and purr and be at rest?

Where cushioned walls rise up between
Its inmates and the common air,
The common pain, and pad and screen
From blows of fate or winds of care?

Where Art may blossom strong and free,
And Pleasure furl her silken wing,
And every laden moment be
A precious and peculiar thing?

And Past and Future, softly veiled
In hiding mists, shall float and lie
Forgotten half, and unassailed
By either hope or memory,

While the luxurious Present weaves
Her perfumed spells untried, untrue,
Broiders her garments, heaps her sheaves,
All for the pleasure of a few?

Can it be this, the longed-for thing

Years, years ago, ere yet my dreams
    Had been of being wise and witty,
Ere I had done with writing themes,
    Or yawn'd o'er this infernal Chitty;
Years, years ago, while all my joy
    Was in my fowling-piece and filly:
In short, while I was yet a boy,
    I fell in love with Laura Lily.

I saw her at the county ball;
    There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall
    Of hands across and down the middle,
Hers was the subtlest spell by far
    Of all that set young hearts romancing:
She was our queen, our rose, our star;
    And when she danced, O Heaven, her dancing!

Dark was her hair, her hand was white;
    Her voice was exquisitely tender,
Her eyes were full of liquid light;
    I never saw a...

At Kotri, by the river, when the evening's sun is low,
The waving palm trees quiver, the golden waters glow,
The shining ripples shiver, descending to the sea;
At Kotri, by the river, she used to wait for me.

So young, she was, and slender, so pale with wistful eyes
As luminous and tender as Kotri's twilight skies.
Her face broke into flowers, red flowers at the mouth,
Her voice, - she sang for hours like bulbuls in the south.

We sat beside the water through burning summer days,
And many things I taught her of Life and all its ways
Of Love, man's loveliest duty, of Passion's reckless pain,
Of Youth, whose transient beauty comes once, but not again.

She lay and laughed and listened beside the water's edge.
The glancing rirer glistened and glinted through the...

What loveliness the years contrive
To rob us of! what exquisite
Beliefs, in which thought chanced to hit
On truths that with the world survive!
Dream-truths, that still attend their flocks
On the high hills of heart and mind,
Peopling the streams, the woods and rocks
With Beauty running like the wind.
They are not dead; but year by year
Still hold us through the inner eye
Of thought, and so can never die
As long as there's one heart to hear
Nature addressing words of love,
(As once she spoke to Rome and Greece,)
Unto the soul, whose faith shall prove
The dream will last though all else cease.

Thanks to the morning light,
Thanks to the foaming sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free;
Thanks to each man of courage,
To the maids of holy mind,
To the boy with his games undaunted
Who never looks behind.

Cities of proud hotels,
Houses of rich and great,
Vice nestles in your chambers,
Beneath your roofs of slate.
It cannot conquer folly,--
Time-and-space-conquering steam,--
And the light-outspeeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base;
The letters do not cheer;
And 'tis far in the deeps of history,
The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.

WRITTEN IN HER ALBUM.


They say that Love had once a book
    (The urchin likes to copy you),
Where, all who came, the pencil took,
    And wrote, like us, a line or two.

'Twas Innocence, the maid divine,
    Who kept this volume bright and fair.
And saw that no unhallowed line
    Or thought profane should enter there;

And daily did the pages fill
    With fond device and loving lore,
And every leaf she turned was still
    More bright than that she turned before.

Beneath the touch of Hope, how soft,
    How light the magic pencil ran!
Till Fear would come, alas, as oft,
    And trembling close what Hope began.

A tear or two had dropt from Grief,
    And Jealousy would, now and then,
Ruffle in haste some snow-...

"Gentle, modest little flower,
Sweet epitome of May,
Love me but for half an hour,
Love me, love me, little fay."
Sentences so fiercely flaming
In your tiny shell-like ear,
I should always be exclaiming
If I loved you, PHOEBE dear.

"Smiles that thrill from any distance
Shed upon me while I sing!
Please ecstaticize existence,
Love me, oh, thou fairy thing!"
Words like these, outpouring sadly
You'd perpetually hear,
If I loved you fondly, madly;
But I do not, PHOEBE dear.

She must be honest, both in thought and deed,
Of generous impulse, and above all greed;
Not seeking praise, or place, or power, or pelf,
But life's best blessings for her higher self,
Which means the best for all.
    She must have faith,
To make good friends of Trouble, Pain, and Death,
And understand their message.
    She should be
As redolent with tender sympathy
As is a rose with fragrance.
    Cheerfulness
Should be her mantle, even though her dress
May be of Sorrow's weaving.
    On her face
A loyal nature leaves its seal of grace,
And chastity is in her atmosphere.
Not that chill chastity which seems austere
(Like untrod snow-peaks, lovely to behold
Till once attained - then barren, loveless, cold);
But the white flame that feeds up...

Dedication
These to His Memory--since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself--I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears--
These Idylls.

And indeed He seems to me
Scarce other than my king's ideal knight,
`Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her--'
Her--over all whose realms to their last isle,
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,
Darkening the world. We have lost him: he is gone:
We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublim...

Clouds spout upon her
    Their waters amain
    In ruthless disdain, -
Her who but lately
    Had shivered with pain
As at touch of dishonour
If there had lit on her
So coldly, so straightly
    Such arrows of rain.

She who to shelter
    Her delicate head
Would quicken and quicken
    Each tentative tread
If drops chanced to pelt her
    That summertime spills
    In dust-paven rills
When thunder-clouds thicken
    And birds close their bills.

Would that I lay there
    And she were housed here!
Or better, together
Were folded away there
Exposed to one weather
We both, who would stray there
When sunny the day there,
    Or evening was clear
    At the prime of the year.

Soon will be gro...

SIX YEARS OLD

O thou! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream;
Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,
Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;
O blessed vision! happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I think of thee with many fears
For what may be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest
But when she sate within the touch of thee.
O too industrious folly!
O vain and causeless me...

There were four loves that one by one,
Following the seasons and the sun,
Passed over without tears, and fell
Away without farewell.

The first was made of gold and tears,
The next of aspen-leaves and fears,
The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,
The last love of strange fruits.

These were the four loves faded. Hold
Some minutes fast the time of gold
When our lips each way clung and clove
To a face full of love.

The tears inside our eyelids met,
Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet
The faces cleaving each to each
Where the blood served for speech.

The second, with low patient brows
Bound under aspen-coloured boughs
And eyes made strong and grave with sleep
And yet too weak to weep

The third, with eager mouth...

Face in the tomb, that lies so still,
    May I draw near,
And watch your sleep and love you,
    Without word or tear.

You smile, your eyelids flicker;
    Shall I tell
How the world goes that lost you?
    Shall I tell?

Ah! love, lift not your eyelids;
    'Tis the same
Old story that we laughed at, -
    Still the same.

We knew it, you and I,
    We knew it all:
Still is the small the great,
    The great the small;

Still the cold lie quenches
    The flaming truth,
And still embattled age
    Wars against youth.

Yet I believe still in the ever-living God
    That fills your grave with perfume,
Writing your name in violets across the sod,
    Shielding your holy face from hail and snow;
 ...

As I lay in the early sun,
Stretched in the grass, I thought upon
My true love, my dear love,
Who has my heart for ever,
Who is my happiness when we meet,
My sorrow when we sever.
She is all fire when I do burn,
Gentle when I moody turn,
Brave when I am sad and heavy
And all laughter when I am merry.
And so I lay and dreamed and dreamed,
And so the day wheeled on,
While all the birds with thoughts like mine
Were singing to the sun.

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
    Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
    But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul?    Thou liest i' the wind and rain.

Even as to him who plays that idle air,
    It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
    Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.

Thou song of songs!--not music as before
    Unto the outward ear;
My spirit sings thee inly evermore,
    Thy falls with tear on tear.
I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.

Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
    Is there no pulse to move thee,
At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
    And falling tears above thee,
O ...

My dearest Love, since thou wilt go,
And leave me here behind thee;
For love or pity, let me know
The place where I may find thee.

AMARIL.In country meadows, pearl'd with dew,
And set about with lilies;
There, filling maunds with cowslips, you
May find your Amarillis.

HER.What have the meads to do with thee,
Or with thy youthful hours?
Live thou at court, where thou mayst be
The queen of men, not flowers.

Let country wenches make 'em fine
With posies, since 'tis fitter
For thee with richest gems to shine,
And like the stars to glitter.

AMARIL.You set too-high a rate upon
A shepherdess so homely.
HER.Believe it, dearest, there's not one
I' th' court that's half so comely.

I prithee stay.AMARIL.    I must away;

Letter I. Prelude.


I.

    Teach me to love thee as a man, in prayer,
    May love the picture of a sainted nun,
    And I will woo thee, when the day is done,
    With tears and vows, and fealty past compare,
    And seek the sunlight in thy golden hair,
    And kiss thy hand to claim thy benison.


II.

    I shall not need to gaze upon the skies,
    Or mark the message of the morning breeze,
    Or heed the notes of birds among the trees,
    If, taught by thee to yearn for Paradise,
    I may confront thee with adoring eyes
 ...

Since all, that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning THOUGHT! that liv'st but in the brain?
Call to the HOURS, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day
Fond THOUGHT! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say, `Ah! loveliest Friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might b...