[Supposed to be chanted to some rude instrument at a modern fireplace]


    Chant we the story now
    Tho' in a house we sleep;
    Tho' by a hearth of coals
    Vigil to-night we keep.
    Chant we the story now,
    Of the vague love we knew
    When I from out the sea
    Rose to the feet of you.

    Bird from the cliffs you came,
    Flew thro' the snow to me,
    Facing the icy blast
    There by the icy sea.
    How did I reach your feet?
    Why should I - at the end
    Hold out half-frozen hands
    Dumbly to you my friend?
    Ne'er had I woman seen,
    Ne'er had I seen a flame.
    There you piled fagots on,
    Heat rose - the blast to tame.
    There by the cave-door dark,
    Comforting me you crie...

Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud
Race through blue heaven on its joyful course
Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
I think I might have done a great deal worse;
For I have ever gone untied and free,
The stars and my high thoughts for company;
Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
And love in many places, silver-shoed,
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

Nella stagion che 'l ciel rapido inchina.

NIGHT BRINGS REPOSE TO OTHERS, BUT NOT TO HIM.


    In that still season, when the rapid sun
Drives down the west, and daylight flies to greet
Nations that haply wait his kindling flame;
In some strange land, alone, her weary feet
The time-worn pilgrim finds, with toil fordone,
Yet but the more speeds on her languid frame;
Her solitude the same,
When night has closed around;
Yet has the wanderer found
A deep though short forgetfulness at last
Of every woe, and every labour past.
But ah! my grief, that with each moment grows,
As fast, and yet more fast,
Day urges on, is heaviest at its close.

When Phoebus rolls his everlasting wheels
To give night room; and from encircling wood,
B...

("Moune, écureuil.")

[xx.]


Squirrel, mount yon oak so high,
To its twig that next the sky
Bends and trembles as a flower!
Strain, O stork, thy pinion well, -
From thy nest 'neath old church-bell,
Mount to yon tall citadel,
And its tallest donjon tower!
To your mountain, eagle old,
Mount, whose brow so white and cold,
Kisses the last ray of even!
And, O thou that lov'st to mark
Morn's first sunbeam pierce the dark,
Mount, O mount, thou joyous lark -
Joyous lark, O mount to heaven!
And now say, from topmost bough,
Towering shaft, and peak of snow,
And heaven's arch - O, can you see
One white plume that like a star,
Streams along the plain afar,
And a steed that from the war
Bears my lover back to me?

TO MY FRIEND, JOHN FOX, JR.


You remember, the deep mist, -
Climbing to the Devil's Den -
Blue beneath us in the glen
And above us amethyst,
Throbbed and circled and away
Thro' the wild-woods opposite,
Torn and shattered, morning-lit,
Scurried up a dewy gray.
Vague as in Romance we saw
From the fog one riven trunk,
Its huge horny talons shrunk,
Thrust a hungry dragon's claw.
And we climbed two hours thro'
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To that wooded rock that shows
Undulating peaks of blue:
The vast Cumberlands that sleep,
Weighed with soaring forests, far
To the concave welkin's bar,
Leagues on leagues of purple sweep.
Range exalted over range
Billowed their enormous spines,
And we heard the priestly pines
Hum...

Alone in desert dreary,
A bird with folded wings
Beholds the waste about her,
And sweetly, sweetly sings.

So heaven-sweet her singing,
So clear the bird notes flow,
'Twould seem the rocks must waken,
The desert vibrant grow.

Dead rocks and silent mountains
Would'st waken with thy strain,--
But dumb are still the mountains,
And dead the rocks remain.

For whom, O heavenly singer,
Thy song so clear and free?
Who hears or sees or heeds thee,
Who feels or cares for thee?

Thou may'st outpour in music
Thy very soul... 'Twere vain!
In stone thou canst not waken
A throb of joy or pain.

Thy song shall soon be silenced;
I feel it... For I know
Thy heart is near to bursting
With loneliness and woe.

Remain, ah not in youth alone!
Tho' youth, where you are, long will stay,
But when my summer days are gone,
And my autumnal haste away.
'Can I be always by your side?'
No; but the hours you can, you must,
Nor rise at Death's approaching stride,
Nor go when dust is gone to dust.

I want to sing something - but this is all -
I try and I try, but the rhymes are dull
As though they were damp, and the echoes fall
Limp and unlovable.

Words will not say what I yearn to say -
They will not walk as I want them to,
But they stumble and fall in the path of the way
Of my telling my love for you.

Simply take what the scrawl is worth -
Knowing I love you as sun the sod
On the ripening side of the great round earth
That swings in the smile of God.

'Twas but a dream! and oh! what are they all,
    All the fond visions Hope's bright finger traces,
    All the fond visions Time's dark wing effaces,
But very dreams! but morning buds, that fall
    Withered and blighted, long before the night:
    Strewing the paths they should have made more bright,
With mournful wreaths, whose light hath past away,
    That can return to life and beauty never,
And yet, of whom it was but yesterday,
    We deemed they'd bloom as fresh and fair for ever.
Oh then, when hopes, that to thy heart are dearest,
    Over the future shed their sunniest beam,
When round thy path their bright wings hover nearest,
    Trust not too fondly! - for 'tis but a dream!

'Tis said, when Schiller's death drew nigh,
The wish possessed his mighty mind,
To wander forth wherever lie
The homes and haunts of human-kind.

Then strayed the poet, in his dreams,
By Rome and Egypt's ancient graves;
Went up the New World's forest streams,
Stood in the Hindoo's temple-caves;

Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark,
The sallow Tartar, midst his herds,
The peering Chinese, and the dark
False Malay uttering gentle words.

How could he rest? even then he trod
The threshold of the world unknown;
Already, from the seat of God,
A ray upon his garments shone;

Shone and awoke the strong desire
For love and knowledge reached not here,
Till, freed by death, his soul of fire
Sprang to a fairer, ampler sphere.
...

Doomed as we are our native dust
To wet with many a bitter shower,
It ill befits us to disdain
The altar, to deride the fane,
Where simple Sufferers bend, in trust
To win a happier hour.

I love, where spreads the village lawn,
Upon some knee-worn cell to gaze:
Hail to the firm unmoving cross,
Aloft, where pines their branches toss!
And to the chapel far withdrawn,
That lurks by lonely ways!

Where'er we roam, along the brink
Of Rhine, or by the sweeping Po,
Through Alpine vale, or champain wide,
Whate'er we look on, at our side
Be Charity! to bid us think,
And feel, if we would know.

Amor, io fallo e veggio il mio fallire.

HE PRAYS LOVE, WHO IS THE CAUSE OF HIS OFFENCES, TO OBTAIN PARDON FOR HIM.


    O Love, I err, and I mine error own,
As one who burns, whose fire within him lies
And aggravates his grief, while reason dies,
With its own martyrdom almost o'erthrown.
I strove mine ardent longing to restrain,
Her fair calm face that I might ne'er disturb:
I can no more; falls from my hand the curb,
And my despairing soul is bold again;
Wherefore if higher than her wont she aim,
The act is thine, who firest and spur'st her so,
No way too rough or steep for her to go:
But the rare heavenly gifts are most to blame
Shrined in herself: let her at least feel this,
Lest of my faults her pardon I should miss.

MACGREGOR...

We are what suns and winds and waters make us;
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles.
But where the land is dim from tyranny,
There tiny pleasures occupy the place
Of glories and of duties; as the feet
Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down
Trip o’er the grass where wrestlers strove by day.
Then Justice, call’d the Eternal One above,
Is more inconstant than the buoyant form
That burst into existence from the froth
Of ever-varying ocean: what is best
Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deform’d.
The heart is hardest in the softest climes,
The passions flourish, the affections die.
O thou vast tablet of these awful truths,
That fillest all the space between the seas,
Spreading from Venice’s des...

There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose,
And not a star lit any side of heaven;
In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched
Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall;
There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat, -
Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf
Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech
The dead have lost ere they are laid in graves.

A melancholy prelude I would sing
To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom.
Find me the harbor of the roaming storm,
Or end of souls whose doom is life itself!
So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream
And utter not. So sends the tide its roll, -
Unending chord of horror for a woe
We but half know, even when we die of it.

    Poor wounded heart, farewell!
        Thy hour of rest is come;
        Thou soon wilt reach thy home,
    Poor wounded heart, farewell!
The pain thou'lt feel in breaking
    Less bitter far will be,
Than that long, deadly aching,
    This life has been to thee.

    There--broken heart, farewell!
        The pang is o'er--
        The parting pang is o'er;
        Thou now wilt bleed no more.
    Poor broken heart, farewell!
No rest for thee but dying--
    Like waves whose strife is past,
On death's cold shore thus lying,
    Thou sleepst in peace at last--
        Poor broken heart, farewell!

The mushroom is the elf of plants,
At evening it is not;
At morning in a truffled hut
It stops upon a spot

As if it tarried always;
And yet its whole career
Is shorter than a snake's delay,
And fleeter than a tare.

'T is vegetation's juggler,
The germ of alibi;
Doth like a bubble antedate,
And like a bubble hie.

I feel as if the grass were pleased
To have it intermit;
The surreptitious scion
Of summer's circumspect.

Had nature any outcast face,
Could she a son contemn,
Had nature an Iscariot,
That mushroom, -- it is him.

The Fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood,
Nor on an Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

A curious vision on mine eyes unfurled
    In the deep night.    I saw, or seemed to see,
    Two Centuries meet, and sit down vis-a-vis
Across the great round table of the world:
One with suggested sorrows in his mien,
    And on his brow the furrowed lines of thought;
    And one whose glad expectant presence brought
A glow and radiance from the realms unseen.

Hand clasped with hand, in silence for a space
    The Centuries sat; the sad old eyes of one
    (As grave paternal eyes regard a son)
Gazing upon that other eager face.
And then a voice, as cadenceless and gray
    As the sea's monody in winter time,
    Mingled with tones melodious, as the chime
Of bird choirs, singing in the dawns of May.

THE OLD CENTURY SPEAKS

By you, Hope s...