Fair is the wedded reign of Night and Day.
Each rules a half of earth with different sway,
Exchanging kingdoms, East and West, alway.

Like the round pearl that Egypt drunk in wine,
The sun half sinks i' the brimming, rosy brine:
The wild Night drinks all up: how her eyes shine!

Now the swift sail of straining life is furled,
And through the stillness of my soul is whirled
The throbbing of the hearts of half the world.

I hear the cries that follow Birth and Death.
I hear huge Pestilence draw his vaporous breath:
"Beware, prepare, or else ye die," he saith.

I hear a haggard student turn and sigh:
I hear men begging Heaven to let them die:
And, drowning all, a wild-eyed woman's cry.

So Night takes toll of Wisdom as of Sin.
The studen...

"I'll be your second." - LISTON.


In Middle Row, some years ago,
There lived one Mr. Brown;
And many folks considered him
The stoutest man in town.

But Brown and stout will both wear out -
One Friday he died hard,
And left a widow'd wife to mourn,
At twenty pence a yard.

Now widow B. in two short months
Thought mourning quite a tax;
And wished, like Mr. Wilberforce,
To manumit her blacks.

With Mr. Street she soon was sweet;
The thing came thus about:
She asked him in at home, and then
At church, he asked her out!

Assurance such as this the man
In ashes could not stand;
So like a Phoenix he rose up
Against the Hand in Hand!

One dreary night the angry sprite
Appeared before her view;

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...

Now the sun his blinking beam
Behind yon mountain loses,
And each eye, that might evil deem,
In blinded slumber closes:
Now the field's a desert grown,
Now the hedger's fled the grove;
Put thou on thy russet gown,
Shielded from the dews, my love,
And wander out with me.

We have met at early day,
Slander rises early,
Slander's tongues had much to say,
And still I love thee dearly:
Slander now to rest has gone,
Only wakes the courting dove;
Slily steal thy bonnet on,
Leave thy father's cot, my love,
And wander out with me.

Clowns have pass'd our noon-day screen,
'Neath the hawthorn's blossom,
Seldom there the chance has been
To press thee to my bosom:
Ploughmen now no more appear,
Night-winds but the thorn-bough mov...

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

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,
...

Through the streets of New York City,
        Blithely every morn,
I carolled o'er my artless ditty,
        Cheerly though forlorn!
Before the rosy light, my lay
        Was to the maids begun,
Ere winters snows had passed away,
        Or smiled the summer sun.
                CAROL--O--a--y--e--o!

In summer months I'd fondly woo
        Those merry, dark-eyed girls,
With faces of ebon hue,
        And teeth like eastern pearls!
One vowed my love she would repay--
        Her heart my song had won--
When winter snows had passed away,
        And smiled the summer sun.
                CAROL--O--a--y--e--o!

A year, alas! had scarcely flown--
        Hope beamed but to deceive--
Ere I was left to weep alone,
        From mor...

    Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife
    And almost a year to creep back into strength,
    Till the dawn of our wedding decennial
    Found me my seeming self again.
    We walked the forest together,
    By a path of soundless moss and turf.
    But I could not look in your eyes,
    And you could not look in my eyes,
    For such sorrow was ours - the beginning of gray in your hair.
    And I but a shell of myself.
    And what did we talk of? - sky and water,
    Anything, 'most, to hide our thoughts.
    And then your gift of wild roses,
    Set on the table to grace our dinner.
    Poor heart, how bravely you struggled
    To imagine and live a remembered rapture!
    Then my spirit drooped as the night came on,
    And you left...

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.

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...

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.

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...

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.

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...

I think it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

"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."

O all you little blackey tops,
Pray don't you eat my father's crops,
While I lie down to take a nap.
Shua O! Shua O!

If father he perchance should come,
With his cocked hat and his long gun,
Then you must fly and I must run.
Shua O! Shua O!

 Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun. 

In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,

We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.

By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
'Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.

And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.

Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I'd lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor ...