[Clare's note:--"Scraps from my father and mother, completed."]

    Here's a sad good bye for thee, my love,
    To friends and foes a smile:
    I leave but one regret behind,
    That's left with thee the while,
    But hopes that fortune is our friend
    Already pays the toil.

    Force bids me go, your friends to please.
    Would they were not so high!
    But be my lot on land or seas,
    It matters not where by,
    For I shall keep a thought for thee,
    In my heart's core to lie.

    Winter shall lose its frost and snow,
    The spring its blossomed thorn,
    The summer all its bloom forego,
    The autumn hound and horn
    Ere I will lose that thought of thee,
    Or ever prove forsworn.

    The dove shall ...

As you forgot I may forget,
When summer dews cease to be wet.
    When whippoorwills disdain the night,
    When sun and moon are no more bright,
And all the stars at midnight set.

When jay birds sing, and thrushes fret,
When snowfalls come in flakes of jet,
    When hearts that shelter love are light,
    I may forget.

When mortal life no cares beset,
When April brings no violet,
    When wrong no longer wars with right,
    When all hope's ships shall heave in sight,
And memory holds no least regret,
    I may forget.

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end,
Old Dublin merchant ‘free of ten and four’
Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
And country scholar, Robert Emmet’s friend,
A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;
Traders or soldiers who have left me blood
That has not passed through any huxter’s loin,
Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,
Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood
Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;
You merchant skipper that leaped overboard
After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,
You most of all, silent and fierce old man
Because you were the spectacle that stirred
My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say
‘Only the wastful virtues earn the sun’;
...

Rump is a turn-broach, yet he seldom can
Steal a swoln sop out of a dripping-pan.

A cold, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky;--
Thus cold and colorless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.

Full late they slept.    They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,
Disdainful of the rain outside,
Was strutting with a martial stride,
As if upon his t...

Joy comes and goes: hope ebbs and flows,
Like the wave.
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles: and then.
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Maz’d with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

We count the hours: these dreams of ours,
False and hollow,
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smil’d and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow?

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming
in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,
I hog a whole house on Boston's
"hardly passionate Marlborough Street,"
where even the man
scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,
has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,
and is "a young Republican."
I have a nine months' daughter,
young enough to be my granddaughter.
Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infants' wear.

These are the tranquilized Fifties,
and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime?
I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,
and made my manic statement,
telling off the state and president, and then
sat waiting sentence in the bull pen
beside a negro boy with curlicues
of marijuana in his hair.

Given a year,
I w...

Oh, soon the forests all will boast
    A crown of red and gold;
A purple haze will circle round
    The mountains dim and old;
Afar the hills, now green and fair,
    Their sombre robes will wear;
A mist-like veil will dim the sun
    And linger on the air.

Already seems the earth half sad
    The summer-child is dead;
And who can tell the dreams gone by,
    The tales of life unsaid?
September is a glowing time;
    A month of happy hours;
Yet in its crimson heart lies hid
    The frost that kills the flowers.

Life, too, may feel the glory near
    And wear its crown of gold;
Yet are the snows not nearest then?
    Are hearts not growing old?
September is the prime of life,
    The glory of the year;
Yet when the lea...

Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretched supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should never hear Apollo's song,
Though feathery clouds were floating all along
The purple west, and, two bright streaks between,
The golden lyre itself were dimly seen:
That the still murmur of the honey bee
Would never teach a rural song to me:
That the bright glance from beauty's eyelids slanting
Would never make a lay of mine enchanting,
Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold
Some tale of lov...

Come, Poet, come!
A thousand labourers ply their task,
And what it tends to scarcely ask,
And trembling thinkers on the brink
Shiver, and know not how to think.
To tell the purport of their pain,
And what our silly joys contain;
In lasting lineaments pourtray
The substance of the shadowy day;
Our real and inner deeds rehearse,
And make our meaning clear in verse:
Come, Poet, come! for but in vain
We do the work or feel the pain,
And gather up the seeming gain,
Unless before the end thou come
To take, ere they are lost, their sum.

Come, Poet, come!
To give an utterance to the dumb,
And make vain babblers silent, come;
A thousand dupes point here and there,
Bewildered by the show and glare;
And wise men half have learned to doubt

Hearken! now the hermit bee
Drones a quiet threnody;
Greening on the stagnant pool
The criss-cross light is beautiful;
In the venomed yew tree wings
Preen and flit. The linnet sings.

Gradually the brave sun
Sinks to a day's journey done;
In the marshy flats abide
Mists to muffle midnight-tide.
Puffed within the belfry tower
Hungry owls drowse out their hour....

Walk in beauty. Vaunt thy rose.
Flaunt thy poisonous loveliness!
Pace for pace with thee there goes
A shape that hath not come to bless.
I, thine enemy?... Nay, nay!
I can only watch, and wait
Patient treacherous time away,
Hold ajar the wicket gate.

(See Note 32)

With friends you stalwart stand and fair,
To-day of fifty years the heir;
The past your works rejoicing praise,
But forward goes your gaze.
Your childlike faith, your spirit true,
Your hand that never weary grew,
A home's sweet music, love of wife,
Make ever young your life.

You dared believe with heart alive
That here in Norway art can thrive.
You forced the hardness of our stones
To harmony of tones.
You laid our wild world's secrets bare
And caught "The Hunter" near the lair.
Our nation's moods, of beauty born,
Your "Girl with Eggs" adorn.

As o'er a slope's snow-covered brow
A youth came swiftly flying now,
You saw him, raised your hand, and lo!
He stood there, chiseled snow.
But your "Ski-runner's" c...

I.

Thou art not steep’d in golden languors,
No tranced summer calm is thine,
Ever varying Madeline.
Thro’ light and shadow thou dost range,
Sudden glances, sweet and strange,
Delicious spites and darling angers,
And airy forms of flitting change.



II.

Smiling, frowning, evermore,
Thou art perfect in love-lore.
Revealings deep and clear are thine
Of wealthy smiles; but who may know
Whether smile or frown be fleeter?
Whether smile or frown be sweeter,
Who may know?
Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow
Light-glooming over eyes divine,
Like little clouds sun-fringed, are thine,
Ever varying Madeline.
Thy smile and frown are not aloof
From one another,
Each to each is dearest brother;
Hues of the silken...

I thought you a fire
On Heron-Plantation Hill,
Dealing out mischief the most dire
To the chattels of men of hire
There in their vill.

But by and by
You turned a yellow-green,
Like a large glow-worm in the sky;
And then I could descry
Your mood and mien.

How well I know
Your furtive feminine shape!
As if reluctantly you show
You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw
Aside its drape . . .

How many a year
Have you kept pace with me,
Wan Woman of the waste up there,
Behind a hedge, or the bare
Bough of a tree!

No novelty are you,
O Lady of all my time,
Veering unbid into my view
Whether I near Death's mew,
Or Life's top cyme!

Who to the north, or south, doth set
His bed, male children shall beget.

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet.
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked "what could I ail?"
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my sight away.
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start;
They spoke as chords do from the string
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice
And love's appeal to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before:
My hea...

I stand upon my native hills again,
Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.

A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near,
And ever restless feet of one, who, now,
Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year;
There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow,
As breaks the varied scene upon her sight,
Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light.

For I have taught her, with delighted eye,
To gaze upon the mountains, to behold,
With deep affection, the pure ample sky,
And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,
To love the song of waters, and to hear
The melo...

Ah Ben!
Say how, or when
Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.
My Ben
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it;
Lest we that talent spend,
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock, the store
Of such a wit the world should have no more.