"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? -
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,
And it much troubles me!"

"'Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee! sure 'tis a foolish thing,
When we were on'y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
And now it's but evening."

"Yet seems it still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband,
And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
Ere ever thou sawest my face?"

"It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,
If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,
Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the ...

Clear from the deep sky pours the moon
Her silver on the heavy dark;
The small stars blink.

Against the moon the maple bough
Flutters distinct her leafy spears;
All sound falls weak....

Weak the train's whistle, the dog's bark,
Slow steps; and rustling into her nest
At last, the thrush.

All's still; only earth turns and breathes.
Then that amazing trembling note
Cleaves the deep wave

Of silence. Shivers even that silvery one;
Sigh all the trees, even the cedar dark
----O joy, and I.

Lost Youth, come back again!
Laugh at weariness and pain.
Come not in dreams, but come in truth,
            Lost Youth.

Sweetheart of long ago,
Why do you haunt me so?
Were you not glad to part,
            Sweetheart?

Still Death, that draws so near,
Is it hope you bring, or fear?
Is it only ease of breath,
            Still Death?

Yes! even I was in Arcadia born,
    And, in mine infant ears,
A vow of rapture was by Nature sworn;
Yes! even I was in Arcadia born,
    And yet my short spring gave me only tears!

Once blooms, and only once, life's youthful May;
    For me its bloom hath gone.
The silent God O brethren, weep to-day
The silent God hath quenched my torch's ray,
    And the vain dream hath flown.

Upon thy darksome bridge, Eternity,
    I stand e'en now, dread thought!
Take, then, these joy-credentials back from me!
Unopened I return them now to thee,
    Of happiness, alas, know naught!

Before Thy throne my mournful cries I vent,
    Thou Judge, concealed from view!
To yonder star a joyous saying went
With judgment's scales to rule us thou art sent,<...

My Anna, summer laughs in mirth,
And we will of the party be,
And leave the crickets in the hearth
For green fields' merry minstrelsy.

I see thee now with little hand
Catch at each object passing bye,
The happiest thing in all the land
Except the bee and butterfly.

*    *    *    *    *

And limpid brook that leaps along,
Gilt with the summer's burnished gleam,
Will stop thy little tale or song
To gaze upon its crimping stream.

Thou'lt leave my hand with eager speed
The new discovered things to see--
The old pond with its water weed
And danger-daring willow tree,
Who leans an ancient invalid
Oer spots where deepest waters be.

In sudden shout and wild surprise
I hear thy simple wonderment,
As new things meet...

Before

Twas not while England's sword unsheathed
Put half a world to flight,
Nor while their new-built cities breathed
Secure behind her might;
Not while she poured from Pole to Line
Treasure and ships and men
These worshipers at Freedoms shrine
They did not quit her then!

Not till their foes were driven forth
By England o'er the main
Not till the Frenchman from the North
Had gone with shattered Spain;
Not till the clean-swept oceans showed
No hostile flag unrolled,
Did they remember that they owed
To Freedom, and were bold!


After


Thesnow lies thick on Valley Forge,
The ice on the Delaware,
But the poor dead soldiers of King George
They neither know nor care.

Not though the earliest primro...

This was her home; one mossy gable thrust
Above the cedars and the locust trees:
This was her home, whose beauty now is dust,
A lonely memory for melodies
The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.

Here every evening is a prayer: no boast
Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth;
Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost,
A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth;
And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.

In vagabond velvet, on the placid day,
A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly;
The south wind sows with ripple and with ray
The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky
Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye.

Their melancholy quaver, lone and low,
When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat:
The whippoorwills, far i...

        I said this morning, as I leaned and threw
    My shutters open to the Spring's surprise,
        "Tell me, O Earth, how is it that in you
    Year after year the same fresh feelings rise?
        How do you keep your young exultant glee?
        No more those sweet emotions come to me.

        "I note through all your fissures how the tide
    Of healthful life goes leaping as of old;
        Your royal dawns retain their pomp and pride;
    Your sunsets lose no atom of their gold.
        How can this wonder be?" My soul's fine ear
        Leaned, listening, till a small voice answered near:

        "My days lapse never over into night;
    My nights encroach not on the rights of dawn.
        I rush not breathless after some delight;
    I wa...

Brooks, for they call’d you so that knew you best,
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,
How oft we two have heard St. Mary’s chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!
How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,
Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.
You man of humorous-melancholy mark,
Dead of some inward agony-is it so?
Our kindlier, trustier Jaques, past away
I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark
????? ????-dream of a shadow, go-
God bless you. I shall join you in a day.

The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful,
wonderful: I'm surprised half the time:
ground up fine, I puff if a pebble stirs:

I'm nervous: my moarality's intricate: if
a squash blossom dies, I feel withered as a stained
zucchini and blame my nature: and
when grassblades flop to the little red-ant
queens burring around trying to get aloft, I blame
my not keeping the grass short, stubble

firm: well, I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant
to be ignored: like when the sun sinking in the
west glares a plane invisible, I think how much

revelation concealment necessitates: and then I
think of the oecean, multiple to a blinding
oneness and realize that only total expression
expressed hiding: I'll have to say everything
to take on the roundness and...

The barberry burns, the rose-hip crimsons warm,
And haw and sumach hedge the hill with fire,
Down which the road winds, worn of hoof and tire,
Only the blueberry-picker plods now from the farm.
Here once the quarry-driver, brown of arm,
Wielded the whip when, deep in mud and mire,
The axle strained, and earned his daily hire,
Labouring bareheaded in both sun and storm.
Wild-cherry now and blackberry and bay
Usurp the place: the wild-rose, undisturbed,
Riots, where once the workman earned his wage,
Whose old hands rest now, like this granite grey,
These rocks, whose stubborn will whilom he curbed,
Hard as the toil that was his heritage.

La bella donna che cotanto amavi.

TO HIS BROTHER GERARDO, ON THE DEATH OF A LADY TO WHOM HE WAS ATTACHED.


    The beauteous lady thou didst love so well
Too soon hath from our regions wing'd her flight,
To find, I ween, a home 'mid realms of light;
So much in virtue did she here excel
Thy heart's twin key of joy and woe can dwell
No more with her--then re-assume thy might,
Pursue her by the path most swift and right,
Nor let aught earthly stay thee by its spell.
Thus from thy heaviest burthen being freed,
Each other thou canst easier dispel,
And an unfreighted pilgrim seek thy sky;
Too well, thou seest, how much the soul hath need,
(Ere yet it tempt the shadowy vale) to quell
Each earthly hope, since all that lives must die.

WOLL...

Ah! changed and cold, how changed and very cold,
    With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes:
    Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise;
This was the promise of the days of old!
Grown hard and stubborn in the ancient mould,
    Grown rigid in the sham of lifelong lies:
    We hoped for better things as years would rise,
But it is over as a tale once told.
All fallen the blossom that no fruitage bore,
    All lost the present and the future time,
All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before:
So lost till death shut-to the opened door,
    So lost from chime to everlasting chime,
So cold and lost for ever evermore.

1 Lest you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught, on the wings of truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;

2 Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser, native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay.

3 Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Caesar was, or Newton named;
These raised new empires o'er the earth,
And those, new heavens and systems framed.

4 Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.

When the last sunshine of expiring Day
In Summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes
While Nature makes that melancholy pause -
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime -
Who hath not shared that calm, so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak but weep,
A holy concord, and a bright regret,
A glorious sympathy with suns that set?[98]
'Tis not harsh sorrow, but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness - but full and clear,
A sweet dejection - a transparent tear,
Unmixed with worldly grief or selfish stain -
Shed wi...

The sun is gone down
    And the moon's in the sky
But the sun will come up
    And the moon be laid by.

The flower is asleep.
    But it is not dead,
When the morning shines
    It will lift its head.

When winter comes
    It will die! No, no,
It will only hide
    From the frost and snow.

Sure is the summer,
    Sure is the sun;
The night and the winter
    Away they run.

Tyrant of all our loves and friendships here,
Behold thy beauteous victim! - Ah! tis thine
To rend fond hearts, and start the tend'rest tear
Where joy should long in cloudless radiance shine.

Alas! the mourning Muse in vain would paint,
Blest shade! how purely pass'd thy life away,
Or, with the meekness of a favour'd saint,
How rose thy spirit to the realms of day.

'Twas thine to fill each part that gladdens life,
Such as approving angels smile upon; -
The faultless daughter, parent, friend, and wife, -
Virtues short-lived! they set just as they shone.

Thus, in the bosom of some winding grove,
Where oft the pensive melodist retires,
From his sweet instrument, the note of love,
Charms the rapt ear, but, as it charms, expires.

Farewell, p...

Dear Master in our classic town,
You, loved by all the younger gown
There at Balliol,
Lay your Plato for one minute down,

II

And read a Grecian tale re-told,
Which, cast in later Grecian mould,
Quintus Calaber
Somewhat lazily handled of old;

III

And on this white midwinter day—
For have the far-off hymns of May,
All her melodies,
All her harmonies echo’d away?—

IV

To-day, before you turn again
To thoughts that lift the soul of men,
Hear my cataract’s
Downward thunder in hollow and glen,

V

Till, led by dream and vague desire,
The woman, gliding toward the pyre,
Find her warrior
Stark and dark in his funeral fire.