The old men of the world have made a fire
To warm their trembling hands.
They poke the young men in.
The young men burn like withes.

If one run a little way,
The old men are wrath.
They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames.
Green withes burn slow...
And the smoke of the young men's torment
Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak,
And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky....

Green withes burn slow...
And the old men of the world sit round the fire
And rub their hands....
But the smoke of the young men's torment
Ascends up for ever and ever.

Friend of my early days, we meet once more!
Once more I stand thine aged boughs beneath,
And hear again the rustling music pour,
Along thy leaves, as whispering spirits breathe.

Full many a day of sunshine and of storm,
Since last we parted, both have surely known;
Thy leaves are thinned, decrepit is thy form,
And all my cherished visions, they are flown!

How beautiful, how brief, those sunny hours
Departed now, when life was in its spring
When Fancy knew no scene undecked with flowers,
And Expectation flew on Fancy's wing!

Here, on the bank, beside this whispering stream,
Which still runs by as gayly as of yore,
Marking its eddies, I was wont to dream
Of things away, on some far fairy shore.

Then every whirling leaf and bubbling ball,<...

Along the graceless grass of town
They rake the rows of red and brown,
Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay,
Delicate, neither gold nor grey,
Raked long ago and far away.

A narrow silence in the park;
Between the lights a narrow dark.
One street rolls on the north, and one,
Muffled, upon the south doth run.
Amid the mist the work is done.

A futile crop; for it the fire
Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.
So go the town's lives on the breeze,
Even as the sheddings of the trees;
Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

    Not in this chamber only at my birth--
        When the long hours of that mysterious night
        Were over, and the morning was in sight--
    I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth
    I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;
        And never shall one room contain me quite
        Who in so many rooms first saw the light,
    Child of all mothers, native of the earth.

    So is no warmth for me at any fire
        To-day, when the world's fire has burned so low;
    I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,
    At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,
    And straighten back in weariness, and long
        To gather up my little gods and go.

I years had been from home,
And now, before the door,
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, -- just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.

When thou art gone, then all the rest will go;
Mornings no more shall dawn,
Roses no more shall blow,
Thy lovely face withdrawn -
Nor woods grow green again after the snow;
For of all these thy beauty was the dream,
The soul, the sap, the song;
To thee the bloom and beam
Of flower and star belong,
And all the beauty thine of bird and stream.

Thy bosom was the moonrise, and the morn
The roses of thy cheek,
No lovely thing was born
But of thy face did speak -
How shall all these endure, of thee forlorn?
The sad heart of the world grew glad through thee,
Happy, men toiled and spun
That had thy smile for fee;
So flowers seek the sun,
So singing rivers hasten to the sea.

Yet, though the world, bereft, should bleakly bloom,
And w...

Around Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.

The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rock o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.

Dazzling and white! Save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.

Yet green are Saco's banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.

The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer's wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its su...

I

My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still
A whole long life through, had but love its will,
Would death that leads me from thee brook delay!

II

I have but to be by thee, and thy hand
Would never let mine go, thy heart withstand
The beating of my heart to reach its place.
When should I look for thee and feel thee gone?
When cry for the old comfort and find none?
Never, I know! Thy soul is in thy face.

III

Oh, I should fade, ’tis willed so! might I save,
Galdly I would, whatever beauty gave
Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too.
It is not to be granted. But the soul
Whence t...

Be pitiful, oh God! the night is long,
    My soul is faint with watching for the light,
    And still the gloom and doubt of seven-fold night
Hangs heavy on my spirit: Thou art strong.--
    Pity me, oh my God!

I stretch my hands through darkness up to Thee,--
    The stars are shrouded, and the night is dumb;
    There is no earthly help,--to Thee I come
In all my helplessness and misery,--
    Pity me, oh my God!

Be pitiful, oh God!--for I am weak,
    And all my paths are rough, and hedged about,--
    Hold Thou my hand dear Lord, and lead me out,
And bring me to the city which I seek,--
    Pity me, oh my God!

By the temptation which Thou didst endure,
    And by Thy fasting and Thy midnight prayer,
    Jesu! let me not utterly desp...

O'er better waves to speed her rapid course
The light bark of my genius lifts the sail,
Well pleas'd to leave so cruel sea behind;
And of that second region will I sing,
In which the human spirit from sinful blot
Is purg'd, and for ascent to Heaven prepares.

Here, O ye hallow'd Nine! for in your train
I follow, here the deadened strain revive;
Nor let Calliope refuse to sound
A somewhat higher song, of that loud tone,
Which when the wretched birds of chattering note
Had heard, they of forgiveness lost all hope.

Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread
O'er the serene aspect of the pure air,
High up as the first circle, to mine eyes
Unwonted joy renew'd, soon as I 'scap'd
Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom,
That had mine eyes and b...

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, --
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bett’ring of the time,
And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.

I

Frost upon small rain the ebony-lacquered avenue
Reflecting lamps as a pool shows goldfish.
The sight suddenly emptied out of the young man's eyes
Entering upon it sideways.

II

In youth, by hazard, I killed an old man.
In age I maimed a little child.
Dead leaves under foot reproach not:
But the lop-sided cherry-branch whenever the sun rises,
How black a shadow!

    'Tis done!    Henceforth nor joy nor woe
        Can make or mar my fate;
    I gaze around, above, below,
        And all is desolate.
    Go, bid the shattered pine to bloom;
        The mourner to be merry;
    But bid no ray to cheer the tomb
        In which my hopes I bury!

    I never thought the world was fair;
        That 'Truth must reign victorious';
    I knew that Honesty was rare;
        Wealth only meritorious.
    I knew that Women might deceive,
        And sometimes cared for money;
    That Lovers who in Love believe
        Find gall as well as honey.

    I knew that "wondrous Classic lore"
        Meant something most pedantic;
    That Mathematics were a bore,
        And Morals un-romantic.<...

It is dark as a cave,
Or a vault in the nave
When the iron door
Is closed, and the floor
Of the church relaid
With trowel and spade.

But the parish-clerk
Cares not for the dark
As he winds in the tower
At a regular hour
The rheumatic clock,
Whose dilatory knock
You can hear when praying
At the day's decaying,
Or at any lone while
From a pew in the aisle.

Up, up from the ground
Around and around
In the turret stair
He clambers, to where
The wheelwork is,
With its tick, click, whizz,
Reposefully measuring
Each day to its end
That mortal men spend
In sorrowing and pleasuring
Nightly thus does he climb
To the trackway of Time.

Him I followed one night
To this place without light,

Lovely he looks, 'tis true, with the light of his torch now extinguished;
But remember that death is not aesthetic, my friends!

A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,
Of temper amorous, as the first of May,
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,
For on my cradle shone the Northern star.

There lived an ancient legend in our house.
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold,
Dying, that none of all our blood should know
The shadow from the substance, and that one
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall.
For so, my mother said, the story ran.
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less,
An old and strange affection of the house.
Myself too had weird seizures, Heaven knows what:
On a sudden in the midst of men and day,
And while I walked and talked as heretofore,
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts,
And feel myse...

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and ...