No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world,s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast.
Almighty ever-present Deity!
Life , that in me has rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thy infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though Earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes c...

Affectionately Inscribed to W.M.R. and L.R.


April, on whose wings
Ride all gracious things,
Like the star that brings
All things good to man,
Ere his light, that yet
Makes the month shine, set,
And fair May forget
Whence her birth began,

Brings, as heart would choose,
Sound of golden news,
Bright as kindling dews
When the dawn begins;
Tidings clear as mirth,
Sweet as air and earth
Now that hail the birth,
Twice thus blest, of twins.

In the lovely land
Where with hand in hand
Lovers wedded stand
Other joys before
Made your mixed life sweet:
Now, as Time sees meet,
Three glad blossoms greet
Two glad blossoms more.

Fed with sun and dew,
While your joys were new,
First aros...

    The thousand streets of London gray
    Repel all country sights;
    But bar not winds upon their way,
    Nor quench the scent of new-mown hay
    In depth of summer nights.

    And here and there an open spot,
    Still bare to light and dark,
    With grass receives the wanderer hot;
    There trees are growing, houses not--
    They call the place a park.

    Soft creatures, with ungentle guides,
    God's sheep from hill and plain,
    Flow thitherward in fitful tides,
    There weary lie on woolly sides,
    Or crop the grass amain.

    And from dark alley, yard, and den,
    In ragged skirts and coats,
    Come thither children of poor men,
    Wild things, untaught of word or pen--
    The little human goats.
...

O friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom!—We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.

Be it right, or wrong, these men among
On women do complain;
Affirming this, how that it is
A labour spent in vain
To love them wele; for never a dele
They love a man again:
For let a man do what he can,
Their favour to attain,
Yet, if a new do them pursue,
Their first true lover then
Laboureth for nought; for from her thought
He is a banished man.

I say not nay, but that all day
It is both writ and said
That woman's faith is, as who saith,
All utterly decayed;
But, nevertheless, right good witness
In this case might be laid,
That they love true, and continue,
Record the Nut-brown Maid:
Which, when her love came, her to prove,
To her to make his moan,
Would not depart; for in her heart
She loved but him alone.

Winsome, wee and witty,
Like a little fay,
Carolling her ditty
All the livelong day,
Saucy as a sparrow
In the summer glade,
Flitting o'er the meadow
Came the little maid.
A youth big and burly,
Loitered near the stile,
He had risen early,
Just to win her smile.
And she came towards him
Trying to look grave,
But she couldn't do it,
Not her life to save.
For the fun within her,
Well'd out from her eyes,
And the tell-tale blushes
To her brow would rise.
Then he gave her greeting,
And with bashful bow,
Said in tones entreating,
"Darling tell me now,
You are all the sunshine,
This world holds for me;
Be my little valentine,
I have come for thee."
But she only tittered
When he told his love,
And ...

The burden of fair women. Vain delight,
And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,
And sorrowful old age that comes by night
As a thief comes that has no heart by day,
And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey,
And weariness that keeps awake for hire,
And grief that says what pleasure used to say;
This is the end of every man’s desire.

The burden of bought kisses. This is sore,
A burden without fruit in childbearing;
Between the nightfall and the dawn threescore,
Threescore between the dawn and evening.
The shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering
In thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire,
Makes love seem shameful and a wretched thing.
This is the end of every man’s desire.

The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,
Cover thy ...

Dark head by the fireside brooding,
    Sad upon your ears
Whirlwinds of the earth intruding
    Sound in wrath and tears:

Tender-hearted, in your lonely
    Sorrow I would fain
Comfort you, and say that only
    Gods could feel such pain.

Only spirits know such longing
    For the far away;
And the fiery fancies thronging
    Rise not out of clay.

Keep the secret sense celestial
    Of the starry birth;
Though about you call the bestial
    Voices of the earth.

If a thousand ages since
    Hurled us from the throne:
Then a thousand ages wins
    Back again our own.

Sad one, dry away your tears:
    Sceptred you shall rise,
Equal mid the crystal spheres
    With seraphs kingly wise.

--...

Dearest, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.

The very flowers that bend and meet,
In sweetening others, grow more sweet;
The clouds by day, the stars by night,
Inweave their floating locks of light;
The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid,
Is but the embrace of sun and shade.

Oh! in the hour when I shall feel
Those shadows round my senses steal,
When gentle eyes are weeping o'er
The clay that feels their tears no more,
Then let thy spirit with me be,
Or some sweet angel, likest thee!

How few that love us have we found!
How wide the world that girds them round
Like mountain streams we ...

[Greek: Aeì d' aeí me pheugei.] - [Pseud.] ANACREON, [Greek: Eis chruson].


1.

The roses of Love glad the garden of life,
Though nurtur'd 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,
Till Time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
Or prunes them for ever, in Love's last adieu!


2.

In vain, with endearments, we soothe the sad heart,
In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
Or Death disunite us, in Love's last adieu!


3.

Still Hope, breathing peace, through the grief-swollen breast,
Will whisper, "Our meeting we yet may renew:"
With this dream of deceit, half our sorrow's represt,
Nor taste we the poison, of Love's last adieu!


4.

Oh! mark you yon pair,...

Comes a train of little ladies
From scholastic trammels free,
Each a little bit afraid is,
Wondering what the world can be!

Is it but a world of trouble
Sadness set to song?
Is its beauty but a bubble
Bound to break ere long?

Are its palaces and pleasures
Fantasies that fade?
And the glories of its treasures
Shadow of a shade?

Schoolgirls we, eighteen and under,
From scholastic trammels free,
And we wonder how we wonder!
What on earth the world can be!

Here went a horse with heavy laboring stride
Along the woodland side;
Deep in the clay his iron hoof-marks show,
Patient and slow,
Where with his human burden yesterday
He passed this way.

Would that this wind that tramples 'round me here,
Among the sad and sere
Of winter-weary forests, were a steed,
Mighty indeed,
And tameless as the tempest of its pace,
Upon whom man might place.

The boundless burden of his mortal cares,
Life's griefs, despairs,
And ruined dreams that bow the spirit so!
And let him go
Bearing them far from the sad world, ah me!
Leaving it free.

As in that Age of Gold, of which men tell,
When Earth was glad and gods came here to dwell.

There was a time, when love's young flowers
With many a joy my bosom prest:
Sweet hours of bliss!--but short are hours,
Those hours are fled--and I'm distrest.
I would not wish, in reason's spite;
I would not wish new joy to gain;
I only wish for one delight,--
To see those hours of bliss again.

There was a day, when love was young,
And nought but bliss did there belong;
When blackbirds nestling o'er us sung,
Ah me! what sweetness wak'd his song.
I wish not springs for ever fled;
I wish not birds' forgotten strain;
I only wish for feelings dead
To warm, and wake, and feel again.

But ah! what once was joy is past:
The time's gone by; the day and hour
Are whirring fled on trouble's blast,
As winter nips the summer flower.
A shadow...

When with clanging and with ringing
    Comes the year's initial day,
I can feel the rhythmic swinging
    Of the world upon its way;
And though Right still wears a fetter,
    And though Justice still is blind,
Time's beyond is always better
    Than the paths he leaves behind.

In our eons of existence,
    As we circle through the night,
We annihilate the distance
    'Twixt the darkness and the light.
From beginnings crude and lowly,
    Round and round our souls have trod
Through the circles, winding slowly
    Up to knowledge and to God.

With each century departed
    Some old evil found a tomb,
Some old truth was newly started
    In propitious soil to bloom.
With each epoch some condition
    That has handicapped the...

The stars are spinning their threads,
    And the clouds are the dust that flies,
And the suns are weaving them up
    For the day when the sleepers arise.

The ocean in music rolls,
    The gems are turning to eyes,
And the trees are gathering souls
    For the day when the sleepers arise.

The weepers are learning to smile,
    And laughter to glean the sighs,
And hearts to bury their care and guile
    For the day when the sleepers arise.

Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy-red,
    The larks and the glimmers and flows!
The lilies and sparrows and daily bread,
    And the something that nobody knows!

Newly Translated Into English Verse By R. Martin Pope is below this original.

Epilogus


    Inmolat Deo Patri
        pius, fidelis, innocens, pudicus
    dona conscientiae,
        quibus beata mens abundat intus:
    alter et pecuniam
        recidit, unde victitent egeni.
    Nos citos iambicos
        sacramus et rotatiles trochaeos,
    sanctitatis indigi
        nec ad levamen pauperum potentes;
    adprobat tamen Deus
        pedestre carmen, et benignus audit.
    Multa divitis domo
        sita est per omnes angulos supellex.
    Fulget aureus scyphus,
        nec aere defit expolita pelvis:
    est et olla fictilis,
        gravisque et ampla argentea est parabsis.
    Sunt eburna quaepiam,
        nonnulla q...

Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns,
And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff
With shocks of clamour, let the chasm take
The noise of many trumpets, lest the hunt
Should die across the dim Aonian hills,
Nor break through thunder and the surf-white cave
That hems about the old-eyed Ogyges
And bars the sea-wind, rain-wind, and the sea!

Much fierce delight hath old-eyed Ogyges
(A hairless shadow in a lion’s skin)
In tumult, and the gleam of flying spears,
And wild beasts vexed to death; “for,” sayeth he,
“Here lying broken, do I count the days
For every trouble; being like the tree
The many-wintered father of the trunks
On yonder ridges: wherefore it is well
To feel the dead blood kindling in my veins
At sound of boar or battle; yea ...

From life without freedom, say, who would not fly?
For one day of freedom, oh! who would not die?
Hark!--hark! 'tis the trumpet! the call of the brave,
The death-song of tyrants, the dirge of the slave.
Our country lies bleeding--haste, haste to her aid;
One arm that defends is worth hosts that invade.

In death's kindly bosom our last hope remains--
The dead fear no tyrants, the grave has no chains.
On, on to the combat! the heroes that bleed
For virtue and mankind are heroes indeed.
And oh, even if Freedom from this world be driven,
Despair not--at least we shall find her in heaven.