How many buds in this warm light
    Have burst out laughing into leaves!
And shall a day like this be gone
    Before I seek the wood that holds
The richest music known?

Too many times have nightingales
    Wasted their passion on my sleep,
And brought repentance soon:
    But this one night I'll seek the woods,
The nightingale, and moon.

Night waneth fast, the morning star
    Saddens with light the glimmering sea,
Whose waves shall soon to realms afar
    Waft me from hope, from love, and thee.
Coldly the beam from yonder sky
    Looks o'er the waves that onward stray;
But colder still the stranger's eye
    To him whose home is far away

Oh, not at hour so chill and bleak,
    Let thoughts of me come o'er thy breast;
But of the lost one think and speak,
    When summer suns sink calm to rest.
So, as I wander, Fancy's dream
    Shall bring me o'er the sunset seas,
Thy look in every melting beam,
    Thy whisper in each dying breeze.

My familiar ghost again
Comes to see what he can see,
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
Spying on our privacy.

Slam the window, bolt the door,
Yet he'll enter in and stay;
In tomorrow's book he'll score
Indiscretions of today.

Whispered love and muttered fears,
How their echoes fly about!
None escape his watchful ears,
Every sigh might be a shout.

No kind words nor angry cries
Turn away this grim spoilsport;
No fine lady's pleading eyes,
Neither love, nor hate, nor ... port.

Critics wears no smile of fun,
Speaks no word of blame nor praise,
Counts our kisses one by one,
Notes each gesture, every phrase.

My familiar ghost again
Stands or squats where suits him best;
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
L...

She will not sleep, for fear of dreams,
But, rising, quits her restless bed,
And walks where some beclouded beams
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.

Obedient to the goad of grief,
Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow,
In varying motion seek relief
From the Eumenides of woe.

Wringing her hands, at intervals,
But long as mute as phantom dim,
She glides along the dusky walls,
Under the black oak rafters grim.

The close air of the grated tower
Stifles a heart that scarce can beat,
And, though so late and lone the hour,
Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet;

And on the pavement spread before
The long front of the mansion grey,
Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar,
Which pale on grass and granite lay.

No...

    After the blast of lightning from the east,
    The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
    After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
    And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,

    Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
    All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
    Or fill these void veins full again with youth
    And wash with an immortal water age?

    When I do ask white Age, he saith not so,--
    "My head hangs weighed with snow."
    And when I hearken to the Earth she saith
    My fiery heart sinks aching. It is death.
    Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified
    Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried."

Down in a valley, by a forest's side,
Near where the crystal Thames rolls on her waves,
I saw a mushroom stand in haughty pride,
As if the lilies grew to be his slaves;
The gentle daisy, with her silver crown,
Worn in the breast of many a shepherd's lass;
The humble violet, that lowly down
Salutes the gay nymphs as they trimly pass:
These, with a many more, methought, complain'd
That Nature should those needless things produce,
Which not alone the sun from others gain'd
But turn it wholly to their proper use:
I could not choose but grieve that Nature made
So glorious flowers to live in such a shade.

Ov' è la fronte che con picciol cenno.

HE ENUMERATES AND EULOGISES THE GRACES OF LAURA.


    Where is the brow whose gentlest beckonings led
My raptured heart at will, now here, now there?
Where the twin stars, lights of this lower sphere,
Which o'er my darkling path their radiance shed?
Where is true worth, and wit, and wisdom fled?
The courteous phrase, the melting accent, where?
Where, group'd in one rich form, the beauties rare,
Which long their magic influence o'er me shed?
Where is the shade, within whose sweet recess
My wearied spirit still forgot its sighs,
And all my thoughts their constant record found?
Where, where is she, my life's sole arbitress?--
Ah, wretched world! and wretched ye, mine eyes
(Of her pure light bereft) which a...

He was born far east of the Rockies
    Of a pet in society's van;
A wine-soaked daughter of pleasure
    Bred back and threw a man;
A man-child who grew up a stranger,
    Who never could learn the way
Of a people who gauge their pleasure
    On a line with the price they pay.

Just a shred of an education--
    A few years of college life,
A course in the card and wine room,
    A year with a chorus-girl wife,
Then disgust with a life unnatural
    Spurred on with the curse of the go,
He quitted that life forever
    For the land of the gold and snow.

The Lure of the Land had gripped him,
    The Land where you die if you fail;
The Land of the fabled fortunes,
    The Land of the endless trail.
The Land of the lonely silence,

Ye poets ragged and forlorn,
    Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,
    Not yet consign'd to paste;

I know a trick to make you thrive;
    O, 'tis a quaint device:
Your still-born poems shall revive,
    And scorn to wrap up spice.

Get all your verses printed fair,
    Then let them well be dried;
And Curll[1] must have a special care
    To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing[2] Pope;
    And when he sets to write,
No letter with an envelope
    Could give him more delight.

When Pope has fill'd the margins round,
    Why then recall your loan;
Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,
    And swear they are your own.

Love on his errand bound to go
Can swim the flood and wade through snow,
Where way is none, 't will creep and wind
And eat through Alps its home to find.

'Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.

And there's the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there's the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying
You find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing
With every wind at will,
But not the daffodil,

Bring baskets now, and sally
Upon the spring's array,
And bear from hill and valley
The daffodil away
That dies on Easter day.

Mountains of sorrow, I have heard your moans,
    And the moving of your pines; but we sit high
    On your green shoulders, nearer stoops the sky,
And pure airs visit us from all the zones.
    Sweet world beneath, too happy far to sigh,
Dost thou look thus beheld from heavenly thrones?
No; not for all the love that counts thy stones,
    While sleepy with great light the valleys lie.
Strange, rapturous peace! its sunshine doth enfold
    My heart; I have escaped to the days divine,
It seemeth as bygone ages back had rolled,
    And all the eldest past was now, was mine;
Nay, even as if Melchizedec of old
    Might here come forth to us with bread and wine.

When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

There came a Youth from Georgia's shore
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;<...

Part of the work remains; one part is past:
And here my ship rides, having anchor cast.

Dry leaves upon the wall,
Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape,
A single frosted cluster on the grape
Still hangs--and that is all.

It hangs forgotten quite,--
Forgotten in the purple vintage-day,
Left for the sharp and cruel frosts to slay,
The daggers of the night.

It knew the thrill of spring;
It had its blossom-time, its perfumed noons;
Its pale-green spheres were rounded to soft runes
Of summer's whispering.

Through balmy morns of May;
Through fragrances of June and bright July,
And August, hot and still, it hung on high
And purpled day by day.

Of fair and mantling shapes,
No braver, fairer cluster on the tree;
And what then is this thing has come to thee
Among the other grapes,

Thou lonely tenan...

I

An age hath been when Earth was proud
Of lustre too intense
To be sustained; and Mortals bowed
The front in self-defence.
Who 'then', if Dian's crescent gleamed,
Or Cupid's sparkling arrow streamed
While on the wing the Urchin played,
Could fearlessly approach the shade?
Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtured in a fickle clime,
May haunt this horned bay;
Whose amorous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes;
And smooths her liquid breast to show
These swan-like specks of mountain snow,
White as the pair that slid along the plains
Of heaven, when Venus held the reins!

II

In youth we love the darksome lawn
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then, Twilight is preferred to Da...

Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.

FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE.


        nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas.
        OVID. ex Ponto, lib. 1. ep. 5.


Thou oft hast told me of the happy hours
Enjoyed by thee in fair Italia's bowers,
Where, lingering yet, the ghost of ancient wit
Midst modern monks profanely dares to flit.
And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid,
Haunt every stream and sing through every shade.
There still the bard who (if his numbers be
His tongue's light echo) must have talked like thee,--
The courtly bard, from whom thy mind has caught
Those playful, sunshine holidays of thought,
In which the spirit baskingly reclines,
Bright without effort, resting while it shines,--
There still he roves, and laughing loves to see
How modern priests with an...