Old Loves and old dreams,--
"Requiescant in pace."
How strange now it seems,--
"Old" Loves and "old" dreams!
Yet we once wrote you reams
Maude, Alice, and Gracie!
Old Loves and old dreams,--
"Requiescant in pace."


When I called at the "Hollies" to-day,
In the room with the cedar-wood presses,
Aunt Deb. was just folding away
What she calls her "memorial dresses."

She'd the frock that she wore at fifteen,--
Short-waisted, of course--my abhorrence;
She'd "the loveliest"--something in "een"
That she wears in her portrait by Lawrence;

She'd the "jelick" she used--"as a Greek," (!)
She'd the habit she got her bad fall in;
She had e'en the blue moiré antique
That she opened Squire Grasshopper's ball in:--

New and old ...

Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense,
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me,
Me, sure that despite of time future, time past,
This tick of our life-time’s one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet,
The moment eternal, just that and no more,
When ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning's flagons up,
And say how many dew;
Tell me how far the morning leaps,
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadths of blue!

Write me how many notes there be
In the new robin's ecstasy
Among astonished boughs;
How many trips the tortoise makes,
How many cups the bee partakes, --
The debauchee of dews!

Also, who laid the rainbow's piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite,
Who counts the wampum of the night,
To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban house
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who 'll let me out some gala day,
With implements to fly away,
Pas...

Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone
Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;
It comes upon us like the glorious pealing
Of the wide spheres, an everlasting tone.
And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,
The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,
And changed to harmonies, for ever stealing
Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.
It tells me too, that on a happy day,
When some good spirit walks upon the earth,
Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore
Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth
To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away
To where the great God lives for evermore.

And, cruel maid, because I see
You scornful of my love, and me,
I'll trouble you no more, but go
My way, where you shall never know
What is become of me; there I
Will find me out a path to die,
Or learn some way how to forget
You and your name for ever;yet
Ere I go hence, know this from me,
What will in time your fortune be;
This to your coyness I will tell;
And having spoke it once, Farewell.
The lily will not long endure,
Nor the snow continue pure;
The rose, the violet, one day
See both these lady-flowers decay;
And you must fade as well as they.
And it may chance that love may turn,
And, like to mine, make your heart burn
And weep to see't; yet this thing do,
That my last vow commends to you;
When you shall see that I am dead,

I

I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile amid the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are ye distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest?"

II

- "O not at being here;
But that our future second death is drear;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
And blank oblivion comes!

III

"Those who our grandsires be
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry
With keenest backward eye.

IV

"They bide as quite forgot;
They are as men who have existed not;
Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;
It is the second death.

V

"We here, as yet, each day
Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway
In some soul hold a love...

Meek Twilight! soften the declining day,
    And bring the hour my pensive spirit loves;
When, o'er the mountain flow descends the ray
    That gives to silence the deserted groves.
Ah, let the happy court the morning still,
    When, in her blooming loveliness array'd,
She bids fresh beauty light the vale, or hill,
    And rapture warble in the vocal shade.
Sweet is the odour of the morning's flower,
    And rich in melody her accents rise;
Yet dearer to my soul the shadowy hour,
    At which her blossoms close, her music dies -
For then, while languid nature droops her head,
She wakes the tear 'tis luxury to shed.

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.
But should it be, that dream eternally
Continuing, as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood, should it thus be given,
'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.
For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright
I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light
And loveliness, have left my very heart
In climes of my imagining, apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought, what more could I have se...

Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing
Under the sky's gray arch;
Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing
It is the wind of March.

Between the passing and the coming season,
This stormy interlude
Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason
For trustful gratitude.

Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning
Of light and warmth to come,
The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning,
The earth arisen in bloom.

In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking;
I listen to the sound,
As to a voice of resurrection, waking
To life the dead, cold ground.

Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken
Of rivulets on their way;
I see these tossed and naked tree-tops darken
With the fresh leaves of May.

For all thy many courtesies to me,
Nothing I have, my Crofts, to send to thee
For the requital, save this only one
Half of my just remuneration.
For since I've travell'd all this realm throughout
To seek and find some few immortals out
To circumspangle this my spacious sphere,
As lamps for everlasting shining here;
And having fix'd thee in mine orb a star,
Amongst the rest, both bright and singular,
The present age will tell the world thou art,
If not to th' whole, yet satisfi'd in part.
As for the rest, being too great a sum
Here to be paid, I'll pay't i' th' world to come.

    Put not trust nor tenderness to sleep,
        In sorrow sad;
    The heart, in which a little love may creep,
        Is not all bad.

    The darkest hours that wear a wondrous gloom,
        Are somewhat light,
    If but one ray of brilliancy illume
        The brooding night.

    The field in which the weed and bramble thrive
        Has some of good,
    If but a single blossom struggling live
        Amid the rude.

    The ocean vast is not all desolate,
        The worlds between,
    If on its waters bearing human freight
        One sail is seen.

    All is not harsh and cold amid the wood,
        If warbled song
    Resound, how feebly, through the solitude
        Of tangled wrong.

    The deser...

L' aura che 'l verde Lauro e l' aureo crine.

HE PRAYS THAT HE MAY DIE BEFORE LAURA.


    The balmy gale, that, with its tender sigh,
Moves the green laurel and the golden hair,
Makes with its graceful visitings and rare
The gazer's spirit from his body fly.
A sweet and snow-white rose in hard thorns set!
Where in the world her fellow shall we find?
The glory of our age! Creator kind!
Grant that ere hers my death shall first be met.
So the great public loss I may not see,
The world without its sun, in darkness left,
And from my desolate eyes their sole light reft,
My mind with which no other thoughts agree,
Mine ears which by no other sound are stirr'd
Except her ever pure and gentle word.

MACGREGOR.

I
Here in the self is all that man can know
Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,
All the unearthly colour, all the glow,
Here in the self which withers like a flower;
Here in the self which fades as hours pass,
And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten
Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass
In which it sees its glory still unrotten.
Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,
Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,
Beauty herself, the universal mind,
Eternal April wandering alone;
The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,
Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.

II
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their ma...

STANZAS ENCLOSED.


TO MY SHADOW; OR, WHY?--WHAT?--HOW?

Dark comrade of my path! while earth and sky
    Thus wed their charms, in bridal light arrayed,
Why in this bright hour, walkst thou ever nigh;
    Blackening my footsteps, with thy length of shade--
                                Dark comrade, WHY?

Thou mimic Shape that, mid these flowery scenes,
    Glidest beside me o'er each sunny spot,
Saddening them as thou goest--say, what means
    So dark an adjunct to so bright a lot--
                                Grim goblin, WHAT?

Still, as to pluck sweet flowers I bend my brow,
    Thou bendest, too--then risest when I rise;--
Say, mute, mysterious Thing! how is't that thou
    Thus comest between me and those blessed skies--
...

Krinken was a little child--
It was summer when he smiled;
Oft the hoary sea and grim
Stretched its white arms out to him,
Calling: "Sun-Child, come to me,
Let me warm my heart with thee"--
But the child heard not the sea
Calling, yearning evermore
For the summer on the shore.

Krinken on the beach one day
Saw a maiden Nis at play--
On the pebbly beach she played
In the summer Krinken made.
Fair and very fair was she--
Just a little child was he.
"Krinken," said the maiden Nis
"Let me have a little kiss--
Just a kiss and go with me
To the summer lands that be
Down within the silver sea!"

Krinken was a little child--
By the maiden Nis beguiled,
Hand in hand with her went he--
And 'twas summer in the sea!
And th...

La gola e 'l sonno e l' oziose piume.

TO A FRIEND, ENCOURAGING HIM TO PURSUE POETRY.


    Torn is each virtue from its earthly throne
By sloth, intemperance, and voluptuous ease;
E'en nature deviates from her wonted ways,
Too much the slave of vicious custom grown.
Far hence is every light celestial gone,
That guides mankind through life's perplexing maze;
And those, whom Helicon's sweet waters please,
From mocking crowds receive contempt alone.
Who now would laurel, myrtle-wreaths obtain?
Let want, let shame, Philosophy attend!
Cries the base world, intent on sordid gain.
What though thy favourite path be trod by few;
Let it but urge thee more, dear gentle friend!
Thy great design of glory to pursue.

ANON.


    In...

There's no sense in going further, it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it, broke my land and sowed my crop,
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop:

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated, so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges,
"Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!"

So I went, worn out of patience; never told my nearest neighbours,
Stole away with pack and ponies, left 'em drinking in the town;
And the faith that moveth mountains didn't seem to help my labours
As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.

April will come to the quiet town
That I left long ago,
Scattering primroses up and down--
Row upon happy row.
(Oh, little green lane, will she come your way,
To a certain path I know?)

April will pause by cottage and gate
In the wild, sweet evening rain,
Where the garden borders run brown and straight,
To coax them to bloom again.
(Oh, little sad garden that once was gay,
Must she call to you all in vain?)

April will come to cottage and hill,
Laughing her lovers awake.
(Oh, little closed house, so cold and still,
Will she find you for old joy's sake,
And leave one primrose beside your door,
Lest the heart of your garden break?)