He sat by me in school. His face is now
Vividly in my mind, as if he went
From me but yesterday - its pleasant smile
And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye,
And the free play of his unhaughty lip,
So redolent of his heart! He was not fair,
Nor singular, nor over-fond of books,
And never melancholy when alone.
He was the heartiest in the ring, the last
Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first
Over the threshold when the school was done.
All of us loved him. We shall speak his name
In the far years to come, and think of him
When we have lost life's simplest passages,
And pray for him - forgetting he is dead -
Life was in him so passing beautiful!

His childhood had been wasted in the close
And airless city. He had never thought
That the ...

AT the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,
Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,
Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.
I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,
And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might
Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.

I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore
To draw his net through the surfs thin line, at the dawn before
The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide.
I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net, the four
Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store
Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.

I will catch in my eyes...

I

Into the shadow-white chamber silts the white
Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night
Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts
A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,
Till petals heaped between the window-shafts
    In a drift die there.

A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed pane
Draws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely stain
The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bed
That rides the room like a frozen berg, its crest
Finally ridged with the austere line of the dead
    Stretched out at rest.

Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressed
The peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.
Yet soon, too soon, she had him home again
With wounds between them, and suffering like a guest
That will no...

The drowsy carrier sways
To the drowsy horses' tramp.
His axles winnow the sprays
Of the hedge where the rabbit plays
In the light of his single lamp.

He hears a roar behind,
A howl, a hoot, and a yell,
A headlight strikes him blind
And a stench o'erpowers the wind
Like a blast from the mouth of Hell.

He mends his swingle-bar,
And loud his curses ring;
But a mother watching afar
Hears the hum of the doctor's car
Like the beat of an angel's wing!

So, to the poet's mood,
Motor or carrier's van,
Properly understood,
Are neither evil nor good,
Ormuzd not Ahriman!

It was May before my
attention came
to spring and

my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've

missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:

don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if

you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain

it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone

Mortal my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time's some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die -
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.

Field-flown the departed day no morning brings
Saying 'This was yours' with her, but new one, worse.
And then that last and shortest . . .

Hail, sober Autumn! thee I love,
Thy healthful breeze and clear blue sky;
And more than flowers of Spring admire
Thy falling leaves of richer dye.

'Twas even thus when life was young,
I welcomed Autumn with delight;
Although I knew that with it came
The shorter day and lengthened night.

Let others pass October by,
Or dreary call its hours, or chill;
Let poets always sing of Spring,
My praise shall be of Autumn still.

And I have loved the setting sun,
E'en than his rising beams more dear;
'Tis fitting time for serious thought,
It is an hour for solemn prayer.

Before the evening closes in,
Or night's dark curtains round us fall,
See how o'er tree, and spire, and hill,
That setting sun illumines all.

So whe...

Once more we venture here, to prove our worth,
And ask indulgence kind, to tempt us forth:
Seek not perfection from our essays green,
That, in man's noblest works, has never been,
Nor is, nor e'er will be; a work exempt
From fault to form, as well might man attempt
T'explore the vast infinity of space,
Or fix mechanic boundaries to grace.
Hard is the finish'd Speaker's task; what then
Must be our danger, to pursue the pen
Of the 'rapt Bard, through all his varied turns,
Where joy extatic smiles, or sorrow mourns?
Where Richard's soul, red in the murtherous lave,
Shrinks from the night-yawn'd tenants of the grave,
While coward conscience still affrights his eye,
Still groans the dagger'd sound, "despair and die."
And hapless Juliet's unextinguish'd flame,
...

In the woods as I did walk,
Dappled with the moon's beam,
I did with a Stranger talk,
And his name was Dream.

Spurred his heel, dark his cloak,
Shady-wide his bonnet's brim;
His horse beneath a silvery oak
Grazed as I talked with him.

Softly his breast-brooch burned and shone;
Hill and deep were in his eyes;
One of his hands held mine, and one
The fruit that makes men wise.

Wondrously strange was earth to see,
Flowers white as milk did gleam;
Spread to Heaven the Assyrian Tree,
Over my head with Dream.

Dews were still betwixt us twain;
Stars a trembling beauty shed;
Yet - not a whisper comes again
Of the words he said.

In youth’s spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less;
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound.
And the tall pines that tower’d around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin’d,
Springing from a darken’d mind.
Death was in that poison’d wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild’ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake

I listen, but no faculty of mine
Avails those modulations to detect,
Which, heard in foreign lands, the Swiss affect
With tenderest passion; leaving him to pine
(So fame reports) and die, his sweet-breathed kine
Remembering, and green Alpine pastures decked
With vernal flowers. Yet may we not reject
The tale as fabulous. Here while I recline,
Mindful how others by this simple Strain
Are moved, for me upon this Mountain named
Of God himself from dread pre-eminence,
Aspiring thoughts, by memory reclaimed,
Yield to the Music's touching influence;
And joys of distant home my heart enchain.

"Thou wanderest in the land of dreams,
    O man of many songs!
To thee what is, but looks and seems;
    No realm to thee belongs!"

"Seest thou those mountains, faint and far,
    O spirit caged and tame?"
"Blue clouds like distant hills they are,
    And like is not the same."

"Nay, nay; I know each mountain well,
    Each cliff, and peak, and dome!
In that cloudland, in one high dell,
    Nesteth my little home."

Steely stars and moon of brass,
How mockingly you watch me pass!
You know as well as I how soon
I shall be blind to stars and moon,
Deaf to the wind in the hemlock tree,
Dumb when the brown earth weighs on me.

With envious dark rage I bear,
Stars, your cold complacent stare;
Heart-broken in my hate look up,
Moon, at your clear immortal cup,
Changing to gold from dusky red,
Age after age when I am dead
To be filled up with light, and then
Emptied, to be refilled again.

What has man done that only he
Is slave to death, so brutally
Beaten back into the earth
Impatient for him since his birth?

Oh let me shut my eyes, close out
The sight of stars and earth and be
Sheltered a minute by this tree.
Hemlock, through your fragr...

        I.

I dreamed last night once more I stood
Knee-deep in purple clover leas;
Your old home glimmered thro' its wood
Of dark and melancholy trees,
Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze
That wantoned o'er the solitude
The water's melody pursued,
And sleepy hummings of the bees.


        II.

And ankle-deep in violet blooms
Methought I saw you standing there,
A lawny light among the glooms,
A crown of sunlight on your hair;
Wild songsters singing every where
Made lightning with their glossy plumes;
About you clung the wild perfumes
And swooned along the shining air.


        III.

And then you called me, and my ears
Grew flattered with the music, led
In fancy back to sweeter years,
Far sweeter y...

Nom d' atra e tempestosa onda marina.

HE IS LED BY LOVE TO REASON.


    No wearied mariner to port e'er fled
From the dark billow, when some tempest's nigh,
As from tumultuous gloomy thoughts I fly--
Thoughts by the force of goading passion bred:
Nor wrathful glance of heaven so surely sped
Destruction to man's sight, as does that eye
Within whose bright black orb Love's Deity
Sharpens each dart, and tips with gold its head.
Enthroned in radiance there he sits, not blind,
Quiver'd, and naked, or by shame just veil'd,
A live, not fabled boy, with changeful wing;
Thence unto me he lends instruction kind,
And arts of verse from meaner bards conceal'd,
Thus am I taught whate'er of love I write or sing.

NOTT.


    Ne'er...

Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)
    We stood together in an open field;
    Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled,
Sporting at ease and courting full in view.
When loftier still a broadening darkness flew,
    Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;
    Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;
So farewell life and love and pleasures new.
Then as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground,
    Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops,
    I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:
    But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops
Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound
    Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep.

Fieldfares, bonny fieldfares, feedin' 'mang the bent,
Wheer the sun is shinin' through yon cloud's wide rent,
            Welcoom back to t' moorlands,
            Frae Norway's fells an' shorelands,
Welcoom back to Whardill,(1) now October's ommost spent.

Noisy, chackin' fieldfares, weel I ken your cry,
When i' flocks you're sweepin' ower the hills sae high:
            Oft on trees you gethers,
            Preenin' out your feathers,
An' I'm fain to see your coats as blue as t' summer sky.

Curlews, larks an' tewits,(2) all have gone frae t' moors,
Frost has nipped i' t' garden all my bonny floors;
            Roses, lilies, pansies,
            Stocks an' yallow tansies
Fade away, an' soon the leaves 'll clutter(3) doon i'    shoors.

Here i' bed...

I love to see the swallows come
    At my window twittering,
Bringing from their southern home
    News of the approaching spring.
'Last year's nest,' they softly say,
    'Last year's love again shall see;
Only faithful lovers may
    Tell you of the coming glee.'

When the first fell touch of frost
    Strips the wood of faded leaves,
Calling all their winged host,
    The swallows meet above the eaves
'Come away, away,' they cry,
    'Winter's snow is hastening;
True hearts winter comes not nigh,
    They are ever in the spring.'

If by some unhappy fate,
    Victim of a cruel mind,
One is parted from her mate
    And within a cage confined,
Swiftly will the swallow die,
    Pining for her lover's bower,
And her lover...