A vision as of crowded city streets,
    With human life in endless overflow;
    Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
    To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,
Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;
    Tolling of bells in turrets, and below
    Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw
    O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!
This vision comes to me when I unfold
    The volume of the Poet paramount,
    Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;--
Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,
    And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,
    Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

O now the crimson east, its fire-streak burning,
Tempts me to wander 'neath the blushing morn,
Winding the zig-zag lane, turning and turning,
As winds the crooked fence's wilder'd thorn.
Where is the eye can gaze upon the blushes,
Unmov'd, with which yon cloudless heaven flushes?
I cannot pass the very bramble, weeping
'Neath dewy tear-drops that its spears surround,
Like harlot's mockery on the wan cheek creeping,
Gilding the poison that is meant to wound;--
I cannot pass the bent, ere gales have shaken
Its transient crowning off, each point adorning,--
But all the feelings of my soul awaken,
To own the witcheries of most lovely Morning.

When he lit the candles there,
And the light fell on his hand,
And it trembled as he scanned
Her and me, his vanquished air
Hinted that his dream was done,
And I saw he had begun
To understand.

When Love's viol was unstrung,
Sore I wished the hand that shook
Had been mine that shared her book
While that evening hymn was sung,
His the victor's, as he lit
Candles where he had bidden us sit
With vanquished look.

Now her dust lies listless there,
His afar from tending hand,
What avails the victory scanned?
Does he smile from upper air:
"Ah, my friend, your dream is done;
And 'tis YOU who have begun
To understand!

Reader - gentle - if so be
Such still live, and live for me,
Will it please you to be told
What my tenscore pages hold?

Here are verses that in spite
Of myself I needs must write,
Like the wine that oozes first
When the unsqueezed grapes have burst.

Here are angry lines, "too hard!"
Says the soldier, battle-scarred.
Could I smile his scars away
I would blot the bitter lay,

Written with a knitted brow,
Read with placid wonder now.
Throbbed such passion in my heart?
Did his wounds once really smart?

Here are varied strains that sing
All the changes life can bring,
Songs when joyous friends have met,
Songs the mourner's tears have wet.

See the banquet's dead bouquet,
Fair and fragrant in its day;
Do they...

Sweet Ravelrig, I ne'er could part
From thee, but wi' a dowie heart.
When I think on the happy days
I spent in youth about your braes,
When innocence my steps did guide,
Where murmuring streams did sweetly glide
Beside the braes well stored wi' trees,
And sweetest flow'rs that fend the bees:

And there the tuneful tribe doth sing,
While lightly flitting on the wing;
And conscious peace was ever found
Within your mansion to abound.
Sweet be thy former owner's rest,
And peace to him that's now possess't
Of all thy beauties great and small,
Lang may he live to bruik them all!

When winter's cold and summer's heat
Shall come and go again,
A hundred years will be complete
Since Marion crossed the main,
And brought unto this wild retreat
His dark-eyed wife of Spain.

He was the founder of a free
And independent band,
Who lit the fires of liberty
The revolution fanned:--
His patent of nobility
Read in the ransomed land!

Around his deeds a lustre throngs,
A heritage designed
To teach the world to spurn the wrongs
Once threatened all mankind:--
To his posterity belongs
The peerage of the mind.

TO THOMAS SHERIDAN

SIR,
I cannot but think that we live in a bad age,
O tempora, O mores! as 'tis in the adage.
My foot was but just set out from my cathedral,
When into my hands comes a letter from the droll.
I can't pray in quiet for you and your verses;
But now let us hear what the Muse from your car says.
    Hum - excellent good - your anger was stirr'd;
Well, punners and rhymers must have the last word.
But let me advise you, when next I hear from you,
To leave off this passion which does not become you;
For we who debate on a subject important,
Must argue with calmness, or else will come short on't.
For myself, I protest, I care not a fiddle,
For a riddle and sieve, or a sieve and a riddle;
And think of the sex as you please, I'd as lieve

If I dare write to you, my lord, who are
Of your own self a public theatre,
And, sitting, see the wiles, ways, walks of wit,
And give a righteous judgment upon it,
What need I care, though some dislike me should,
If Dorset say what Herrick writes is good?
We know y'are learn'd i' th' Muses, and no less
In our state-sanctions, deep or bottomless.
Whose smile can make a poet, and your glance
Dash all bad poems out of countenance;
So that an author needs no other bays
For coronation than your only praise,
And no one mischief greater than your frown
To null his numbers, and to blast his crown.
Few live the life immortal. He ensures
His fame's long life who strives to set up yours.

I

Stretching eyes west
Over the sea,
Wind foul or fair,
Always stood she
Prospect-impressed;
Solely out there
Did her gaze rest,
Never elsewhere
Seemed charm to be.

II

Always eyes east
Ponders she now -
As in devotion -
Hills of blank brow
Where no waves plough.
Never the least
Room for emotion
Drawn from the ocean
Does she allow.

Mary, leave thy lowly cot
When thy thickest jobs are done;
When thy friends will miss thee not,
Mary, to the pastures run.
Where we met the other night
Neath the bush upon the plain,
Be it dark or be it light,
Ye may guess we'll meet again.

Should ye go or should ye not,
Never shilly-shally, dear.
Leave your work and leave your cot,
Nothing need ye doubt or fear:
Fools may tell ye lies in spite,
Calling me a roving swain;
Think what passed the other night--
I'll be bound ye'll meet again.

Hills of the west, that gird
Forest and farm,
Home of the nestling bird,
Housing from harm,
When on your tops is heard
Storm:

Hills of the west, that bar
Belts of the gloam,
Under the twilight star,
Where the mists roam,
Take ye the wanderer
Home.

Hills of the west, that dream
Under the moon,
Making of wind and stream,
Late-heard and soon,
Parts of your lives that seem
Tune.

Hills of the west, that take
Slumber to ye,
Be it for sorrow's sake
Or memory,
Part of such slumber make
Me.

[1]

WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1702


I

Once on a time, as old stories rehearse,
    A friar would need show his talent in Latin;
But was sorely put to 't in the midst of a verse,
    Because he could find no word to come pat in;
                    Then all in the place
                    He left a void space,
        And so went to bed in a desperate case:
When behold the next morning a wonderful riddle!
He found it was strangely fill'd up in the middle.
    CHO. Let censuring critics then think what they list on't;
        Who would not write verses with such an assistant?


II

This put me the friar into an amazement;
    For he wisely consider'd it must be a sprite;
That he came through the keyhole, or in at the casement...

A summer's morning that has but one voice;
    Five hundred stocks, like golden lovers, lean
Their heads together, in their quiet way,
    And but one bird sings, of a number seen.

It is the lark, that louder, louder sings,
    As though but this one thought possessed his mind:
'You silent robin, blackbird, thrush, and finch,
    I'll sing enough for all you lazy kind!'

And when I hear him at this daring task,
    'Peace, little bird,' I say, 'and take some rest;
Stop that wild, screaming fire of angry song,
    Before it makes a coffin of your nest.'

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.

Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.

I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.

"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!

"Of such strange tidings what think ye,
O birds in brown that peck and preen?
Men know but little more than we!

"When I was borne from yonder tree
In bonds to them, I hoped to glean
How happy days are made to be,

"And want and wailing turned to glee;
Alas, despite their mighty mien
Men know but little more than we!

"They cannot change the Frost's decree,
They cannot keep the skies serene;
How happy days are made to be

"Eludes great Man's sagacity
No less than ours, O tribes in treen!
Men know but little more than we
How happy days are made to be."

(To W. E. H.)


Here, in this sequestered close
Bloom the hyacinth and rose;
Here beside the modest stock
Flaunts the flaring hollyhock;
Here, without a pang, one sees
Ranks, conditions, and degrees.

All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting place;
Peach, and apricot, and fig
Here will ripen, and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,--
More had not Alcinoüs!

Here, in alleys cool and green,
Far ahead the thrush is seen;
Here along the southern wall
Keeps the bee his festival;
All is quiet else--afar
Sounds of toil and turmoil are.

Here be shadows large and long;
Here be spaces meet for song;
Grant, O garden-god, that I,
Now that none profane is nigh,--
Now that mood and moment please,

    They have chiseled on my stone the words:
    "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
    That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
    This was a man."
    Those who knew me smile
    As they read this empty rhetoric.
    My epitaph should have been:
    "Life was not gentle to him,
    And the elements so mixed in him
    That he made warfare on life
    In the which he was slain."
    While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
    Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
    Graven by a fool!

    My life's blossom might have bloomed on all sides
    Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals
    On the side of me which you in the village could see.
    From the dust I lift a voice of protest:
    My flowering side you never saw!
    Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed
    Who do not know the ways of the wind
    And the unseen forces
    That govern the processes of life.