Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
    Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
    Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.

Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;
    With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
    Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.

Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
    Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!
AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead,
    Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.

Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsa...

Day after Day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.

But where are now the Glory and the Rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the Joy that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?

I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower - something's lost in me.

Return! Return! I cry, O Visions vanished,
O Voices banished, to my Soul again! -
The near Earth blossoms and the far Skies glisten,
I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.

I feel the stirrings in me of great things.
New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,
And tremble on the margin of their nest,
Then flutter back, and hide within my breast.

Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.
Beholding men, they fear them. But at length
Grown all too great and active for the heart
That broods them with such tender mother art,
Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour,
Save the impelling consciousness of power
That stirs within them - they shall soar away
Up to the very portals of the Day.

Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through
When I contemplate all those thoughts may do;
Like snow-white eagles penetrating space,
They may explore full many an unknown place,
And build their nests on mountain he...

[In the vale of Grasmere, by the side of an old highway
leading to Ambleside, is a gate, which, from time out of
mind, has been called the Wishing-gate, from a belief that
wishes formed or indulged there have a favorable issue.]

Hope rules a land forever green:
All powers that serve the bright-eyed Queen
Are confident and gay;
Clouds at her bidding disappear;
Points she to aught? the bliss draws near,
And Fancy smooths the way.

Not such the land of Wishes there
Dwell fruitless day-dreams, lawless prayer,
And thoughts with things at strife;
Yet how forlorn, should ye depart
Ye superstitions of the heart,
How poor, were human life!

When magic lore abjured its might,
Ye did not forfeit one dear right,
One tender claim abate;
Witne...

Would you know what joy is hid
In our green Musketaquid,
And for travelled eyes what charms
Draw us to these meadow farms,
Come and I will show you all
Makes each day a festival.
Stand upon this pasture hill,
Face the eastern star until
The slow eye of heaven shall show
The world above, the world below.

Behold the miracle!
Thou saw'st but now the twilight sad
And stood beneath the firmament,
A watchman in a dark gray tent,
Waiting till God create the earth,--
Behold the new majestic birth!
The mottled clouds, like scraps of wool,
Steeped in the light are beautiful.
What majestic stillness broods
Over these colored solitudes.
Sleeps the vast East in pleasèd peace,
Up the far mountain walls the streams increase
Inundating the ...

I


Morn's mystic rose is reddening on the hills,
Dawn's irised nautilus makes glad the sea;
There is a lyre of flame that throbs and fills
Far heaven and earth with hope's wild ecstasy.--
With lilied field and grove,
Haunts of the turtle-dove,
Here is the land of Love.


II


The chariot of the noon makes blind the blue
As towards the goal his burning axle glares;
There is a fiery trumpet thrilling through
Wide heaven and earth with deeds of one who dares.--
With peaks of splendid name,
Wrapped round with astral flame,
Here is the land of Fame.


III


The purple priesthood of the evening waits
With golden pomp within the templed skies;
There is a harp of worship at the gates
Of heaven and ...

When we have laid aside our last endeavour,
    And said farewell to one or two that weep,
And issued from the house of life for ever,
    To find a lodging in the house of sleep--

With eyes fast shut, in sunless chambers lying,
    With folded arms unmoved upon the breast,
Beyond the noise of sorrow and of crying,
    Beyond the dread of dreaming, shall we rest?

Or shall there come at last desire of waking,
    To walk again on hillsides that we know,
When sunrise through the cold white mist is breaking,
    Or in the stillness of the after-glow?

Shall there be yearning for the sound of voices,
    The sight of faces, and the touch of hands,
The will that works, the spirit that rejoices,
    The heart that feels, the mind that understands?
<...

Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.

Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.

The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.

Two worlds they have - a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.

    My little boy, with smooth, fair cheeks,
    And dreamy, large, brown eyes,
    Not often, little wisehead, speaks,
    But hearing, weighs and tries.

    "God is not only in the sky,"
    His sister said one day--
    Not older much, but she would cry
    Like Wisdom in the way--

    "He's in this room." His dreamy, clear,
    Large eyes look round for God:
    In vain they search, in vain they peer;
    His wits are all abroad!

    "He is not here, mamma? No, no;
    I do not see him at all!
    He's not the shadows, is he?" So
    His doubtful accents fall--

    Fall on my heart, no babble mere!
    They rouse both love and shame:
    But for earth's loneliness and fear,
    I might be saying the same!

 ...

"My eyes make pictures, when they are shut."
        COLERIDGE.


Fair morn, I bring my greeting
    To lofty skies, and pale,
Save where cloud-shreds are fleeting
    Before the driving gale,
The weary branches tossing,
    Careless of autumn's grief,
Shadow and sunlight crossing
    On each earth-spotted leaf.

I will escape their grieving;
    And so I close my eyes,
And see the light boat heaving
    Where the billows fall and rise;
I see the sunlight glancing
    Upon its silvery sail,
Where a youth's wild heart is dancing,
    And a maiden growing pale.

And I am quietly pacing
    The smooth stones o'er and o'er,
Where the merry waves are chasing
    Each other to the shore.
Words come to me while listen...

--After reading the Upanishads


Out of the dusky chamber of the brain
Flows the imperial will through dream on dream;
The fires of life around it tempt and gleam;
The lights of earth behind it fade and wane.

Passed beyond beauty tempting dream on dream,
The pure will seeks the hearthold of the light;
Sounds the deep "OM," the mystic word of might;
Forth from the hearthold breaks the living stream.

Passed out beyond the deep heart music-filled,
The kingly Will sits on the ancient throne,
Wielding the sceptre, fearless, free, alone,
Knowing in Brahma all it dared and willed.

--June 15, 1894

As a pale phantom with a lamp
    Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
    Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
    As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
    And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
    In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
    Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
    Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
    Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed.    One mass of shade,
    The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
    I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground b...

I feel the stirrings in me of great things.
New half-fledged thoughts rise up and beat their wings,
And tremble on the margin of their nest,
Then flutter back, and hide within my breast.

Beholding space, they doubt their untried strength.
Beholding men, they fear them.    But at length,
Grown all too great and active for the heart
That broods them with such tender mother art,
Forgetting fear, and men, and all, that hour,
Save the impelling consciousness of power
That stirs within them - they shall soar away
Up to the very portals of the Day.

Oh, what exultant rapture thrills me through
When I contemplate all those thoughts may do;
Like snow-white eagles penetrating space,
They may explore full many an unknown place,
And build their nests on mountai...

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?
For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
I am an answer, they are only a call.

But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

Poets are strange -- not always understood
By many is their gift,
Which is for evil or for mighty good --
To lower or to lift.

Upon their spirits there hath come a breath;
Who reads their verse
Will rise to higher life, or taste of death
In blessing or in curse.

The Poet is great Nature's own high priest,
Ordained from very birth
To keep for hearts an everlasting feast --
To bless or curse the earth.

They cannot help but sing; they know not why
Their thoughts rush into song,
And float above the world, beneath the sky,
For right or for the wrong.

They are like angels -- but some angels fell,
While some did keep their place;
Their poems are the gates of heav'n or hell,
And God's or Satan's face

Looks thro' their ...

Far are those tranquil hills,
Dyed with fair evening's rose;
On urgent, secret errand bent,
A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three,
Barefooted, cowled; their eyes
Scan the lone, hastening solitary
With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech
With them he doth confer:
God-sped, he hasteneth on,
That anxious traveller ...

I was that man - in a dream:
And each world's night in vain
I patient wait on sleep to unveil
Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know
How yet burns on in me
Love - from one lost in Paradise -
For their grave courtesy.

Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?

Once on the year's last eve in my mind's might
Sitting in dreams, not sad, nor quite elysian,
Balancing all 'twixt wonder and derision,
Methought my body and all this world took flight,
And vanished from me, as a dream, outright;
Leaning out thus in sudden strange decision,
I saw as it were in the flashing of a vision,
Far down between the tall towers of the night,
Borne by great winds in awful unison,
The teeming masses of mankind sweep by,
Even as a glittering river with deep sound
And innumerable banners, rolling on
Over the starry border glooms that bound
The last gray space in dim eternity.

And all that strange unearthly multitude
Seemed twisted in vast seething companies,
That evermore with hoarse and terrible cries
And desperate encounter at ...