Adieu to Belashanny!
where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I'll think of you,
as sure as night and morn.
The kindly spot, the friendly town,
where every one is known,
And not a face in all the place
but partly seems my own;
There's not a house or window,
there's not a field or hill,
But, east or west, in foreign lands,
I'll recollect them still.
I leave my warm heart with you,
tho' my back I'm forced to turn,
Adieu to Belashanny,
and the winding banks of Erne!

No more on pleasant evenings
we'll saunter down the Mall,
When the trout is rising to the fly,
the salmon to the fall.
The boat comes straining on her net,
and heavily she creeps,
Cast off, cast off,she feels the oars,
and to her berth she sweeps;
Now fo...

(To M. E. H.)


When you wake in your crib,
You, an inch of experience,
Vaulted about
With the wonder of darkness;
Wailing and striving
To reach from your feebleness
Something you feel
Will be good to and cherish you,
Something you know
And can rest upon blindly:
O then a hand
(Your mother's, your mother's!)
By the fall of its fingers
All knowledge, all power to you,
Out of the dreary,
Discouraging strangenesses
Comes to and masters you,
Takes you, and lovingly
Woos you and soothes you
Back, as you cling to it,
Back to some comforting
Corner of sleep.

So you wake in your bed,
Having lived, having loved:
But the shadows are there,
And the world and its kingdoms
Incredibly faded;
And you...

What can I do in poetry
Now the good spirit's gone from me?
Why, nothing now but lonely sit
And over-read what I have writ.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Memphis.


'Tis true, alas--the mysteries and the lore
I came to study on this, wondrous shore.
Are all forgotten in the new delights.
The strange, wild joys that fill my days and nights.
Instead of dark, dull oracles that speak
From subterranean temples, those I seek
Come from the breathing shrines where Beauty lives,
And Love, her priest, the soft responses gives.
Instead of honoring Isis in those rites
At Coptos held, I hail her when she lights
Her first young crescent on the holy stream--
When wandering youths and maidens watch her beam
And number o'er the nights she hath to run,
Ere she again embrace her bridegroom sun.
While o'er some mystic leaf that dimly lends
A clew into past times the stu...

Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
And all the clouds are gone,
The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
Good times are coming on",
The evil that was threatened late
To all of our degree
Hath passed in discord and debate,
And,Hey then up go we!

A common people strove in vain
To shame us unto toil,
But they are spent and we remain,
And we shall share the spoil
According to our several needs
As Beauty shall decree,
As Age ordains or Birth concedes,
And, Hey then up go we!

And they that with accursed zeal
Our Service would amend,
Shall own the odds and come to heel
Ere worse befall their end:
For though no naked word be wrote
Yet plainly shall they see
What pinneth Orders on their coat,
And, Hey then up go we!
<...

Of tribulation these are they
Denoted by the white;
The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
Of victors designate.

All these did conquer; but the ones
Who overcame most times
Wear nothing commoner than snow,
No ornament but palms.

Surrender is a sort unknown
On this superior soil;
Defeat, an outgrown anguish,
Remembered as the mile

Our panting ankle barely gained
When night devoured the road;
But we stood whispering in the house,
And all we said was "Saved"!

I cannot look upon thy grave,
    Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
    These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
    A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
    The stillness round a star?

Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
    Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
    This madness of the heart.

And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
    A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
    Had oped and closed again.

And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
    The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
    Then turn away to peace.

But oh, for evermore thy look,
    Thy laugh, thy charm, t...

She gave her soul and body for a carriage,
    And livened lackey with a vacant grin,
And all the rest -house, lands -and called it marriage:
    The bargain made, a husband was thrown in.

And now, despite her luxury, she's faded,
    Gone is the bloom that was so fresh and bright;
She has the dark-rimmed eye, the countenance jaded,
    Of one who watches with the sick at night.

Ah, heaven, she does! her sick heart, sick and dying,
    Beyond the aid of human skill to save,
In that cold room her breast is hourly lying,
    And her grim thoughts crowd near to dig its grave.

And yet it lingers, suffering and wailing,
    As sick hearts will that feed upon despair,
And that lone watcher, unrelieved, is paling
    With vigils that no pitying soul can ...

Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

Not bed-time yet! The night-winds blow,
The stars are out, - full well we know
The nurse is on the stair,
With hand of ice and cheek of snow,
And frozen lips that whisper low,
"Come, children, it is time to go
My peaceful couch to share."

No years a wakeful heart can tire;
Not bed-time yet! Come, stir the fire
And warm your dear old hands;
Kind Mother Earth we love so well
Has pleasant stories yet to tell
Before we hear the curfew bell;
Still glow the burning brands.

Not bed-time yet! We long to know
What wonders time has yet to show,
What unborn years shall bring;
What ship the Arctic pole shall reach,
What lessons Science waits to teach,
What sermons there are left to preach.
What poems yet to sing.

What next? we as...

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy grove,
Where flocks have ta'en delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent move
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm:
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.

When wolv...

        Mother

Oh, what a heavy sigh!
    Dicky, are you ailing?

        Dicky

Even by this fireside, mother,
    My heart is failing.

To-night across the down,
    Whistling and jolly,
I sauntered out from town
    With my stick of holly.

Bounteous and cool from sea
    The wind was blowing,
Cloud shadows under the moon
    Coming and going.

I sang old roaring songs,
    Ran and leaped quick,
And turned home by St. Swithin's
    Twirling my stick.

And there as I was passing
    The churchyard gate
An old man stopped me, "Dicky,
    You're walking late."

I did not know the man,
    I grew afeared
At his lean lolling jaw,
    His spreading beard.

His garments...

Two better friends you wouldn't pass
Throughout a summer's day,
Than DAMON and his PYTHIAS,
Two merchant princes they.

At school together they contrived
All sorts of boyish larks;
And, later on, together thrived
As merry merchants' clerks.

And then, when many years had flown,
They rose together till
They bought a business of their own
And they conduct it still.

They loved each other all their lives,
Dissent they never knew,
And, stranger still, their very wives
Were rather friendly too.

Perhaps you think, to serve my ends,
These statements I refute,
When I admit that these dear friends
Were parties to a suit?

But 'twas a friendly action, for
Good PYTHIAS, as you see,
Fought merely as executor,
An...

Hymn At Cock-Crow (Hymnus Ad Galli Cantum)


        Ales diei nuntius
    lucem propinquam praecinit;
    nos excitator mentium
    iam Christus ad vitam vocat.

        Auferte, clamat, lectulos
    aegros, soporos, desides:
    castique recti ac sobrii
    vigilate, iam sum proximus.

        Post solis ortum fulgidi
    serum est cubile spernere,
    ni parte noctis addita
    tempus labori adieceris.

        Vox ista, qua strepunt aves
    stantes sub ipso culmine
    paulo ante quam lux emicet,
    nostri figura est iudicis.

        Tectos tenebris horridis
    stratisque opertos segnibus
    suadet quietem linquere
    iam iamque venturo die.

        Ut, cum coruscis flatibus
    aurora...

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

Where the great green combers break in thunder on the barrier reefs,--
Where, unceasing, sounds the mighty diapason of the deep,--
Ringed in bursts of wild wave-laughter, ringed in leagues of flying foam,--
Long lagoons of softest azure, curving beaches white as snow,
Lap in sweetness and in beauty all the isles of Owhyhee.

Land more lovely sun ne'er shone on than these isles of Owhyhee,
Spendthrift Nature's wild profusion fashioned them like fairy bowers;
Yet behind--below the sweetness,--underneath the passion-flowers,
Lurked grim deeds, and things of horror, grisly Deaths, and ceaseless Fears,
Fears and Deaths that walked in Darkness, grisly Deaths and ceaseless Fears.




Mauna Loa--Mona Lo-ah.

Kilauea--Kil-o-ee-ah.

Halé-Mau-Mau--Ha-lee-M...