They are flocking from the East
And the West,
They are flocking from the North
And the South,
Every moment setting forth
From realm of snake or lion,
Swamp or sand,
Ice or burning;
Greatest and least,
Palm in hand
And praise in mouth,
They are flocking up the path
To their rest,
Up the path that hath
No returning.

Up the steeps of Zion
They are mounting,
Coming, coming,
Throngs beyond man's counting;
With a sound
Like innumerable bees
Swarming, humming
Where flowering trees
Many-tinted,
Many-scented,
All alike abound
With honey, -
With a swell
Like a blast upswaying unrestrainable
From a shadowed dell
To the hill-tops sunny, -
With a thunder
Like the ocean when in strength

"Who gives and hides the giving hand,
Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise,
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs
The burden of the sea and land.

Who gives to whom hath naught been given,
His gift in need, though small indeed
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed,
Is large as earth and rich as heaven.

Forget it not, O man, to whom
A gift shall fall, while yet on earth;
Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth
Recall it in the lives to come.

Who broods above a wrong in thought
Sins much; but greater sin is his
Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses,
Shall count the holy alms as nought.

Who dares to curse the hands that bless
Shall know of sin the deadliest cost;
The patience of the heavens is lost
Beholding man's unthankfulness....

The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:

Sits long and arises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.

I am the Vision and the Dream
Of trembling Age, and yearning Youth;
I am the Sorceress Supreme.
I am Illusion; I am Truth.

I am the Queen to whom belongs
The royal right great gifts to give;
I am the Singer of the Songs
That lure men on to live and live.

There is no music like to mine;
I sing in green, and gold and red;
I pour from secret casks the wine
That cheers the cold hearts of the dead.

My harp it has a thousand tones,
And makes the world with joy a-flood;
The old men feel it in their bones,
And life leaps laughing in their blood.

The sourest mortal all in vain
Shall try from me to keep apart;
I have no commerce with his brain,
I storm the fortress of his heart.

I am the Soul of things to come;
I ma...

If the quick spirits in your eye
Now languish and anon must die;
If every sweet and every grace
Must fly from that forsaken face;
Then, Celia, let us reap our joys
Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys.

Or if that golden fleece must grow
For ever free from aged snow;
If those bright suns must know no shade,
Nor your fresh beauties ever fade;
Then fear not, Celia, to bestow
What, still being gather'd, still must grow.

Thus either Time his sickle brings
In vain, or else in vain his wings.

    Heavily slumbered noonday bright
    Upon the lone field, glory-dight,
    A burnished grassy sea:
    The child, in gorgeous golden hours,
    Through heaven-descended starry flowers,
    Went walking on the lea.

    Velvety bees make busy hum;
    Green flies and striped wasps go and come;
    The butterflies gleam white;
    Blue-burning, vaporous, to and fro
    The dragon-flies like arrows go,
    Or hang in moveless flight:--

    Not one she followed; like a rill
    She wandered on with quiet will;
    Received, but did not miss;
    Her step was neither quick nor long;
    Nought but a snatch of murmured song
    Ever revealed her bliss.

    An almost solemn woman-child,
    Not fashioned frolicsome and wild,
 ...

Still, like dew in silence falling,
    Drops for thee the nightly tear
Still that voice the past recalling,
    Dwells, like echo, on my ear,
        Still, still!

Day and night the spell hangs o'er me,
    Here forever fixt thou art:
As thy form first shone before me,
    So 'tis graven on this heart,
        Deep, deep!

Love, oh Love, whose bitter sweetness,
    Dooms me to this lasting pain.
Thou who earnest with so much fleetness,
Why so slow to go again?
    Why? why?

I dwell alone - I dwell alone, alone,
    Whilst full my river flows down to the sea,
Gilded with flashing boats
    That bring no friend to me:
O love-songs, gurgling from a hundred throats,
    O love-pangs, let me be.

Fair fall the freighted boats which gold and stone
    And spices bear to sea:
Slim, gleaming maidens swell their mellow notes,
    Love-promising, entreating -
    Ah! sweet, but fleeting -
    Beneath the shivering, snow-white sails.
    Hush! the wind flags and fails -
Hush! they will lie becalmed in sight of strand -
    Sight of my strand, where I do dwell alone;
Their songs wake singing echoes in my land -
    They cannot hear me moan.

    One latest, solitary swallow flies
    Across the sea, rough autumn-tempest t...

A

A carrion crow sat on an oak,
Watching a tailor shape his cloak.
"Wife, bring me my old bent bow,
That I may shoot yon carrion crow."
The tailor he shot and missed his mark,
And shot his own sow quite through the heart.
"Wife, wife, bring brandy in a spoon,
For our old sow is in a swoon."

B

Ba, ba, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, marry, have I,
Three bags full.

One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
That cries in the lane.

C

Hen.    Cock, cock, I have la-a-ayed!
Cock. Hen, hen, that's well sa-a-ayed!
Hen.    Although I have to go bare-footed every day-a-ay!
Cock. (Con spirito.) Sell your eggs and buy shoes!
                 ...

Three words I will tell you, of meaning full:
The lips of the many shout them;
Yet were they born of no sect or school,
The heart only knows about them:
    That man is of everything worth bereft
    Who in those three words has no faith left:

Man is born free--and is free alway
Even were he born in fetters!
Let not the mob's cry lead you astray,
Or the misdeeds of frantic upsetters:
    Fear not the slave when he breaks his bands;
    Fear nothing from any free man's hands.

And Virtue--it is no empty sound;
That a man can obey her, no folly;
Even if he stumble all over the ground
He yet can follow the Holy;
    And what never wisdom of wise man knew
    A child-like spirit can simply do.

And a God there is--a s...

Shall I not give this world my heart, and well?
If for naught else, for many a miracle
Of the impassioned spring, the rose, the snow?
Nay, by the spring that still must come and go
When thou art dust, by roses that shall blow
Across thy grave, and snows it shall not miss.
Not this world, oh, not this!

Shall I not give this world my heart, who find
Within this world the glories of the mind
That wondrous mind that mounts from earth to God?
Nay, hy the little footways it hath trod,
And smiUs to see, when thou art under sod.
And by its very gaze across the ahyss.
Not this world, oh, not this!

Shall I not give this world my heart, who hold
One figure here above myself, my gold.
My life and hope, my joy and my intent?
Nay, by that form whose strengt...

Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
For a glance from you!

Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs,
Angels, the demons abject under me,
Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs,
Time, space, all would I give - aye, upper spheres,
For a kiss from thee!

    Thy world is made to fit thine own,
    A nursery for thy children small,
    The playground-footstool of thy throne,
    Thy solemn school-room, Father of all!
    When day is done, in twilight's gloom,
    We pass into thy presence-room.

    Because from selfishness and wrath,
    Our cold and hot extremes of ill,
    We grope and stagger on the path--
    Thou tell'st us from thy holy hill,
    With icy storms and sunshine rude,
    That we are all unripe in good.

    Because of snaky things that creep
    Through our soul's sea, dim-undulant,
    Thou fill'st the mystery of thy deep
    With faces heartless, grim, and gaunt;
    That we may know how ugly seem
    The things our spirit-oceans teem.

    Because of half-way thi...

Non fur mai Giove e Cesare sì mossi.

LAURA IN TEARS.


    High Jove to thunder ne'er was so intent,
So resolute great Cæsar ne'er to strike,
That pity had not quench'd the ire of both,
And from their hands the accustom'd weapons shook.
Madonna wept: my Lord decreed that I
Should see her then, and there her sorrows hear;
So joy, desire should fill me to the brim,
Thrilling my very marrow and my bones.
Love show'd to me, nay, sculptured on my heart,
That sweet and sparkling tear, and those soft words
Wrote with a diamond on its inmost core,
Where with his constant and ingenious keys
He still returneth often, to draw thence
True tears of mine and long and heavy sighs.

MACGREGOR.

I


Eve goes slowly
Dancing lightly
Clad with shadow up the hills;
Birds their singing
Cease at last, and silence
Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

Not a bat's cry
Stirs the stillness
Perfect as broad water sleeping,
Not a moth's wings
Flit in the gathering darkness,
Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.

Then a light shines
From the casement,
Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,
Palely golden
As the late eve's primrose,
Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.



II


Only joy now
Come in silence,
Come before your look's forgot;
Come and hearken
While the lonely shadow
Broadens on the hill and then is not.

Now the hour is,
Here the plac...

O sweetly wild and 'witching Poesy!
Thou light of this world's hermitage I prove thee;
And surely none helps loving thee that knows thee,
A soul of feeling cannot help but love thee.
I would say how thy secret wonders move me,
Thou spell of loveliness!--but 'tis too much:
Had I the language of the gods above me
I might then venture thy wild harp to touch,
And sing of all thy thrilling pains and pleasures;
The flowers I meet in this world's wilderness;
The comforts rising from thy spell-bound treasures,
Thy cordial balm that softens my distress:
I would say all, but thou art far above me;
Words are too weak, expression can't be had;
I can but say I love, and dearly love thee,
And that thou cheer'st me when my soul is sad.

Unwin, I should but ill repay
The kindness of a friend,
Whose worth deserves as warm a lay
As ever friendship penn’d,
Thy name omitted in a page
That would reclaim a vicious age.


A union form’d, as mine with thee,
Not rashly, or in sport,
May be as fervent in degree
And faithful in its sort,
And may as rich in comfort prove,
As that of true fraternal love.


The bud inserted in the rind,
The bud of peach or rose,
Adorns, though differing in its kind,
The stock whereon it grows,
With flower as sweet, or fruit as fair,
As if produced by nature there.


Not rich, I render what I may,
I seize thy name in haste,
And place it in this first essay,
Lest this should prove the last.
‘Tis where it should be—in...

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas, we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box, let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at, Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Larranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay;
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away,

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown,
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty, grey and dour and old,
With ...