Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore:

Yet, having once begun to try,
Dares not desert his quest,
But, climbing, ever keeps his eye
On one small hut against the sky
Wherein he hopes to rest:

Who climbs till nerve and force are spent,
With many a puff and pant:
Who still, as rises the ascent,
In language grows more violent,
Although in breath more scant:

Who, climbing, gains at length the place
That crowns the upward track.
And, entering with unsteady pace,
Receives a buffet in the face
That lands him on his back:

And feels himself, like one in sleep,
Glide swiftly down again,
A helpless weight,...

The silver and violet leopard of the night
Spotted with stars and smooth with silence sprang;
And though three doors stood open, the end of light
Closed like a trap; and stillness was a clang.

Under the leopard sky of lurid stars
I strove with evil sleep the hot night long,
Dreams dumb and swollen of triumphs without wars,
Of tongueless trumpet and unanswering gong.

I saw a pale imperial pomp go by,
Helmet and hornèd mitre and heavy wreath;
Their high strange ensigns hung upon the sky
And their great shields were like the doors of death.

Their mitres were as moving pyramids
And all their crowns as marching towers were tall;
Their eyes were cold under their carven lids
And the same carven smile was on them all.

Over a paven plain that se...

[1]

Were I a pet of fair Calliope,
I would devote the gifts conferr'd on me
To dress in verse old Aesop's lies divine;
For verse, and they, and truth, do well combine;
But, not a favourite on the Muses' hill,
I dare not arrogate the magic skill,
To ornament these charming stories.
A bard might brighten up their glories,
No doubt. I try, - what one more wise must do.
Thus much I have accomplish'd hitherto: -
By help of my translation,
The beasts hold conversation,
In French, as ne'er they did before.
Indeed, to claim a little more,
The plants and trees,[2] with smiling features,
Are turn'd by me to talking creatures.
Who says, that this is not enchanting?
'Ah,' says the critics, 'hear what vaunting!
From one whose work...

He made him a love o' dreams--
He raised for his heart's delight--
(As the heart of June a crescent moon)
A frail, fair spirit of light.

He gave her the gift of joy--
The gift of the dancing feet--
He made her a thing of very Spring--
Virginal--wild and sweet.

But when he would draw her near
To his eager heart's content,
As a sunbeam slips from the finger-tips
She slipped from his hold and went.

Virginal--wild--and sweet--
So she eludes him still--
The love that he made of dawn and shade
Of dominant want and will.

For ever the dream of man
Is more than the dreamer is;
Though he form it whole of his inmost soul,
Yet never 'tis wholly his.

Only is given to him
The right to follow and yearn
The lovelines...

"Farewell to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.

"The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
And my knife is in his side."

"My mother thinks us long away;
'Tis time the field were mown.
She had two sons at rising day,
To-night she'll be alone."

"And here's a bloody hand to shake,
And oh, man, here's good-bye;
We'll sweat no more on scythe and rake,
My bloody hands and I."

"I wish you strength to bring you pride,
And a love to keep you clean,
And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,
At racing on the green."

"Long for me the rick will wait,
And long will wait the fold,
And long...

A Story of Christmas Eve.



Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire -

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning boy to save,
And warmth of body and peace of mind.

And, as our happy circle sat,
The fire well capp'd the company:
In grave debate or careless chat,
A right good fellow, mingled he:

He seemed as one of us to sit,
And talked of things above, below,
With flames more winsome than our wit,
A...

    Here brewer Gabriel's fire's extinct,
        And empty all his barrels:
    He's blest, if, as he brew'd, he drink,
        In upright virtuous morals.

My neighbor lives on the hill,
And I in the valley dwell,
My neighbor must look down on me,
Must I look up?--ah, well,
My neighbor lives on the hill,
And I in the valley dwell.

My neighbor reads, and prays,
And I--I laugh, God wot,
And sing like a bird when the grass is green
In my small garden plot;
But ah, he reads and prays,
And I--I laugh, God wot.

His face is a book of woe,
And mine is a song of glee;
A slave he is to the great "They say,"
But I--I am bold and free;
No wonder he smacks of woe,
And I have the tang of glee.

My neighbor thinks me a fool,
"The same to yourself," say I;
"Why take your books and take your prayers,
Give me the open sky;"
My neighbor thinks me a fool,
"The same to yourself," sa...

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

Be not proud, but now incline
Your soft ear to discipline;
You have changes in your life,
Sometimes peace, and sometimes strife;
You have ebbs of face and flows,
As your health or comes or goes;
You have hopes, and doubts, and fears,
Numberless as are your hairs;
You have pulses that do beat
High, and passions less of heat;
You are young, but must be old:
And, to these, ye must be told,
Time, ere long, will come and plow
Loathed furrows in your brow:
And the dimness of your eye
Will no other thing imply,
But you must die
As well as I.

In my dream, methought I trod,
Yesternight, a mountain road;
Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
High as eagle's flight, it ran.

Overhead, a roof of cloud
With its weight of thunder bowed;
Underneath, to left and right,
Blankness and abysmal night.

Here and there a wild-flower blushed,
Now and then a bird-song gushed;
Now and then, through rifts of shade,
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played.

But the goodly company,
Walking in that path with me,
One by one the brink o'erslid,
One by one the darkness hid.

Some with wailing and lament,
Some with cheerful courage went;
But, of all who smiled or mourned,
Never one to us returned.

Anxiously, with eye and ear,
Questioning that shadow drear,
Never hand in token stirr...

        "Sleep, weary ones, while ye may --
            Sleep, oh, sleep!"
                    Eugene Field.


        Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
        The soft wind sang to the dead below:
        "Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
        And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
        The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
        And the task that was joyous be weary at last."

        To the winter sky when the nights were long
        The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
        "Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
        And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
        The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
        And the path grow rough when the night came down."...

    I, too, saw God through mud--
        The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
        War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
        And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

    Merry it was to laugh there--
        Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
        For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
        Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

    I, too, have dropped off fear--
        Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
        And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
        Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

    And witnessed exultation--
        Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
        Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
        Seraphic for an...

What sight so lured him thro’ the fields he knew
As where earth’s green stole into heaven’s own hue,

Far–far–away?

What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells

Far–far–away.

What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy,
Thro’ those three words would haunt him when a boy,

Far–far–away?

A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death

Far–far–away?

Far, far, how far? from o’er the gates of Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,

Far–far–away?

What charm in words, a charm no words could give?
O dying words, can Music make you live

Far–far–away?

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.--OVID, Fastorum, Lib. vi.


"O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,--
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,--
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,--we who are about to die
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; an...

From upland slopes I see the cows file by,
Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,
By dusking fields and meadows shining pale
With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,
A peevish night-hawk in the western sky
Beats up into the lucent solitudes,
Or drops with griding wing. The stilly woods
Grow dark and deep and gloom mysteriously.
Cool night-winds creep, and whisper in mine ear
The homely cricket gossips at my feet.
From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear,
Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break sweet
In full Pandean chorus. One by one
Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.

When last I saw this opening rose
That holds the summer in its hand,
And with its beauty overflows
And sweetens half a shire of land,
It was a black and cindered thing,
Drearily rocking in the cold,
The relic of a vanished spring,
A rose abominably old.

Amid the stainless snows it grinned,
A foul and withered shape, that cast
Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind
Went rattling through it as it passed;
It filled the heart with a strange dread,
Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound,
And gibbered like the wandering dead
In some unhallowed burial-ground.

Whoso on that December day
Had seen it so deject and lorn,
So lone a symbol of decay,
Had dreamed of it this summer morn?
Divined the power that should relume
A flame so spent, ...