I wish this world and its green hills were mine,
But it is not; the wandering shepherd star
Is not more distant, gazing from afar
On the unreapèd pastures of the sea,
Than I am from the world, the world from me.
At night the stars on milky way that shine
Seem things one might possess, but this round green
Is for the cows that rest, these and the sheep:
To them the slopes and pastures offer sleep;
My sleep I draw from the far fields of blue,
Whence cold winds come and go among the few
Bright stars we see and many more unseen.

Birds sing on earth all day among the flowers,
Taking no thought of any other thing
But their own hearts, for out of them they sing:
Their songs are kindred to the blossom heads,
Faint as the petals which the blackthorn sheds,
A...

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast,
Makest meridian music, long and loud,
Accentuating summer! dost thy best
To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd
With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon
When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady browed,
Upon his sultry scythe thou tangible tune
Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise
Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.

Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills
Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes;
Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills
The land with death as sullenly he takes
Downward his dusty way: 'midst woods and fields
At every pool his burning thirst he slakes;
No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields
A spring from him; no creek evades his eye;
He needs but ...

"Lord of the castle! oh, where goest thou?
Why is the triumph of pride on thy brow?"
"Pilgrim, my bridal awaits me to-day,
Over the mountains away and away."

"Flora in beauty and solitude roves,
List'ning for thee in the shade of the groves."
"Pilgrim, I hasten her truth to repay,
Over the mountains away and away."

"Guided by honor, how brilliant the road
Leading from cottage to castle abode!"
"Pilgrim, its dictates I learned to obey,
Over the mountains away and away."

Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night's gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf;
Each sleep-imprisoned creature breaks
Its dreamy fetters, one by one,
And love awakes, and labor wakes,--
The morning comes before the sun.

What is this message from the light
So fairer far than light can be?
Youth stands a-tiptoe, eager, bright,
In haste the risen sun to see;
Ah! check thy lunging, restless heart,
Count the charmed moments as they run,
It is life's best and fairest part,
This morning hour before the sun.

When once thy day shall burst to flower,
When once the sun shall climb the sky,
And busy hour by busy hour,
The urgent noontide draws anigh;
When the long shadows creep...

    I'll weep and sigh when e'er she wills
    To frown--and when she deigns to smile
    It will be cure for all my ills,
    And, foolish still, I'll laugh the while;
    But till that comes, I'll bless the rules
    Experience taught, and deem it wise
    To hold thee as the game of fools,
    And all thy tricks despise.

There is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man.
It hurls its barbed syllables,--
At once is mute again.
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted brother
Gave his breath away.

Wherever runs the breathless sun,
Wherever roams the day,
There is its noiseless onset,
There is its victory!

Behold the keenest marksman!
The most accomplished shot!
Time's sublimest target
Is a soul 'forgot'!

            I.    The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

    We find your soft Utopias as white
    As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
    O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
    How human breasts adore alarum bells.
    You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
    Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
    I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
    Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
    Promise us all our share in Agincourt
    Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
    That future ant-hills will not be too good
    For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
    Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
    Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
    Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his...

"He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord."

The night-wind comes in sudden squalls:
The ruddy fire-light starts and falls
Fantastically on the walls.

The bare trees all their branches wave;
The frantic wind doth howl and rave,
Like prairie-wolf above a grave.

The moon looks out; but cold and pale,
And seeming scar'd at this wild gale
Draws o'er her pallid face a veil.

In vain I turn the poet's page--
In vain consult some ancient sage--
I hear alone the tempest rage.

The shutters tug at hinge and bar--
The windows clash with frosty jar--
The child creeps closer to "Papa."

And now, I almost start aghast,
The clamor rises thick and fast,
Surely a troop of fiends drove past!

That last shock shook the ...

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding;
And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

I miss thee from my side, beloved,
    I miss thee from my side;
And wearily and drearily
    Flows Time's resistless tide.
The world, and all its fleeting joys,
    To me are worse than vain,
Until I clasp thee to my heart,
    Beloved one, again.

The wildwood and the forest-path,
    We used to thread of yore,
With bird and bee have flown with thee,
    And gone for ever more!
There is no music in the grove,
    No echo on the hill;
But melancholy boughs are there--
    And hushed the whip-poor-will.

I miss thee in the town, beloved,
    I miss thee in the town;
From morn I grieve till dewy eve
    Spreads wide its mantle brown.
My spirit's wings, that once could soar
    In Fancy's world of air,
Are crushed and beat...

Blessings on thee, noble boy!
With thy sunny eyes of blue,
Speaking in their cloudless depths
Of a spirit pure and true.

In thy thoughtful look and calm,
In thy forehead broad and high,
We have seemed to meet again
One whose home is in the sky.

Thou to Earth art still a stranger,
To Life's tumult and unrest;
Angel visitants alone
Stir the fountains in thy breast.

Thou hast yet no Past to shadow
With a fear the Future's light,
And the Present spreads before thee
Boundless as the Infinite.

But each passing hour must waken
Energies that slumber now,
Manhood with its fire and action
Stamp that fair, unfurrowed brow.

Into Life's sublime arena,
Opening through the world's broad mart,
Bear thy Mother's gentl...

Strut, once a foreman of a shop we knew;
But turn'd a ladies' usher now, 'tis true:
Tell me, has Strut got e're a title more?
No; he's but foreman, as he was before.

I.

When in the pansy-purpled stain
Of sunset one far star is seen,
Like some bright drop of rain,
Out of the forest, deep and green,
O'er me at Spirit seems to lean,
The fairest of her train.

II.

The Spirit, dowered with fadeless youth,
Of Lay and Legend, young as when,
Close to her side, in sooth,
She led me from the marts of men,
A child, into her world, which then
To me was true as truth.

III.

Her hair is like the silken husk
That holds the corn, and glints and glows;
Her brow is white as tusk;
Her body like a wilding rose,
And through her gossamer raiment shows
Like starlight closed in musk.

IV.

She smiles at me; she nods at me;
And by her looks I am beguiled
Into the mystery...

Now, joy and thanks forevermore!
The dreary night has wellnigh passed,
The slumbers of the North are o'er,
The Giant stands erect at last!
More than we hoped in that dark time
When, faint with watching, few and worn,
We saw no welcome day-star climb
The cold gray pathway of the morn!
O weary hours! O night of years!
What storms our darkling pathway swept,
Where, beating back our thronging fears,
By Faith alone our march we kept.
How jeered the scoffing crowd behind,
How mocked before the tyrant train,
As, one by one, the true and kind
Fell fainting in our path of pain!
They died, their brave hearts breaking slow,
But, self-forgetful to the last,
In words of cheer and bugle blow
Their breath upon the darkness passed.
A mighty host, on either...

Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?
Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
And will the day that follows change thy doom?
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;
And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

At A Bookstore

Anno Domini 1972

A crazy bookcase, placed before
A low-price dealer's open door;
Therein arrayed in broken rows
A ragged crew of rhyme and prose,
The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays
Whose low estate this line betrays
(Set forth the lesser birds to lime)
YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME!

Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake
This scarecrow from the shelf I take;
Three starveling volumes bound in one,
Its covers warping in the sun.
Methinks it hath a musty smell,
I like its flavor none too well,
But Yorick's brain was far from dull,
Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull.

Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark, -
Was that the roll of thunder? Hark!
The shop affords a safe retreat,
A chair...

Once again the Steamer at Calais, the tackles
Easing the car-trays on to the quay. Release her!
Sign-refill, and let me away with my horses.
(Seventy Thundering Horses!)
Slow through the traffic, my horses! It is enough, it is France!

Whether the throat-closing brick-fields by Lille, or her paves
Endlessly ending in rain between beet and tobacco;
Or that wind we shave by, the brutal North-Easter,
Rasping the newly dunged Somme.
(Into your collars, my horses!) It is enough, it is France!

Whether the dappled Argonne, the cloud-shadows packing
Either horizon with ghosts; or exquisite, carven
Villages hewn from the cliff, the torrents behind them
Feeding their never-quenched lights.
(Look to your footing, my horses!) It is enough, it is France!

Whethe...

Pear-tree.

By woodman's edge I faint and fail;
By craftsman's edge I tell the tale.

Chestnut-tree.

High in the wood, high o'er the hall,
Aloft I rise when low I fall.

Oak-tree.

Unmoved I stand what wind may blow.
Swift, swift before the wind I go.