Adieu to kindred hearts and home,
To pleasure, joy, and mirth,
A fitter foot than mine to roam
Could scarcely tread the earth;
For they are now so few indeed
(Not more than three in all),
Who e’er will think of me or heed
What fate may me befall.

For I through pleasure’s paths have run
My headlong goal to win,
Nor pleasure’s snares have cared to shun
When pleasure sweetened sin.
Let those who will their failings mask,
To mine I frankly own;
But for them pardon will I ask
Of none, save Heaven alone.

From carping friends I turn aside;
At foes defiance frown;
Yet time may tame my stubborn pride,
And break my spirit down.
Still, if to error I incline,
Truth whispers comfort strong,
That never reckless act of mine
E’er...

Far from love the Heavenly Father
Leads the chosen child;
Oftener through realm of briar
Than the meadow mild,

Oftener by the claw of dragon
Than the hand of friend,
Guides the little one predestined
To the native land.

I.

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:
This creature like a girl, who smiles
Into my eyes and softly lays
Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
Long miles of haunted forest ways.

II.

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
A fragrance that a flower exhaled
And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
A sunbeam making gold the gloom
Of vines that roof some woodland room
Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
Of streams her presence doth assume
Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

III.

Sometimes she seems the light that lies
On foam of ...

Ben può talor col mio.


Sometimes my love I dare to entertain
        With soaring hope not over-credulous;
        Since if all human loves were impious,
        Unto what end did God the world ordain?
For loving thee what license is more plain
        Than that I praise thereby the glorious
        Source of all joys divine, that comfort us
        In thee, and with chaste fires our soul sustain?
False hope belongs unto that love alone
        Which with declining beauty wanes and dies,
        And, like the face it worships, fades away.
That hope is true which the pure heart hath known,
        Which alters not with time or death's decay,
        Yielding on earth earnest of Paradise.

The circling months begin this day
To run their yearly ring,
And long-breathed time, which ne'er will stay,
Refits his wings and shoots away,
It round again to bring.
Who feels the force of female eyes
And thinks some nymph divine,
Now brings his annual sacrifice,
Some pretty toy or neat device
To offer at her shrine.
But I can pay no offering
To show how I adore,
Since I have but a heart to bring,
A downright foolish, faithful thing,
And that you had before.
Yet we may give, for custom sake,
What will to both be new:
My constancy a gift I'll make
And in return of it will take
Some levity from you.

Best beloved of ancient stories
Are our Diarmid's woes to me.
Like a mist, by breezes broken,
So this tale of olden glories
Floats in fragments, as a token
Of the song of Ireland's sea.

Through long centuries repeated
Lived the legend told in Erse,
But a change comes swift or slowly
Fades the language, and defeated
Flies the faith, once counted holy,
Old-world ways, and oral verse.

Not from men of note or learning
May we gather now these tales,
Heard beneath the cotter's rafter,
Or where smithy sparks are burning,
Or at sea, when hushed the laughter
Of the breeze on hull and sails.

Then with Ossian's rhythmic Measure
Comes upon the fancy's sight,
One with golden locks; resplendent,
Great and strong with eyes of azure,...

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro’ both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek
The meanings ambush’d under all they saw,
The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice,
What omens may foreshadow fate to man
And woman, and the secret of the Gods.
My son, the Gods, despite of human prayer,
Are slower to forgive than human kings.
The great God, Arês, burns in anger still
Against the guiltless heirs of him from Tyre
Our Cadmus, out of whom thou art, who found
Beside the springs of Dircê, smote, and still’d
Thro’ all its folds the multitudinous beast
The dragon, which our trembling fathers call’d
The God’s own son.
A tale, that told to me,
When but thine age, by age...

I.

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
Little has yet been changed, I think
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink.

II.

Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name
It was not her time to love; beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,
And now was quiet, now astir,
Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.

III.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made...

Now young-ey'd Spring, on gentle breezes borne,
    'Mid the deep woodlands, hills, and vales, and bowers,
    Unfolds her leaves, her blossoms, and her flowers,
    Pouring their soft luxuriance on the morn.
O! how unlike the wither'd, wan, forlorn,
    And limping Winter, that o'er russet moors,
    Grey ridgy fields, and ice-incrusted shores,
    Strays! - and commands his rising Winds to mourn.
Protracted Life, thou art ordain'd to wear
    A form like his; and, shou'd thy gifts be mine,
    I tremble lest a kindred influence drear
Steal on my mind; - but pious Hope benign,
    The Soul's bright day-spring, shall avert the fear,
    And gild Existence in her dim decline.

No gift I bring but worship, and the love
    Which all must bear to lovely souls and pure,
    Those lights, that, when all else is dark, endure;
Stars in the night, to lift our eyes above;

To lift our eyes and hearts, and make us move
    Less doubtful, though our journey be obscure,
    Less fearful of its ending, being sure
That they watch over us, where'er we rove.

And though my gift itself have little worth,
    Yet worth it gains from her to whom 'tis given,
            As a weak flower gets colour from the sun.
Or rather, as when angels walk the earth,
    All things they look on take the look of heaven--
            For of those blessed angels thou art one.

On the hill they are crowding together,
In the stand they are crushing for room,
Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather,
They gather like bees on the broom;
They flutter like moths round a candle,
Stale similes, granted, what then?
I've got a stale subject to handle,
A very stale stump of a pen.


Hark! the shuffle of feet that are many,
Of voices the many-tongued clang,
"Has he had a bad night?" "Has he any
Friends left?"    How I hate your turf slang;
'Tis stale to begin with, not witty,
But dull, and inclined to be coarse,
But bad men can't use (more's the pity)
Good words when they slate a good horse.


Heu! heu! quantus equis (that's Latin
For "bellows to mend" with the weeds),
They're off! lights and shades! silk and sat...

        To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire,
        And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire,
        And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire.

        And though no word shall e'er be said to ease the ghostly sting,
        And though our hearts, unhoused, unfed, must still go wandering,
        My sign is set upon her head while stars do meet and sing.

        Not such a sign as women wear who make their foreheads tame
        With life's long tolerance, and bear love's sweetest, humblest name,
        Nor such as passion eateth bare with its crown of tears and flame.

        Nor such a sign as happy friend sets on his friend's dear brow
        When meadow-pipings break and blend to a key of autumn woe...

In search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,
In torment writhed
Throughout three long, three weary nights;
And then was cured,
Thanks to all-healing Nature's
Soft, omnipresent balm.
He crept away from out the copse,
And stretch'd his wing alas!
Lost is all power of flight
He scarce can lift himself
From off the ground
To catch some mean, unworthy prey,
And rests, deep-sorrowing,
On the low rock beside the stream.
Up to the oak he looks,
Looks up to heaven,
While in his noble eye there gleams a tear.
Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold,
There comes a wanton pair of...

In the whole wide world there was but one;
Others for others, but she was mine,
The one fair woman beneath the sun.

From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine
Down to the lithe and delicate feet
There was not a curve nor a waving line

But moved in a harmony firm and sweet
With all of passion my life could know.
By knowledge perfect and faith complete

I was bound to her, - as the planets go
Adoring around their central star,
Free, but united for weal or woe.

She was so near and Heaven so far -
She grew my heaven and law and fate,
Rounding my life with a mystic bar

No thought beyond could violate.
Our love to fulness in silence nursed
Grew calm as morning, when through the gate

Of the glimmering east the sun has...

Prologue

Calm and clear! the bright day is declining,
The crystal expanse of the bay,
Like a shield of pure metal, lies shining
’Twixt headlands of purple and grey,
While the little waves leap in the sunset,
And strike with a miniature shock,
In sportive and infantine onset,
The base of the iron-stone rock.

Calm and clear! the sea-breezes are laden
With a fragrance, a freshness, a power,
With a song like the song of a maiden,
With a scent like the scent of a flower;
And a whisper, half-weird, half-prophetic,
Comes home with the sigh of the surf;
But I pause, for your fancies poetic
Never rise from the level of “Turf”.

Fellow-bungler of mine, fellow-sinner,
In public performances past,
In trials whence touts take their wi...

"Her divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw
I could some instruction draw,
And raise pleasure to the height
Through the meanest objects sight.
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustelling;
By a Daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree;
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.'
    G. Wither.

    
    
In youth from rock to rock I went,
From hill to hill in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,
Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,
My thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature's love partake,
Of Thee, sweet Daisy!

Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly...

For every ill beneath the sun
There is some remedy or none;
If there be one, resolve to find it;
If not, submit, and never mind it.

Maceo dead! a thrill of sorrow
    Through our hearts in sadness ran
When we felt in one sad hour
    That the world had lost a man.

He had clasped unto his bosom
    The sad fortunes of his land -
Held the cause for which he perished
    With a firm, unfaltering hand.


On his lips the name of freedom
    Fainted with his latest breath.
Cuba Libre was his watchword
    Passing through the gates of death.

With the light of God around us,
    Why this agony and strife?
With the cross of Christ before us,
    Why this fearful waste of life?

Must the pathway unto freedom
    Ever mark a crimson line,
And the eyes of wayward mortals
    Always close to light divine?

Must the hearts of fearless valor
    Fa...