A beautiful flower, that bedeck'd a mean pasture,
In virgin perfection I found;
Its fair bloom stood naked to every disaster,
And deep the storm gather'd around:
The rose in the midst of its brambles is blooming,
Whose weapons intruders alarm,
But sweetest of blossoms, fond, fair, and weak woman
Has nothing to guard her from harm.

Each stranger seem'd struck with a blossom so lovely,
In such a lone valley that grew;
The clown's admiration was cast on it roughly
While blushing it shrank from his view:
O sweet was the eve when I found the fair blossom,
Sure never seem'd blossom so fair,
I instant transplanted its charms to my bosom,
And deep has the root gather'd there.

Woman's faith, and woman's trust
Write the characters in the dust;
Stamp them on the running stream,
Print them on the moon's pale beam,
And each evanescent letter
Shall be clearer, firmer, better,
And more permanent, I ween,
Than the thing those letters mean.

I have strain'd the spider's thread
'Gainst the promise of a maid;
I have weigh'd a grain of sand
'Gainst her plight of heart and hand;
I told my true love of the token,
How her faith proved light, and her word was broken:
Again her word and truth she plight,
And I believed them again ere night.

The leaves are many under my feet,
    And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
    A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
    The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,--
    Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
    Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
    The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
    Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
    Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
    You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I ...

On a mound an Arab lay,
And sung his sweet regrets
And told his amulets:
The summer bird
His sorrow heard,
And, when he heaved a sigh profound,
The sympathetic swallow swept the ground.

'If it be, as they said, she was not fair,
Beauty's not beautiful to me,
But sceptred genius, aye inorbed,
Culminating in her sphere.
This Hermione absorbed
The lustre of the land and ocean,
Hills and islands, cloud and tree,
In her form and motion.

'I ask no bauble miniature,
Nor ringlets dead
Shorn from her comely head,
Now that morning not disdains
Mountains and the misty plains
Her colossal portraiture;
They her heralds be,
Steeped in her quality,
And singers of her fame
Who is their Muse and dame.

'Higher, dear...

You will come, my bird, Bonita?
Come! For I by steep and stone
Have built such nest for you, Juanita,
As not eagle bird hath known.

Rugged! Rugged as Parnassus!
Rude, as all roads I have trod
Yet are steeps and stone-strewn passes
Smooth o’er-head, and nearest God.

Here black thunders of my cañon
Shake its walls in Titan wars!
Here white sea-born clouds companion
With such peaks as know the stars!

Here madrona, manzanita
Here the snarling chaparral
House and hang o’er steeps, Juanita,
Where the gaunt wolf loved to dwell!

Dear, I took these trackless masses
Fresh from Him who fashioned them;
Wrought in rock, and hewed fair passes,
Flower set, as sets a gem.

Aye, I built in woe. God willed it;
Woe that passe...

I.

Ah me! those old familiar bounds!
That classic house, those classic grounds
My pensive thought recalls!
What tender urchins now confine,
What little captives now repine,
Within yon irksome walls?


II.

Ay, that's the very house! I know
Its ugly windows, ten a-row!
Its chimneys in the rear!
And there's the iron rod so high,
That drew the thunder from the sky
And turn'd our table-beer!


III.

There I was birch'd! there I was bred!
There like a little Adam fed
From Learning's woeful tree!
The weary tasks I used to con! -
The hopeless leaves I wept upon! -
Most fruitless leaves to me! -


IV.

The summon'd class! - the awful bow! -
I wonder who is master now
And wholeso...

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf
rounded a naked headland
and returned


along the inlet shore:


it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,
crisp in the running sand,
some breakthroughs of sun
but after a bit


continuous overcast:


the walk liberating, I was released from forms,
from the perpendiculars,
straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds
of thought
into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends
of sight:


I allow myself eddies of meaning:
yield to a direction of significance
running
like a stream through the geography of my work:
you can find
in my sayings
swerves of action

Soldier, wake, the day is peeping,
Honour ne'er was won in sleeping,
Never when the sunbeams still
Lay unreflected on the hill:
'Tis when they are glinted back
From axe and armour, spear and jack,
That they promise future story
Many a page of deathless glory.
Shields that are the foe man's terror,
Ever are the morning's mirror.

Arm and up, the morning beam
Hath call'd the rustic to his team,
Hath call'd the falc'ner to the lake,
Hath call'd the huntsman to the brake;
The early student ponders o'er
His dusty tomes of ancient lore.
Soldier, wake, thy harvest, fame;
Thy study, conquest; war, thy game.
Shield, that would be foeman's terror,
Still should gleam the morning's mirror.

Poor hire repays the rustic's pain;
More paltry...

Or shall I say, Vain word, false thought,
Since prudence hath her martyrs too,
And Wisdom dictates not to do,
Till doing shall be not for nought.

Not ours to give or lose is life;
Will Nature, when her brave ones fall,
Remake her work? or songs recall
Death’s victim slain in useless strife?

That rivers flow into the sea
Is loss and waste, the foolish say,
Nor know that back they find their way,
Unseen, to where they wont to be.

Showers fall upon the hills, springs flow,
The river runneth still at hand,
Brave men are born into the land,
And whence the foolish do not know.

No! no vain voice did on me fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost,
‘’Tis better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all.’

(After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the 54th Massachusetts.)


        I

        Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
        To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
        And set here in the city's talk and trade
        To the good memory of Robert Shaw,
        This bright March morn I stand,
        And hear the distant spring come up the land;
        Knowing that what I hear is not unheard
        Of this boy soldier and his negro band,
        For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,
        For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.
        The land they died to save from death and shame
        Trembles and waits,...

    His song of dawn outsoars the joyful bird,
        Swift on the weary road his footfall comes;
    The dusty air that by his stride is stirred
        Beats with a buoyant march of fairy drums.
    "Awake, O Earth! thine ancient slumber break;
    To the new day, O slumbrous Earth, awake!"

    Yet long ago that merry march began,
        His feet are older than the path they tread;
    His music is the morning-song of man,
        His stride the stride of all the valiant dead;
    His youngest hopes are memories, and his eyes
    Deep with the old, old dream that never dies.

It's the Spring.
Earth has conceived, and her bosom,
Teeming with summer, is glad.

Vistas of change and adventure,
Thro' the green land
The grey roads go beckoning and winding,
Peopled with wains, and melodious
With harness-bells jangling:
Jangling and twangling rough rhythms
To the slow march of the stately, great horses
Whistled and shouted along.

White fleets of cloud,
Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,
Sail the blue peacefully.    Green flame the hedgerows.
Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds
Sway the tall poplars.
Pageants of colour and fragrance,
Pass the sweet meadows, and viewless
Walks the mild spirit of May,
Visibly blessing the world.

O, the brilliance of blossoming orchards!
O, the savour and thr...

It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o’er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow’rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame,
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,, and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! O’er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
...

(On the Embankment in stormy weather.)


A livid sky on London
And like iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted,
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away,
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,
As digging lets the daylight on the sunken streets of yore,
The lightning looked on London town, the broken bridge of London town,
The ending of a broken road where men shall go no more.

I saw the kings of London town,
The kings that buy and sell,
That built it up with penny loaves
And penny lies as well:
And where the streets were paved with gold, the shrivelled paper shone for gold,
The scorching light of p...

Some poor man in need
To bless and to feed,
I bring at its worth,
This day of my birth,
A book, - from my youth I must own.
But Who in His power
Gave bud and gave flower,
To bread can transform
In want's winter-storm
Each leaf that my Springtime has grown.

Grant, that by this unsparing hurricane
Green leaves with yellow mixed are torn away,
And goodly fruitage with the mother spray;
'Twere madness, wished we, therefore, to detain,
With hands stretched forth in mollified disdain,
The "trumpery" that ascends in bare display
Bulls, pardons, relics, cowls black, white, and grey
Upwhirled, and flying o'er the ethereal plain
Fast bound for Limbo Lake. And yet not choice
But habit rules the unreflecting herd,
And airy bonds are hardest to disown;
Hence, with the spiritual sovereignty transferred
Unto itself, the Crown assumes a voice
Of reckless mastery, hitherto unknown.

(See Note 69)

Come up on deck! The morning is clear, -
Memory wakes, as the landmarks appear.
How many the islands, green and cheery,
The salt-licking skerries, weed-wound, smeary!
On this side, on that side, they frolic before us,
Good friends, but wild, - in frightened chorus
Sea-fowl shriek round us, a flying legion.
We are in a region
Of storms historic, unique for aye.

We fare the fishermen's venturesome way!
Far out the bank and the big fish shoaling,
The captain narrates; and just now unrolling
Sails run to shore a swift racing match; -
Good is the catch.

Yes, yes, - I recognize them again,
Romsdal's boats' weather-beaten men.
They know how to sail, when need's at hand.

But I'm forgetting to look towards la...

Saint Brandan sails the northern main;
The brotherhood of saints are glad.
He greets them once, he sails again;
So late! such storms! The Saint is mad!

He heard, across the howling seas,
Chime convent-bells on wintry nights;
He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides,
Twinkle the monastery-lights;

But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer'd
And now no bells, no convents more!
The hurtling Polar lights are near'd,
The sea without a human shore.

At last (it was the Christmas night;
Stars shone after a day of storm)
He sees float past an iceberg white,
And on it Christ! a living form.

That furtive mien, that scowling eye,
Of hair that red and tufted fell
It is Oh, where shall Brandan fly?
The traitor Judas, out of hell!

Pa...