The noontide sun streamed brightly down
    Moriah's mountain crest,
The golden blaze of his vivid rays
    Tinged sacred Jordan's breast;
While towering palms and flowerets sweet,
Drooped low 'neath Syria's burning heat.

In the sunny glare of the sultry air
    Toiled up the mountain side
The Patriarch sage in stately age,
    And a youth in health's gay pride,
Bearing in eyes and in features fair
The stamp of his mother's beauty rare.

She had not known when one rosy dawn,
    Ere they started on their way,
She had smoothed with care his clustering hair,
    And knelt with him to pray,
That his father's hand and will alike
Were nerved at his young heart to strike.

The Heavenly Power that with such dower
    Of love fills a mot...

HONORA, shou'd that cruel time arrive
    When 'gainst my truth thou should'st my errors poize,
    Scorning remembrance of our vanish'd joys;
    When for the love-warm looks, in which I live,
But cold respect must greet me, that shall give
    No tender glance, no kind regretful sighs;
    When thou shalt pass me with averted eyes,
    Feigning thou see'st me not, to sting, and grieve,
And sicken my sad heart, I cou'd not bear
    Such dire eclipse of thy soul-cheering rays;
    I cou'd not learn my struggling heart to tear
From thy lov'd form, that thro' my memory strays;
    Nor in the pale horizon of Despair
    Endure the wintry and the darken'd days.

April 1773.

I
Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.

II
Where got I that truth?
Out of a medium's mouth.
Out of nothing it came,
Out of the forest loam,
Out of dark night where lay
The crowns of Nineveh.

Weary, oh, so weary
With it all!
Sunny days or dreary--
How they pall!
Why should we be heroes,
Launa Dee,
Striving to no winning?
Let the world be Zero's!
As in the beginning
Let it be!

What good comes of toiling,
When all's done?
Frail green sprays for spoiling
Of the sun;
Laurel leaf or myrtle,
Love or fame--
Ah, what odds what spray, sweet?
Time, that makes life fertile,
Makes its blooms decay, sweet,
As they came.

Lie here with me dreaming,
Cheek to cheek,
Lithe limbs twined and gleaming,
Brown and sleek;
Like two serpents coiling
In their lair.
Where's the good of wreathing
Sprays for Time's despoiling?
Let me feel your breathing
In my hair.

You and I together--
...

Sleep on, my darling, sleep on,
I am keeping watch by your side,
I have drawn in the curtains close,
And banished the world outside;
Rest as the reaper may rest,
When the harvest work is done
Rest as the soldier may rest,
When the victor's work is won.

You smile in your happy sleep:
Are the children with you now?
Sweet baby Willie, so early called,
And Nellie with thoughtful brow,
And May, our loving daughter.
Ah, the skies grew dark, my love,
When the sunshine of her presence
Vanished to Heaven above.

While you're resting, my darling,
I dream of the shadowy hour,
When one of us looks the last
On the light of its household bower,
Then a sad sigh heaves my breast,
And tears from my eyelids burst,
As I ask of the future ...

Poichè per mio destino.

IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: IN THEM HE FINDS EVERY GOOD, AND HE CAN NEVER CEASE TO PRAISE THEM.


    Since then by destiny
I am compell'd to sing the strong desire,
Which here condemns me ceaselessly to sigh,
May Love, whose quenchless fire
Excites me, be my guide and point the way,
And in the sweet task modulate my lay:
But gently be it, lest th' o'erpowering theme
Inflame and sting me, lest my fond heart may
Dissolve in too much softness, which I deem,
From its sad state, may be:
For in me--hence my terror and distress!
Not now as erst I see
Judgment to keep my mind's great passion less:
Nay, rather from mine own thoughts melt I so,
As melts before the summer sun the snow.

At first I fondly thought

        All perfect things are saddening in effect.
    The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes,
    The matchless tinting on the royal rose
        Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked,
        Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked
    Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows -
    These hold a deeper pathos than our woes,
        Since they leave nothing better to expect.

        Resistless change, when powerless to improve,
    Can only mar. The gold will pale to gray;
    Nothing remains tomorrow as to-day;
        The lose will not seem quite so fait, and love
    Must find its measures of delight made less.
    Ah, how imperfect is all Perfectness!

("Fuyons ensemble.")

[HERNANI, Act II.]


DONNA SOL.    Together let us fly!

HERNANI. Together? No! the hour is past for flight.
Dearest, when first thy beauty smote my sight,
I offered, for the love that bade me live,
Wretch that I was, what misery had to give:
My wood, my stream, my mountain. Bolder grown,
By thy compassion to an outlaw shown,
The outlaw's meal beneath the forest shade,
The outlaw's couch far in the greenwood glade,
I offered. Though to both that couch be free,
I keep the scaffold block reserved for me.

DONNA SOL. And yet you promised?

HERNANI (falls on his knee.)    Angel! in this hour,
Pursued by vengeance and oppressed by power -
Even in this hour when death prepares to close
In shame a...

Died at Hartford, May 4th, 1860.


Aye, robe yourselves in black, light messengers
Whose letter'd faces to the people tell
The pulse and pressure of the passing hour.
'Tis fitting ye should sympathize with them,
And tint your tablets with a sable hue
Who bring them tidings of a loss so great.

What have they lost?
                    An upright man, who scorn'd
All subterfuge, who faithful to his trust
Guarded the interests they so highly prized,
With power and zeal unchang'd, from youth to age.

Yet there's a sadder sound of bursting tears
From woe-worn helpless ones, from widow'd forms
O'er whom he threw a shelter, for his name
Long mingled with their prayers, both night and morn.
The Missionary toward the setting sun
Will miss his l...

"Good-bye," I said to my conscience--
"Good-bye for aye and aye,"
And I put her hands off harshly,
And turned my face away;
And conscience smitten sorely
Returned not from that day.

But a time came when my spirit
Grew weary of its pace;
And I cried: "Come back, my conscience;
I long to see thy face."
But conscience cried: "I cannot;
Remorse sits in my place."

"Down, down, down, ten thousand fathoms deep."
Count Fathom.


Who does not know that dreadful gulf, where Niagara falls,
Where eagle unto eagle screams, to vulture vulture calls;
Where down beneath, Despair and Death in liquid darkness grope,
And upward, on the foam there shines a rainbow without Hope;
While, hung with clouds of Fear and Doubt, the unreturning wave
Suddenly gives an awful plunge, like life into the grave;
And many a hapless mortal there hath dived to bale or bliss;
One - only one - hath ever lived to rise from that abyss!
Oh, Heav'n! it turns me now to ice with chill of fear extreme,
To think of my frail bark adrift on that tumultuous stream!
In vain with desperate sinews, strung by love of life and light,
I urged that coffin, my canoe, aga...

A Memory Of A Sister



The fire advances along the log
Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach
And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year,
It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim
From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

December 1915.

In the cedar shadow sleeping,
Where cool grass and fragrant glooms
Oft at noon have lur’d me, creeping
From your darken’d palace rooms:
I, who in your train at morning
Stroll’d and sang with joyful mind,
Heard, at evening, sounds of warning;
Heard the hoarse boughs labour in the wind.

Who are they, O pensive Graces,
For I dream’d they wore your forms
Who on shores and sea-wash’d places
Scoop the shelves and fret the storms?
Who, when ships are that way tending,
Troop across the flushing sands.
To all reefs and narrows wending,
With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands

Yet I see, the howling levels
Of the deep are not your lair;
And your tragic-vaunted revels
Are less lonely than they were.
In a Tyrian galley steering
Fro...

Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love
for so enveloping my heart and brain
in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain.


In this vast landscape where chill south winds play,
where long nights hoarsen the shrill weather-vane,
it opens wide its raven’s wings, my soul,
freer than in times of mild renewal.


Nothing’s sweeter to my heart, full of sorrows,
on which the hoar-frost fell in some past time,
O pallid seasons, queens of our clime,


than the changeless look of your pale shadows,
except, two by two, to lay our grief to rest
in some moonless night, on a perilous bed.

Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
And last, Man's Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years,
Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears,
The venerable form, the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back, yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

...

Psyche moans, in deep-sunk, darksome prison,
For redemption; ah! for light she aches;
Fears, hopes, after every noise doth listen--
Whether Fate her bars of iron breaks.

Bound are Psyche's pinions--airy, soaring;
Yet high-hearted is she, groaning low;
Knows that under clouds whence rain is pouring
Sprouts the palm that crowns the victor's brow;

Knows among the thorns the rose yet reigneth;
Golden flowers spring from the desert grave
She her garland through denial gaineth,
And her strength is steeled by winds that rave.

'Tis through lack that she her blisses buyeth;
Sorrow's dream comes true by longing long;
Lest light break the sleep wherein she lieth,
Round her tree of life the shadows throng.

Psyche's wail is but a fluted sadness

I

1.

Los smitten with astonishment
Frightend at the hurtling bones

2.

And at the surging sulphureous
Perturbed Immortal mad raging

3.

In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre
Round the furious limbs of Los

4.

And Los formed nets & gins
And threw the nets round about

5.

He watch'd in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change
With rivets of iron & brass;

6.

And these were the changes of Urizen.


II

1.

Ages on ages roll'd over him!
In stony sleep ages roll'd over him!
Like a dark waste stretching chang'able
By earthquakes riv'n, belching sullen fires
On ages roll'd ages in ghastly
Sick torment; around...

Past a dull, grey plain where a world-old grief seems to brood o’er the silent land,
When the orbéd moon turns her tense, white face on the ominous waste of sand,
And the wind that steals by the dreamer feels like the touch of a phantom hand,

Through the tall, still trees and the tangled scrub that has sprung on the old bush track,
In a clearing wide, where a willow broods and the cowering bush shrinks backs,
Stands a house alone that no dwellers own, yet unharmed by the storm’s attack.

’Tis a strange, sad place. On the shingle roof mosses gather and corn-blades spring,
And a stillness reigns in the air unstirred by the beat of a wild bird’s wing.
He who sees believes that the old house grieves with the grief of a sentient thing.

From the charmed gums that about the land in a ...