Hither, hither, from thy home,
    Airy sprite, I bid thee come!
    Born of roses, fed on dew,
    Charms and potions canst thou brew?
    Bring me here, with elfin speed,
    The fragrant philter which I need.
    Make it sweet and swift and strong,
    Spirit, answer now my song!


**    *    *    *

    Hither I come,
    From my airy home,
    Afar in the silver moon.
    Take the magic spell,
    And use it well,
    Or its power will vanish soon!

I have wept a million tears:
Pure and proud one, where are thine,
What the gain though all thy years
In unbroken beauty shine?

All your beauty cannot win
Truth we learn in pain and sighs:
You can never enter in
To the circle of the wise.

They are but the slaves of light
Who have never known the gloom,
And between the dark and bright
Willed in freedom their own doom.

Think not in your pureness there,
That our pain but follows sin:
There are fires for those who dare
Seek the throne of might to win.

Pure one, from your pride refrain:
Dark and lost amid the strife
I am myriad years of pain
Nearer to the fount of life.

When defiance fierce is thrown
At the God to whom you bow,
Rest the lips of the Unknown<...

Come my Celia, let us prove,
While wee may, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours, for'ever:
He, at length, our good will fever.
Spend not then his gifts in vaine.
Sunnes, that set, may rise againe:
But, if once wee lose this light,
'Tis, with us, perpetuall night.
Why should we deferre our joyes?
Fame, and rumor are but toyes.
Cannot wee delude the eyes
Of a few poore houshold spyes?
Or his easier eares beguile,
So removed by our wile?
'Tis no sinne, loves fruit to steale,
But the sweet theft to reveale:
To bee taken, to be seene,
These have crimes accounted beene.

He.    Ah, the bird-like fluting
Through the ash-tops yonder,
Bullfinch-bubblings, soft sounds suiting
What sweet thoughts, I wonder?
Fine-pearled notes that surely
Gather, dewdrop-fashion,
Deep-down in some heart which purely
Secretes globuled passion,
Passion insuppressive,
Such is piped, for certain;
Love, no doubt, nay, love excessive
’Tis your ash-tops curtain.

Would your ash-tops open
We might spy the player,
Seek and find some sense which no pen
Yet from singer, sayer,
Ever has extracted:
Never, to my knowledge,
Yet has pedantry enacted
That, in Cupid’s College,
Just this variation
Of the old, old yearning
Should by plain speech have salvation,
Yield new men new learning.

“Love!” but what love, ...

Wilt thou, because thy Florio loves,
Forsake the giddy glitt'ring throng,
With him to dwell in peaceful groves,
With him to hear the shepherd's song?

Can'st thou, without a sigh, resign
The homage by thy charms inspir'd?
To one, oh! say, can'st thou confine
What oft so many have admir'd?

Sweet maid! oh! bless'd shall be our love,
Till time shall bid it cease to flow;
With thee shall ev'ry moment prove
A little heaven form'd below!

TO .......


Oh, fair as heaven and chaste as light!
Did nature mould thee all so bright.
That thou shouldst e'er be brought to weep
O'er languid virtue's fatal sleep,
O'er shame extinguished, honor fled,
Peace lost, heart withered, feeling dead?

No, no! a star was born with thee,
Which sheds eternal purity.
Thou hast, within those sainted eyes,
So fair a transcript of the skies,
In lines of light such heavenly lore
That men should read them and adore.
Yet have I known a gentle maid
Whose mind and form were both arrayed
In nature's purest light, like thine;--
Who wore that clear, celestial sign
Which seems to mark the brow that's fair
For destiny's peculiar care;
Whose bosom, too, like Dian's own,
Was guarded by a sacred zon...

I loved a child as we should love
Each other everywhere;
I cared more for his happiness
Than I dreaded my own despair.

An angel asked me to give him
My whole life's dearest cost;
And in adding mine to his treasures
I knew they could never be lost.

To his heart I gave the gold,
Though little my own had known;
To his eyes what tenderness
From youth in mine had grown!

I gave him all my buoyant
Hope for my future years;
I gave him whatever melody
My voice had steeped in tears.

Upon the shore of darkness
His drifted body lies.
He is dead, and I stand beside him,
With his beauty in my eyes.

I am like those withered petals
We see on a winter day,
That gladly gave their color
In the happy summer away.

The eve put on her sweetest shroud,
The summer-dress she's often in,
Freck'd with white and purple cloud,
Dappled like a leopard's skin;
The martin, by the cotter's shed,
Had welcom'd eve with twittering song;
The blackbird sang the sun to bed,
Old Oxey's briery dells among:

When o'er the field tript rosy Jane,
Fair as the flowers she treaded on;
But she was gloomy for her swain,
Who long to fight the French had gone;
She milk'd, and sang her mournful song,
As, how an absent maid did moan,
Who for a soldier sorrowed long,
That went and left her, like her own.

Though dreadful drums had ceas'd their noise,
And peace proclaim'd returning Joe,
Delays so lingering dampt her joys,
And expectation nettled woe:
Hope, mix'd with fear and...

I grew a rose within a garden fair,
And, tending it with more than loving care,
I thought how, with the glory of its bloom,
I should the darkness of my life illume;
And, watching, ever smiled to see the lusty bud
Drink freely in the summer sun to tinct its blood.

My rose began to open, and its hue
Was sweet to me as to it sun and dew;
I watched it taking on its ruddy flame
Until the day of perfect blooming came,
Then hasted I with smiles to find it blushing red--
Too late! Some thoughtless child had plucked my rose and fled!

Thy trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Free, peremptory, clear.
No jingling serenader's art,
Nor tinkle of piano strings,
Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs.
The kingly bard
Must smite the chords rudely and hard,
As with hammer or with mace;
That they may render back
Artful thunder, which conveys
Secrets of the solar track,
Sparks of the supersolar blaze.
Merlin's blows are strokes of fate,
Chiming with the forest tone,
When boughs buffet boughs in the wood;
Chiming with the gasp and moan
Of the ice-imprisoned flood;
With the pulse of manly hearts;
With the voice of orators;
With the din of city arts;
With the cannonade of wars;
With the mar...

From age to age the haggard human train
    Creeps wearily across Time's burning sands
    To look into her face, and lift weak hands
In supplication to the calm disdain
That crowns her stony brow.... But all in vain
    The riddle of mortality they try:
    Doom speaks still from her unrelenting eye--
Doom deep as passion, infinite as pain.
From age to age the voice of Love is heard
    Pleading above the tumult of the throng,
But evermore the inexorable word
    Comes like the tragic burden of a song.
"The answer is the same," the stern voice saith:
"Death yesterday, today and still tomorrow--Death!"

"All ready?" cried the captain;
"Ay, ay!" the seamen said;
"Heave up the worthless lubbers,
The dying and the dead."
Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust
"Now let the sharks look to it,
Toss up the dead ones first!"
Corpse after corpse came.up,
Death had been busy there;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
"Are all the dead dogs over?"
Growled through that matted lip;
"The blind ones are no better,
Let's lighten the good ship."
Hark! from the shi...

Just in the hush before dawn
A little wistful wind is born.
A little chilly errant breeze,
That thrills the grasses, stirs the trees.
And, as it wanders on its way,
While yet the night is cool and dark,
The first carol of the lark, -
Its plaintive murmurs seem to say
"I wait the sorrows of the day."

Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair
Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,
Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,
Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.
A hoary mist rose up and slowly sheathed
The dripping walls and portal granite-stepped,
And sank into the inner court, and crept
From column unto column thickly wreathed.

In that dead hour of darkness before dawn,
When hearts beat fainter, and the hands of death
Are strengthened, - with lips white and drawn
And feverish lids and scarcely moving breath,
The hapless mother, tender Chione,
Beside the earth-cold figure of her child,
After long bursts of weeping sharp and wild
Lay broken, silent in her agony.
At first in waking horror racked and bound
She lay, and then a gradual st...

        Some cawing Crows, a hooting Owl,
        A Hawk, a Canary, an old Marsh-Fowl,
    One day all meet together
        To hold a caucus and settle the fate
        Of a certain bird (without a mate),
    A bird of another feather.

        "My friends," said the Owl, with a look most wise,
        "The Eagle is soaring too near the skies,
    In a way that is quite improper;
        Yet the world is praising her, so I'm told,
        And I think her actions have grown so bold
    That some of us ought to stop her."

        "I have heard it said," quoth Hawk, with a sigh,
        "That young lambs died at the glance of her eye,
    And I wholly scorn and despise her.
        This, and more, I am told they say,
        And I think that the only ...

There are some things that entertain me more
Than men or books; and to my knowledge seem
A key of Poetry, made of magic lore
Of childhood, opening many a fabled door
Of superstition, mystery, and dream
        Enchantment locked of yore.

For, when through dusking woods my pathway lies,
Often I feel old spells, as o'er me flits
The bat, like some black thought that, troubled, flies
Round some dark purpose; or before me cries
The owl that, like an evil conscience, sits
        A shadowy voice and eyes.

Then, when down blue canals of cloudy snow
The white moon oars her boat, and woods vibrate
With crickets, lo, I hear the hautboys blow
Of Elf-land; and when green the fireflies glow,
See where the goblins hold a Fairy Fête
        With lanthorn ro...

Said the Poet, I wouldn’t maintain,
As the mystical German has done,
That the land, inexistent till then,
To reward him then first saw the sun;
And yet I could deem it was so,
As o’er the new waters he sailed,
That his soul made the breezes to blow,
With his courage the breezes had failed;
His strong quiet purpose had still
The hurricane’s fury withheld;
The resolve of his conquering will
The lingering vessel impelled:
For the beings, the powers that range
In the air, on the earth, at our sides,
Can modify, temper and change
Stronger things than the winds and the tides,
By forces occult can the laws
As we style them of nature o’errule;
Can cause, so to say, every cause,
And our best mathematics befool;
Can defeat calculation and plan,
...

I.

    O thou to whom, athwart the perish'd days
    And parted nights long sped, we lift our gaze,
    Behold! I greet thee with a modern rhyme,
    Love-lit and reverent as befits the time,
    To solemnize the feast-day of thy son.


II.

    And who was he who flourish'd in the smiles
    Of thy fair face? 'Twas Shakespeare of the Isles,
    Shakespeare of England, whom the world has known
    As thine, and ours, and Glory's, in the zone
    Of all the seas and all the lands of earth.


III.

    He was un-famous when he came to thee,
    But sound, and sweet, and good for eyes to see,
    And born at Stratford, on St. George's Day,
    A week before the wondrous month of May;
    And God therein was gracious to us ...