The ant is busy with its house,
The bee is at its tree;
And by its nest among the boughs
The bird makes melody.
The Day, reluctant still to leave,
Sits crystal at its noon,
Like some sweet girl, with naught to grieve,
Sighing a dreamy tune.
Oh, hark, my heart, and quit your quest!
The song she sighs is one of rest.
The butterfly is on its flower;
The wasp is at its clay;
The wind to bramble lane and bower
Whispers of yesterday.
The Afternoon goes to its close,
With bright attendant states,
Like some calm queen who seeks repose.
Behind her palace gates.
Oh, look, my heart, your pining cease!
That way, at last, you shall find peace.
The cricket trills; the beetle booms;
The mole heaves at its mound:
Pale moths come forth like ghosts...

Dear Morris - here is your letter -
Can my answer reach you now?
Fate has left me your debtor,
You will remember how;
For I went away to Nantucket,
And you to the Isle of Orleans,
And when I was dawdling and dreaming
Over the ways and means
Of answering, the power was denied me,
Fate frowned and took her stand;
I have your unanswered letter
Here in my hand.
This - in your famous scribble,
It was ever a cryptic fist,
Cuneiform or Chaldaic
Meanings held in a mist.

Dear Morris, (now I'm inditing
And poring over your script)
I gather from the writing,
The coin that you had flipt,
Turned tails; and so you compel me
To meet you at Touchwood Hills:
Or, mayhap, you are trying to tell me
The sum of a painter's ills:
Is that...

O'er the Campagna it is dim warm weather;
    The Spring comes with a full heart silently,
    And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.

With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together
    Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.
    Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.

I fain would put my hands about thy face,
    Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,
    And draw thee to me like a mournful child.

Thou lookest on me from another place;
    I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing
    That in the silence makes thy sweet eyes wild.

Gayly a knight set forth against the foe,
For a fair face had shone on him in dreams;
A voice had stirred the silence of his sleep,
"Go win the battle, and I will be thine."

So, for the love of those appealing eyes,
Led by low accents of fair Gloria's voice,
He wound the bugle down his castle's steep,
And gayly rode to battle in the morn.

And none were braver in the tented field,
Like lightning heralding the doomful bolt;
The enemy beheld his snowy plume,
And death-lights flashed along his glancing spear.

But in the lonesome watches of the night,
An angel came and warned him with clear voice,
Against high God his rash right arm was raised,
Was rashly raised against the true, the right.

He strove to drown the angel voice with song
A...

The shades of night were brooding
O'er the sea, the earth, the sky;
The passing winds were wailing
In a low, unearthly sigh;
The darkness gathered deeper,
For no starry light was shed,
And silence reigned unbroken,
As the silence of the dead.

The wintry clouds were hanging
From the starless sky so low,
While 'neath them earth lay folded
In a winding shroud of snow.
'Twas cold, 'twas dark, 'twas dreary,
And the blast that swept along
The mountains hoarsely murmured
A fierce, discordant song.

And mortal men were resting
From the turmoil of the day,
And broken hearts were dreaming
Of the friends long passed away;
And saintly men were keeping
Their vigils through the night,
While angel spirits hovered near
Around thei...

"Phoebe! Phoebe! Where is the chit?
When I want her most she's out of the way.
Child, you're running a long account
Up, to be squared on Judgment-day.

"Where have you been? and what have you there?"
"To the pasture for buttercups wet with dew."
"My patience! I think you are out of your wits;
I wonder what good will buttercups do?

"There's pennyroyal you might have got,-
It might have been useful to you or me,
But I never heard, in all my life,
Of buttercup cordial or buttercup tea.

"I want you to stay and mind the bread,
I've just put two loaves in the oven to bake;
When they are clone take them carefully out,
And put in their place this loaf of cake,

"While I run over to Widow Brown's;
Her son, from the mines, has just got back.

The rose did caper on her cheek,
Her bodice rose and fell,
Her pretty speech, like drunken men,
Did stagger pitiful.

Her fingers fumbled at her work, --
Her needle would not go;
What ailed so smart a little maid
It puzzled me to know,

Till opposite I spied a cheek
That bore another rose;
Just opposite, another speech
That like the drunkard goes;

A vest that, like the bodice, danced
To the immortal tune, --
Till those two troubled little clocks
Ticked softly into one.

The folds of the sea crash like whips on my skin.
And the stars of the sea tear me apart.
The evening of the sea is one of screaming wounds for the lonely,
But lovers find the good death of their day dreams...
Be there soon, you with pain in your eye, the sea hurts.
Be there soon, you who suffer in love, the sea is killing me.
Your hands are cool saints.    Cover me with them,
The sea is burning on me.
But why don't you help me!    But help!...    Cover me.    Save me.
Cure me, friend and woman.
Mother... you -

When some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet 'All hails,'
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause.

Nature is but the outward vestibule
Which God has placed before an unseen shrine,
The Visible is but a fair, bright vale
That winds around the great Invisible;
The Finite -- it is nothing but a smile
That flashes from the face of Infinite;
A smile with shadows on it -- and 'tis sad
Men bask beneath the smile, but oft forget
The loving Face that very smile conceals.
The Changeable is but the broidered robe
Enwrapped about the great Unchangeable;
The Audible is but an echo, faint,
Low whispered from the far Inaudible;
This earth is but an humble acolyte
A-kneeling on the lowest altar-step
Of this creation's temple, at the Mass
Of Supernature, just to ring the bell
At Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! while the world
Prepares its heart for consecration's hour....

Gorgeous and splendid was the sight;
From myriad lamps a fairy light
Enshrin'd in wreaths the Gothic wall,
And heav'nly music fill'd the hall!

But there was one - (alas! that I
Had ever seen) - the melody
Her voice surpassed, and brighter far
Her eyes than ev'ry mimic star!

I gaz'd, until, oh! thought divine!
I fancied she I saw was mine;
But soon the beauteous vision flew -
The stranger-form I lov'd withdrew.

Yet still she lives within my breast,
There mem'ry has her form imprest: -
Thus, when some minstrel's strain is done,
Sounds seem to breathe, for ever gone!

Beato in sogno, e di languir contento.

THOUGH SO LONG LOVE'S FAITHFUL SERVANT, HIS ONLY REWARD HAS BEEN TEARS.


    Happy in visions, and content to pine,
Shadows to clasp, to chase the summer gale,
On shoreless and unfathom'd sea to sail,
To build on sand, and in the air design,
The sun to gaze on till these eyes of mine
Abash'd before his noonday splendour fail,
To chase adown some soft and sloping vale,
The wingèd stag with maim'd and heavy kine;
Weary and blind, save my own harm to all,
Which day and night I seek with throbbing heart,
On Love, on Laura, and on Death I call.
Thus twenty years of long and cruel smart,
In tears and sighs I've pass'd, because I took
Under ill stars, alas! both bait and hook.

MACGREGOR.

All human joys are swift of wing
For heaven doth so allot it
That when you get an easy thing
You find you haven't got it.

Man never yet has loved a maid,
But they were sure to part, sir;
Nor never lacked a paltry spade
But that he drew a heart, sir!

Go, Chauncey! it is plain as day
You much prefer a dinner
To walking straight in wisdom's way--
Go to, thou babbling sinner.

The froward part that you have played
To me this lesson teaches:
To trust no man whose stock in trade
Is after-dinner speeches.

Now 'tis the time when, tall,
The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam
Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream,
In many a fragrant ball,
Blooms of the button-bush fall.

Let us go forth and seek
Woods where the wild plums redden and the beech
Plumps its packed burs; and, swelling, just in reach,
The pawpaw, emerald sleek,
Ripens along the creek.

Now 'tis the time when ways
Of glimmering green flaunt white the misty plumes
Of the black-cohosh; and through bramble glooms,
A blur of orange rays,
The butterfly-blossoms blaze.

Let us go forth and hear
The spiral music that the locusts beat,
And that small spray of sound, so grassy sweet,
Dear to a country ear,
The cricket's summer cheer.

Now golden celandine
I...

Who never wanted, -- maddest joy
Remains to him unknown:
The banquet of abstemiousness
Surpasses that of wine.

Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
Desire's perfect goal,
No nearer, lest reality
Should disenthrall thy soul.

In the Gloaming to be roaming, where the crested waves are foaming,
And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet;
When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour
To discover - but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet.

"To their feet," I say, for Leech's sketch indisputably teaches
That the mermaids of our beaches do not end in ugly tails,
Nor have homes among the corals; but are shod with neat balmorals,
An arrangement no one quarrels with, as many might with scales.

Sweet to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady,
Lalage, Neaera, Haidee, or Elaine, or Mary Ann:
Love, you dear delusive dream, you! Very sweet your victims deem you,
When, heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can.

Sweet to has...

Burly, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;
Epicurean of June;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum,--
All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
An...

(With Mr. Dicksee's Picture)

Take 'this of Juliet and her Romeo,'
Dear Heart of mine, for though yon budding sky
Yearns o'er Verona, and so long ago
That kiss was kissed; yet surely Thou and I,
Surely it is, whom morning tears apart,
As ruthless men tear tendrilled ivy down:
Is not Verona warm within thy gown,
And Mantua all the world save where thou art?

O happy grace of lovers of old time,
Living to love like gods, and dead to live
Symbols and saints for us who follow them;
Even bitter Death must sweets to lovers give:
See how they wear their tears for diadem,
Throned on the star of an unshaken rhyme.