I'd rather be a Could Be
    If I could not be an Are;
For a Could Be is a May Be,
    With a chance of touching par.
I'd rather be a Has Been
    Than a Might Have Been, by far;
For a Might Have Been has never been,
    But a Has was once an Are.

Most delicate Ariel! submissive thing,
Won by the mind's high magic to its hest -
Invisible embassy, or secret guest, -
Weighing the light air on a lighter wing; -
Whether into the midnight moon, to bring
Illuminate visions to the eye of rest, -
Or rich romances from the florid West, -
Or to the sea, for mystic whispering, -
Still by thy charm'd allegiance to the will,
The fruitful wishes prosper in the brain,
As by the fingering of fairy skill, -
Moonlight, and waters, and soft music's strain,
Odors, and blooms, and my Miranda's smile,
Making this dull world an enchanted isle.

This cap, that so stately appears,
With ribbon-bound tassel on high,
Which seems by the crest that it rears
Ambitious of brushing the sky:
This cap to my cousin I owe,
She gave it, and gave me beside,
Wreath’d into an elegant bow,
The ribbon with which it is tied.


This wheel-footed studying chair,
Contrived both for toil and repose,
Wide-elbow’d, and wadded with hair,
In which I both scribble and dose,
Bright-studded to dazzle the eyes,
And rival in lustre of that
In which, or astronomy lies,
Fair Cassiopeia sat:


These carpets so soft to the foot,
Caledonia’s traffic and pride!
Oh spare them, ye knights of the boot,
Escaped from a cross-country ride!
This table, and mirror within,
Secure from collision and dust,...

I


The lights are out, and gone are all the guests
That thronging came with merriment and jests
    To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane
In the new house,--into the night are gone;
But still the fire upon the hearth burns on,
    And I alone remain.

    O fortunate, O happy day,
    When a new household finds its place
    Among the myriad homes of earth,
    Like a new star just sprung to birth,
    And rolled on its harmonious way
    Into the boundless realms of space!

So said the guests in speech and song,
As in the chimney, burning bright,
We hung the iron crane to-night,
And merry was the feast and long.


II

And now I sit and muse on what may be,
And in my vision see, or seem to see,
    Throug...

(See Note 53)

We welcome you this wondrous summer-day,
When childhood's dreams on earth are streaming,
To bloom and sing, to brighten and to pale;
    A fairy-tale,
A fairy-tale, our Northland all is seeming,
And holds you in its arms a festal space
With grateful glee and whisperings face to face.
    Th' angelic noise,
    Sweet strains of children's joys,
Bears you a moment to that home
Whence all our dreams, whence all our dreams have come.

We welcome you! Our nation all is young,
Still in that age of dreams enthralling,
When greatest things in fairy-tales are nursed,
    And he is first,
And he is first, who hears his Lord's high calling.
Of childhood's longings you the meaning know,
And to the North a goal of greatness show.
   ...

        Some time, far hence, when Autumn sheds
            Her frost upon your hair,
        And you together sit at dusk,
            May I come to you there?
        And lightly will our hearts turn back
            To this, then distant, day
        When, while the world was clad in flowers,
            You two were wed in May.

        When we shall sit about your board
            Three old friends met again,
        Joy will be with us, but not much
            Of jest and laughter then;
        For Autumn's large content and calm,
            Like heaven's own smile, will bless
        The harvest of your happy lives
            With store of happiness.

        May you, who, flankt about with flowers,
            Will plight your faith ...

I.

September On Cape Ann

The partridge-berry flecks with flame the way
That leads to ferny hollows where the bee
Drones on the aster. Far away the sea
Points its deep sapphire with a gleam of grey.
Here from this height where, clustered sweet, the bay
Clumps a green couch, the haw and barberry
Beading her hair, sad Summer, seemingly,
Has fallen asleep, unmindful of the day.
The chipmunk barks upon the old stone wall;
And in the shadows, like a shadow, stirs
The woodchuck where the boneset's blossom creams.
Was that a phoebe with its pensive call?
A sighing wind that shook the drowsy firs?
Or only Summer waking from her dreams?

II.

In An Annisquam Garden

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time l...

        Dedication Poem on the reception of the annex to the home for aged colored people, from the bequest of Mr. Edward T. Parker.

Outcast from her home in Syria
    In the lonely, dreary wild;
Heavy hearted, sorrow stricken,
    Sat a mother and her child.

There was not a voice to cheer her
    Not a soul to share her fate;
She was weary, he was fainting,
    And life seemed so desolate.

Far away in sunny Egypt
    Was lone Hagar's native land;
Where the Nile in kingly bounty
    Scatters bread with gracious hand.

In the tents of princely Abram
    She for years had found a home;
Till the stern decree of Sarah
    Sent her forth the wild to roam.

Hour by hour she journeyed onward
    From the shelter of their tent,

One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
Our destin'd course will finish. and in peace
Then, for an offering sacred to the powers
Who lent us gracious guidance, we will then
Inscribe a monument of deathless praise,
O my adventurous song. With steady speed
Long hast thou, on an untried voyage bound,
Sail'd between earth and heaven: hast now survey'd,
Stretch'd out beneath thee, all the mazy tracts
Of passion and opinion; like a waste
Of sands and flowery lawns and tangling woods,
Where mortals roam bewilder'd: and hast now
Exulting soar'd among the worlds above,
Or hover'd near the eternal gates of heaven,
If haply the discourses of the Gods,
A curious, but an unpresuming guest,
Thou might'st partake, and carry back some strain
Of divine wisdom, lawful to...

(Terpsichore)

Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 24, 1843.

In narrowest girdle, O reluctant Muse,
In closest frock and Cinderella shoes,
Bound to the foot-lights for thy brief display,
One zephyr step, and then dissolve away!

. . . . . . . . . .

Short is the space that gods and men can spare
To Song's twin brother when she is not there.
Let others water every lusty line,
As Homer's heroes did their purple wine;
Pierian revellers! Know in strains like these
The native juice, the real honest squeeze, - -
Strains that, diluted to the twentieth power,
In yon grave temple might have filled an hour.
Small room for Fancy's many-chorded lyre,
For Wit's bright rockets with their trains of fire,
For...

Give me the chance, and I will make
Thy thoughts of me, like worms this day,
Take wings and change to butterflies
That in the golden light shall play;
Thy cold, clear heart, the quiet pool
That never heard Love's nightingale,
Shall hear his music night and day,
And in no seasons shall it fail.

I'll make thy happy heart my port,
Where all my thoughts are anchored fast;
Thy meditations, full of praise,
The flags of glory on each mast.
I'll make my Soul thy shepherd soon,
With all thy thoughts my grateful flock;
And thou shalt say, each time I go,
How long, my Love, ere thou'lt come back?

From Bolton's old monastic tower
The bells ring loud with gladsome power;
The sun shines bright; the fields are gay
With people in their best array
Of stole and doublet, hood and scarf,
Along the banks of crystal Wharf,
Through the Vale retired and lowly,
Trooping to that summons holy.
And, up among the moorlands, see
What sprinklings of blithe company!
Of lasses and of shepherd grooms,
That down the steep hills force their way,
Like cattle through the budded brooms;
Path, or no path, what care they?
And thus in joyous mood they hie
To Bolton's mouldering Priory.
What would they there? Full fifty years
That sumptuous Pile, with all its peers,
Too harshly hath been doomed to taste
The bitterness of wrong and waste:
Its courts are ravaged; bu...

Rorate Coeli desuper, et nubes pluant Justum.
Aperiatur Terra, et germinet Salvatorem.

No sudden thing of glory and fear
    Was the Lord's coming; but the dear
Slow Nature's days followed each other
To form the Saviour from his Mother
--One of the children of the year.

The earth, the rain, received the trust,
--The sun and dews, to frame the Just.
    He drew his daily life from these,
    According to his own decrees
Who makes man from the fertile dust.

Sweet summer and the winter wild,
These brought him forth, the Undefiled.
    The happy Springs renewed again
    His daily bread, the growing grain,
The food and raiment of the Child.

A drear and desolate shore!
Where no tree unfolds its leaves,
And never the spring wind weaves
Green grass for the hunter's tread;
A land forsaken and dead,
Where the ghostly icebergs go
And come with the ebb and flow
Of the waters of Bradore!

A wanderer, from a land
By summer breezes fanned,
Looked round him, awed, subdued,
By the dreadful solitude,
Hearing alone the cry
Of sea-birds clanging by,
The crash and grind of the floe,
Wail of wind and wash of tide.
"O wretched land!" he cried,
"Land of all lands the worst,
God forsaken and curst!
Thy gates of rock should show
The words the Tuscan seer
Read in the Realm of Woe
Hope entereth not here!"

Lo! at his feet there stood
A block of smooth larch wood,
W...

The clouds that promise a glorious morrow
    Are fading slowly, one by one;
The earth no more bright rays may borrow
    From her loved Lord, the golden sun;
Gray evening shadows are softly creeping,
    With noiseless steps, o'er vale and hill;
The birds and flowers are calmly sleeping;
    And all around is fair and still.

Once loved I dearly, at this sweet hour,
    With loitering steps to careless stray,
To idly gather an opening flower,
    And often pause upon my way, -
Gazing around me with joyous feeling,
    From sunny earth to azure sky,
Or bending over the streamlet, stealing
    'Mid banks of flowers and verdure by.

You wond'ring ask me why sit I lonely
    Within my quiet, curtain'd room,
So idly seeking and clinging only

I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me;
She will wait me there
Till I find it fair,
And have time to spare
From company.

When I've overgot
The world somewhat,
When things cost not
Such stress and strain,
Is soon enough
By cypress sough
To tell my Love
I am come again.

And if some day,
When none cries nay,
I still delay
To seek her side,
(Though ample measure
Of fitting leisure
Await my pleasure)
She will riot chide.

What - not upbraid me
That I delayed me,
Nor ask what stayed me
So long? Ah, no! -
New cares may claim me,
New loves inflame me,
She will not blame me,
But suffer it so.

I
Sea and strand, and a lordlier land than sea-tides rolling and rising sun
Clasp and lighten in climes that brighten with day when day that was here is done,
Call aloud on their children, proud with trust that future and past are one.
Far and near from the swan's nest here the storm-birds bred of her fair white breast,
Sons whose home was the sea-wave's foam, have borne the fame of her east and west;
North and south has the storm-wind's mouth rung praise of England and England's quest.
Fame, wherever her flag flew, never forbore to fly with an equal wing:
France and Spain with their warrior train bowed down before her as thrall to king;
India knelt at her feet, and felt her sway more fruitful of life than spring.
Darkness round them as iron bound fell off from races of elder name,
Sl...

On a blank leaf of "poems printed, not published.


Well thought! who would not rather hear
The songs to Love and Friendship sung
Than those which move the stranger's tongue,
And feed his unselected ear?

Our social joys are more than fame;
Life withers in the public look.
Why mount the pillory of a book,
Or barter comfort for a name?

Who in a house of glass would dwell,
With curious eyes at every pane?
To ring him in and out again,
Who wants the public crier's bell?

To see the angel in one's way,
Who wants to play the ass's part,
Bear on his back the wizard Art,
And in his service speak or bray?

And who his manly locks would shave,
And quench the eyes of common sense,
To share the noisy recompense
Th...