High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long:
"From town to town, from tower to tower,
The red rose is a gladsome flower.
Her thirty years of winter past,
The red rose is revived at last;
She lifts her head for endless spring,
For everlasting blossoming:
Both roses flourish, red and white:
In love and sisterly delight
The two that were at strife are blended,
And all old troubles now are ended.
Joy! joy to both! but most to her
Who is the flower of Lancaster!
Behold her how She smiles to-day
On this great throng, this bright array!
Fair greeting doth she send to all
From every corner of the hall;
But chiefly from...

The darkness steals the forms of all the queens,
But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red,
Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead
Hours that were once all glory and all queens.

And I remember all the sunny hours
Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,
And morning singing where the woods are scrolled
And diapered above the chaunting flowers.

Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And grey now night is here; nor will
Another torn red sunset come to pass.

I.

The Gothic looks solemn,
The plain Doric column
Supports an old Bishop and Crosier;
The mouldering arch,
Shaded o'er by a larch
Stands next door to Wilson the Hosier.

II.

Vice that is, by turns,
O'er pale faces mourns
The black tassell'd trencher and common hat;
The Chantry boy sings,
The Steeple-bell rings,
And as for the Chancellor dominat.

III.

There are plenty of trees,
And plenty of ease,
And plenty of fat deer for Parsons;
And when it is venison,
Short is the benison,
Then each on a leg or thigh fastens.

Part fenced by man, part by a rugged steep
That curbs a foaming brook, a Grave-yard lies;
The hare's best couching-place for fearless sleep;
Which moonlit elves, far seen by credulous eyes,
Enter in dance. Of church, or sabbath ties,
No vestige now remains; yet thither creep
Bereft Ones, and in lowly anguish weep
Their prayers out to the wind and naked skies.
Proud tomb is none; but rudely-sculptured knights,
By humble choice of plain old times, are seen
Level with earth, among the hillocks green:
Union not sad, when sunny daybreak smites
The spangled turf, and neighbouring thickets ring
With 'jubilate' from the choirs of spring!

I.

Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act
A history stranger than his written fact,
Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom
Of that great hour when throne and altar fell
With long death-groan which still is audible.
He, when around the walls of Paris rung
The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom,
And every ill which follows unblest war
Maddened all France from Finistere to Var,
The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung,
And guided Freedom in the path he saw
Lead out of chaos into light and law,
Peace, not imperial, but republican,
And order pledged to all the Rights of Man.

II.

Death called him from a need as imminent
As that from which the Silent William went
When powers of evil, like the smiting seas
On Holla...

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 in the afterglow,

I.

The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims
Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims
The ageratum's blue that banks the rill;
And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill,
And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
Down goes the day despondent to its close:
And now the sunset's hands of copper build
A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars
The day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.

II.

There is a booming in the forest boughs;
Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
The storm is at his wildman rev...

Where had her sweetness gone?
What fanatics invent
In this blind bitter town,
Fantasy or incident
Not worth thinking of,
put her in a rage.
I had forgiven enough
That had forgiven old age.
All lives that has lived;
So much is certain;
Old sages were not deceived:
Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.

Ho! sportsman Time, whose chargers fleet
    The moments, madly driven,
Beat in the dust beneath their feet
    Sweet hopes that years have given;
Turn, turn aside those reckless steeds,
    Oh! do not urge them my way;
There's nothing that Time wants or needs
    In this contented by-way.

You have down-trodden, in your race,
    So much that proves your power,
Why not avoid my humble place?
    Why rob me of my dower?
With your vast cellars, cavern deep,
    Packed tier on tier with treasures,
You would not miss them should I KEEP
    My little store of pleasures.

As one who, frightened, flying, flings
    Her riches down at random,
Your course is paved with precious things
    Life casts before your tandem:
The warrior's fame,...

(See Note 79)

    I
DEDICATION

You never came here; but I go
Here often and am met by you.
Each room and road here must renew
The thought of you and your form show
Standing with helpful hand extended,
As when long since in trust and deed
My home you from my foes defended.

    ...

So often, while I wrote this book,
The light shone from your genial eye;
Then we were one, both you and I
And what in silence being took;
So here and there the book possesses
Your spirit and your heart's fresh faith,
And therefore now your name it blesses.

I love the air, when growing colder
    It, clear and high,
    The purer sky
Broadens with sense of freedom bolder.

I find in forests joy the keenest
    In aut...

    It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled
    With new-fallen frost.
    It was midnight and not a soul abroad.
    Out of the chimney of the court-house
    A gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased
    The northwest wind.
    I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs
    And leaned it against the frame of the trap-door
    In the ceiling of the portico,
    And I crawled under the roof and amid the rafters
    And flung among the seasoned timbers
    A lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.
    Then I came down and slunk away.
    In a little while the fire-bell rang -
    Clang! Clang! Clang!
    And the Spoon River ladder company
    Came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water
    On the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter
    Higher and...

I went by footpath and by stile
Beyond where bustle ends,
Strayed here a mile and there a mile
And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen
For years past did I call,
And then on others who had been
The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer
When they had used to roam;
But now, though tempting was the air,
I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them
By mound and stone and tree
Of things we had done ere days were dim,
But they spoke not to me.

    Vain transient World, what charms are thine?
        And what do mortals in thee see,
    That they should worship at thy shrine,
        And sacrifice their all to thee?

    Thy brightest gifts, thy happiest hours
        Fly past on pinions of the wind;
    They fade like blooms upon the flowers,
        And leave a painful want behind.

    Thou art a road, though not of space,
        Which rich and poor alike must tread;
    Thy starting point we cannot trace,
        Thine end - the country of the dead.

    A pathway paved with want and woe,
        With pleasures painful, incomplete;
    Like stones upon the way below,
        Which wound the weary pilgrim's feet.

    Thou'rt hedged with visions of despair,
        With w...

I

The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims
Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims
The ageratum's blue that banks the rill;
And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill,
And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
Down goes the day despondent to its close:
And now the sunset's hands of copper build
A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars
The day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.

II

There is a booming in the forest boughs;
Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
The storm is at his wildman revel...

How smartly the quarters of the hour march by
That the jack-o'-clock never forgets;
Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye,
Or got the true twist of the ogee over,
A double ding-dong ricochetts.

Just so did he clang here before I came,
And so will he clang when I'm gone
Through the Minster's cavernous hollows - the same
Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver
To the speechless midnight and dawn!

I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,
Whose mould lies below and around.
Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts,
And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,
As the eve-damps creep from the ground.

See - a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,
And a Duke and his Duchess near;
And one Sir Edmun...

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman’s gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.

My little story, Cousin Rufus said,
Is not so much a story as a fact.
It is about a certain willful boy -
An aggrieved, unappreciated boy,
Grown to dislike his own home very much,
By reason of his parents being not
At all up to his rigid standard and
Requirements and exactions as a son
And disciplinarian.

    So, sullenly
He brooded over his disheartening
Environments and limitations, till,
At last, well knowing that the outside world
Would yield him favors never found at home,
He rose determinedly one July dawn -
Even before the call for breakfast - and,
Climbing the alley-fence, and bitterly
Shaking his clenched fist at the woodpile, he
Evanished down the turnpike. - Yes: he had,
Once and for all, put into execution
His long low-mut...

Years since (but names to me before),
Two sisters sought at eve my door;
Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
A gray old farm-house in the West.

How fresh of life the younger one,
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun!
Her gravest mood could scarce displace
The dimples of her nut-brown face.

Wit sparkled on her lips not less
For quick and tremulous tenderness;
And, following close her merriest glance,
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance.

Timid and still, the elder had
Even then a smile too sweetly sad;
The crown of pain that all must wear
Too early pressed her midnight hair.

Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
Her modest lips were sweet with song;
A memory haunted all her words
Of clover-fields and singing...