I am so weary with the burden old
Of foregone faults, and power of custom base,
That much I fear to perish from the ways,
And fall into my enemy's grim fold.
True, a high friend, to free me, not with gold,
Came, of ineffable and utmost grace--
Then straightway vanished from before my face,
So that in vain I strive him to behold.
But his voice yet comes echoing below:
O ye that labour, the way open lies!
Come unto me lest some one shut the gate!
--What heavenly grace--what love will--or what fate--
The pinions of a dove on me bestow
That I may rest, and from the earth arise?

Love is fellow-service.


A youth and maid upon a summer night
Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light,
Edmund and Emma, let their names be these,
Among the shrubs within the circling trees,
Joined in a game with boys and girls at play:
For games perhaps too old a little they;
In April she her eighteenth year begun,
And twenty he, and near to twenty-one.
A game it was of running and of noise;
He as a boy, with other girls and boys
(Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun;
And when her turn, she marked not, came to run,
‘Emma,’ he called, then knew that he was wrong,
Knew that her name to him did not belong.
Her look and manner proved his feeling true,
A child no more, her womanhood she knew;
Half was the colour mounted on her fa...

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these grey rocks; that household lawn;
Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn;
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake;
This little bay; a quiet road
That holds in shelter thy Abode
In truth together do ye seem
Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such Forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep!
But, O fair Creature! in the light
Of common day, so heavenly bright,
I bless Thee, Vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart;
God shield thee to thy latest years!
Thee, neither know I, nor thy peers;
And yet my eyes are filled with tears.

...

There is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man.
It hurls its barbed syllables,--
At once is mute again.
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted brother
Gave his breath away.

Wherever runs the breathless sun,
Wherever roams the day,
There is its noiseless onset,
There is its victory!

Behold the keenest marksman!
The most accomplished shot!
Time's sublimest target
Is a soul 'forgot'!

I.

Thou, from the first, unborn, undying Love,
Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,
Before the face of God didst breathe and move,
Though night and pain and rain and death reign here.
Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
The very throne of the eternal God;
Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
Are mellowed into music, borne abroad
By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
Even from its central deeps: thine empery
Is over all; thou wilt not brook eclipse;
Thou goest and returnest to His leeps
Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.


II.

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evils which infold thee.

Eastwards through busy streets I lingered on;
Jostled by anxious crowds, who, heart and brain,
Were so absorbed in dreams of Mammon-gain,
That they could spare no time to look upon
The sunset's gold and crimson fires, which shone
Blessing keen eyes and wrinkled brows in vain.

Right in my path stood out that solemn Fane
Whose soaring cupola of stern grey stone
Lifteth for awful beacon to the sky
The burning Cross: silent and sole amid
That ceaseless uproar, as a pyramid
Isled in its desert. The great throngs pressed by
Heedless and urgent: thus Religion towers
Above this sordid, restless life of ours.

Halifax sits on her hills by the sea
    In the might of her pride, -
Invincible, terrible, beautiful, she
    With a sword at her side.

To right and to left of her, battlements rear
    And fortresses frown;
While she sits on her throne without favour or fear
    With her cannon as crown.

Coast guard and sentinel, watch of the weal
    Of a nation she keeps;
But her hand is encased in a gauntlet of steel,
    And her thunder but sleeps.

The song that lightens the languid way,
        When brows are glowing,
        And faint with rowing,
Is like the spell of Hope's airy lay,
To whose sound thro' life we stray;
The beams that flash on the oar awhile,
    As we row along thro' the waves so clear,
Illume its spray, like the fleeting smile
    That shines o'er sorrow's tear.

Nothing is lost on him who sees
    With an eye that feeling gave;--
For him there's a story in every breeze,
    And a picture in every wave.
Then sing to lighten the languid way;
        When brows are glowing,
        And faint with rowing,
'Tis like the spell of Hope's airy lay,
To whose sound thro' life we stray.

            *            *            *            *            *

'Tis sweet...

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,
Her stones of emptiness remain;
Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
The lonely waste of Edom's plain.

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft
The bow of vengeance turns not back;
Of all her myriads none are left
Along the Wady Mousa's track.

Clear in the hot Arabian day
Her arches spring, her statues climb;
Unchanged, the graven wonders pay
No tribute to the spoiler, Time!

Unchanged the awful lithograph
Of power and glory undertrod;
Of nations scattered like the chaff
Blown from the threshing-floor of God.

Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn
From Petra's gates with deeper awe,
To mark afar the burial urn
Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor;

And where upon its ancient guard
T...

A baby played with the surplice sleeve
Of a gentle priest; while in accents low,
The sponsors murmured the grand "I believe,"
And the priest bade the mystic waters to flow
In the name of the Father, and the Son,
And Holy Spirit -- Three in One.

Spotless as a lily's leaf,
Whiter than the Christmas snow;
Not a sign of sin or grief,
And the babe laughed, sweet and low.

A smile flitted over the baby's face:
Or was it the gleam of its angel's wing
Just passing then, and leaving a trace
Of its presence as it soared to sing?
A hymn when words and waters win
To grace and life a child of sin.

Not an outward sign or token,
That a child was saved from woe;
But the bonds of sin were broken,
And the babe laughed, sweet and low.

A...

Beside me, in the car, she sat,
She spake not, no, nor looked to me
From her to me, from me to her,
What passed so subtly, stealthily?
As rose to rose that by it blows
Its interchanged aroma flings;
Or wake to sound of one sweet note
The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this! but this,
That influent as within me dwelt
Her life, mine too within her breast,
Her brain, her every limb she felt
We sat; while o’er and in us, more
And more, a power unknown prevailed,
Inhaling, and inhaled, and still
’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed;
I passed; and know not to this day
If gold or jet her girlish hair,
If black, or brown, or lucid-grey
Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance
...

    When a son you shall desire,
    Pray to water and to fire;
    But when you would have a daughter,
    Pray to fire and then to water.

THE DAM BREAKS DOWN, THE ICE-PLAIN GROWLS,
THE FLOODS ARISE, THE WATER HOWLS.

"I'll bear thee, mother, across the swell,

'Tis not yet high, I can wade right well."

"Remember us too! in what danger are we!

Thy fellow-lodger, and children three!

The trembling woman! Thou'rt going away!"

She bears the mother across the spray.

"Quick! haste to the mound, and awhile there wait,

I'll soon return, and all will be straight.

The mound's close by, and safe from the wet;

But take my goat too, my darling pet!"

THE DAM DISSOLVES, THE ICE-PLAIN GROWLS,
THE FLOODS DASH ON, THE WATER HOWLS.

She places the mother safe on the shore;

Fair Susan then turns tow'rd the flood once more.

"Oh whither? ...

There was never a castle seen
    So fair as mine in Spain:
It stands embowered in green,
    Crowning the gentle slope
Of a hill by the Xenil's shore
And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
    The storied Vega plain,
And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;
    And I toil through years of pain
    Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet
Sometimes its courts I greet:
    Sometimes in joy its shining halls
I tread with favoured feet;
But never my eyes in the light of day
    Were blest with its ivied walls,
Where the marble white and the granite gray
Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play,
    When the soft day dimly falls.

I know in its dusky rooms
    Are treasures rich and rare;
The spoil of Eastern looms,<...

How could I know, how could I guess
That here was your great happiness--
In mine? And how could I know
Your love infinite must grow?

Suddenly at dawn I wake
To see the cruse of colour break
Over the East, and then the gray
Creep up with light of common day ...
No, no, no! again that bright
Flashing, flushing, flooding light
Leading on day, until I ache
With love to see the dark world wake.

O, with such second flood your love
Painted my earth and heaven above,
With such wild magnificence
As bruised my heart in every sense,
In every nerve. Was ever man
Fit this renewed love to sustain?

Now in these days when Autumn's leaf
Is red and gold, and for a brief
Day the earth flowers ere it dies,
What if Spring came with new su...

O loyal to the royal in thyself,
And loyal to thy land, as this to thee--
Bear witness, that rememberable day,
When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the Prince
Who scarce had plucked his flickering life again
From halfway down the shadow of the grave,
Past with thee through thy people and their love,
And London rolled one tide of joy through all
Her trebled millions, and loud leagues of man
And welcome! witness, too, the silent cry,
The prayer of many a race and creed, and clime--
Thunderless lightnings striking under sea
From sunset and sunrise of all thy realm,
And that true North, whereof we lately heard
A strain to shame us 'keep you to yourselves;
So loyal is too costly! friends--your love
Is but a burthen: loose the bond, and go.'
Is this the tone of e...

Be glad, just for to-day!
O heart, be glad!
Cast all your cares away!
Doff all that 's sad!
Put of your garments gray
Be glad to-day!
Be merry while you-can;
For life is short
It seemeth but a span
Before we part.
Let each maid take her man,
And dance while dance she can:
Life's but a little span
Be merry while you can.

Dark the sea was: but I saw him,
One great head with goggle eyes,
Like a diabolic cherub
Flying in those fallen skies.

I have heard the hoarse deniers,
I have known the wordy wars;
I have seen a man, by shouting,
Seek to orphan all the stars.

I have seen a fool half-fashioned
Borrow from the heavens a tongue,
So to curse them more at leisure--
--And I trod him not as dung.

For I saw that finny goblin
Hidden in the abyss untrod;
And I knew there can be laughter
On the secret face of God.

Blow the trumpets, crown the sages,
Bring the age by reason fed!
(He that sitteth in the heavens,
'He shall laugh'--the prophet said.)