Those possessions short-liv'd are,
Into the which we come by war.

"The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering gray,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;

"Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November's gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter's hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek, so softly pressed,
In happy quiet on my breast,

"But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire's cheerful glow,
I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie those that I h...

Welcome, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world
Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,
Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,
First I met thee.

There are marks of age,
There are thumb-marks on thy margin,
Made by hands that clasped thee rudely,
At the alehouse.

Soiled and dull thou art;
Yellow are thy time-worn pages,
As the russet, rain-molested
Leaves of autumn.

Thou art stained with wine
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall
Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,--

When I paused to hear
The old ballad...

I had a friend who battled for the truth
With stubborn heart and obstinate despair,
Till all his beauty left him, and his youth,
And there were few to love him anywhere.

Then would he wander out among the graves,
And think of dead men lying in a row;
Or, standing on a cliff observe the waves,
And hear the wistful sound of winds below;

And yet they told him nothing. So he sought
The twittering forest at the break of day,
Or on fantastic mountains shaped a thought
As lofty and impenitent as they.

And next he went in wonder through a town
Slowly by day and hurriedly by night,
And watched men walking up the street and down
With timorous and terrible delight.

Weary, he drew man's wisdom from a book,
And pondered on the high words spoken...

Grubs loves his wife and children, while that they
Can live by love, or else grow fat by play;
But when they call or cry on Grubs for meat,
Instead of bread Grubs gives them stones to eat.
He raves, he rends, and while he thus doth tear,
His wife and children fast to death for fear.

Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay'd to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!

Light, so low in the vale
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
And you are his morning start.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and heart,
Into my heart and my blood!

Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers,
Over the meadow and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.

Unmindful of the roses,
Unmindful of the thorn,
A reaper tired reposes
Among his gathered corn:
So might I, till the morn!

Cold as the cold Decembers,
Past as the days that set,
While only one remembers
And all the rest forget, -
But one remembers yet.

Quella per cui con Sorga ho cangiat' Arno.

HE ATTEMPTS TO PAINT HER BEAUTIES, BUT NOT HER VIRTUES.


    She, for whose sake fair Arno I resign,
And for free poverty court-affluence spurn,
Has known to sour the precious sweets to turn
On which I lived, for which I burn and pine.
Though since, the vain attempt has oft been mine
That future ages from my song should learn
Her heavenly beauties, and like me should burn,
My poor verse fails her sweet face to define.
The gifts, though all her own, which others share,
Which were but stars her bright sky scatter'd o'er,
Haply of these to sing e'en I might dare;
But when to the diviner part I soar,
To the dull world a brief and brilliant light,
Courage and wit and art are baffled quite.

MAC...

Splashing along the boggy woods all day,
And over brambled hedge and holding clay,
I shall not think of him:
But when the watery fields grow brown and dim,
And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire,
I know that he'll be with me on my way
Home through the darkness to the evening fire.

He's jumped each stile along the glistening lanes;
His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins;
Hearing the saddle creak,
He'll wonder if the frost will come next week.
I shall forget him in the morning light;
And while we gallop on he will not speak:
But at the stable-door he'll say good-night.

Swags up! and yet I turn upon the way.
The yellow hill against a dapple sky,
With tufts and clumps of thorn, the bush whereby
All through the wonder-pregnant night I lay
Until the silver stars were merged in grey
Our fragrant camp, demand a parting sigh:
New tracks, new camps, and hearts for ever high,
Yet brief regret with every welcome day.
Dear dreamy earth, receding flickering lamp,
Dear dust wherein I found this night a home,
Still for a memory’s sake I turn and cling,
Then take the road for many a distant camp,
Among what hills, by what pale whispering foam,
With eager faith for ever wandering.

This after-sunset is a sight for seeing,
Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it.
- And dwell you in that glory-show?
You may; for there are strange strange things in being,
Stranger than I know.

Yet if that chasm of splendour claim your presence
Which glows between the ash cloud and the dun,
How changed must be your mortal mould!
Changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence
From what you were of old:

All too unlike the fond and fragile creature
Then known to me . . . Well, shall I say it plain?
I would not have you thus and there,
But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature
You as the one you were.

I

Last night I dreamed this dream: That I was dead;
And as I slept, forgot of man and God,
That other dreamless sleep of rest,
I heard a footstep on the sod,
As of one passing overhead,
And lo, thou, Dear, didst touch me on the breast,
Saying: "What shall I write against thy name
That men should see?"
Then quick the answer came,
"I was beloved of thee."


II

Dear Giver of Thyself when at thy side,
I see the path beyond divide,
Where we must walk alone a little space,
I say: "Now am I strong indeed
To wait with only memory awhile,
Content, until I see thy face, "
Yet turn, as one in sorest need,
To ask once more thy giving grace,
So, at the last
Of all our partings, when the night
Has hidden from my failing si...

Tranquility! the sovereign aim wert thou
In heathen schools of philosophic lore;
Heart-stricken by stern destiny of yore
The Tragic Muse thee served with thoughtful vow;
And what of hope Elysium could allow
Was fondly seized by Sculpture, to restore
Peace to the Mourner. But when He who wore
The crown of thorns around his bleeding brow
Warmed our sad being with celestial light,
'Then' Arts which still had drawn a softening grace
From shadowy fountains of the Infinite,
Communed with that Idea face to face:
And move around it now as planets run,
Each in its orbit round the central Sun.

Tradition, be thou mute! Oblivion, throw
Thy veil in mercy o'er the records, hung
Round strath and mountain, stamped by the ancient tongue
On rock and ruin darkening as we go,
Spots where a word, ghostlike, survives to show
What crimes from hate, or desperate love, have sprung;
From honour misconceived, or fancied wrong,
What feuds, not quenched but fed by mutual woe.
Yet, though a wild vindictive Race, untamed
By civil arts and labours of the pen,
Could gentleness be scorned by those fierce Men,
Who, to spread wide the reverence they claimed
For patriarchal occupations, named
Yon towering Peaks, "Shepherds of Etive Glen?"

(IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.)



I

In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,
Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade
In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. -
On burgher, squire, and clown
It smiled the long street down for near a mile

II

But evil days beset that domicile;
The stately beauties of its roof and wall
Passed into sordid hands. Condemned to fall
Were cornice, quoin, and cove,
And all that art had wove in antique style.

III

Among the hired dismantlers entered there
One till the moment of his task untold.
When charged therewith he gazed, and answered bold:
"Be needy I or no,
I will not help lay low a house so fair!

IV

"Hunger is hard. But since the terms be such -
No wa...

In quella parte dov' Amor mi sprona.

HE FINDS HER IMAGE EVERYWHERE.


    When Love, fond Love, commands the strain,
The coyest muse must sure obey;
Love bids my wounded breast complain,
And whispers the melodious lay:
Yet when such griefs restrain the muse's wing,
How shall she dare to soar, or how attempt to sing?

Oh! could my heart express its woe,
How poor, how wretched should I seem!
But as the plaintive accents flow,
Soft comfort spreads her golden gleam;
And each gay scene, that Nature holds to view,
Bids Laura's absent charms to memory bloom anew.

Though Fate's severe decrees remove
Her gladsome beauties from my sight,
Yet, urged by pity, friendly Love
Bids fond reflection yield delight;
If lavish spring wit...

I.
Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far.
God must judge the couple: leave them as they are
Whichever one’s the guiltless, to his glory,
And whichever one the guilt’s with, to my story!

II.
Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough,
Strike no arm out further, stick and stink as now,
Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,
Heaven with snaky hell, in torture and entoilment?

III.
Who’s the culprit of them? How must he conceive
God, the queen he caps to, laughing in his sleeve,
’Tis but decent to profess oneself beneath her:
Still, one must not be too much in earnest, either!

IV.
Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes;
Then go live his life out! Life will try his nerves,
When the sky, which...

It was a day of sombre heat:
The still, dense air was void of sound
And life; no wing of bird did beat
A little breeze through it, the ground
Was like live ashes to the feet.
From the black hills that loomed around
The valley many a sudden spire
Of flame shot up, and writhed, and curled,
And sank again for heaviness:
And heavy seemed to men that day
The burden of the weary world.
For evermore the sky did press
Closer upon the earth that lay
Fainting beneath, as one in dire
Dreams of the night, upon whose breast
Sits a black phantom of unrest
That holds him down. The earth and sky
Appeared unto the troubled eye
A roof of smoke, a floor of fire.

There was no water in the land.
Deep in the night of each ravine
Men, vainly searching ...